1 DeEc, 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 581 
Keep the ground clear of weeds and oceasionally hoed if you wish your 
plants to do their best, and stake when the flower bud begins to appear. 
Unless you wish to preserve seed, it is well to cut the flower stem as soon 
as it has completed blooming, and thus conserve strength all you can. 
It seems desecration to cut a spike of good Gladiolus, but one good point 
about this flower is that cut and kept in water it will continue to open to the 
last bud. When the leaves are well yellowed and flattened down, the bulbs 
may be lifted and stored in a .cool, dry place till planting time comes round 
again. 
I prefer to wrap mine in paper, with name ona slip enclosed, and to go 
over them in two or three weeks after the first wrapping to see they are 
properly dried. 
he corm frequently duplicates itself, but varieties differ much in this 
respect. Some never seem to do so, and if you wish to raise a stock of any 
particular variety, or even to keep your stock good. care should be taken to 
preserve the small bulblets to be found in more or less numbers round the base 
of the parent. Some of the Lemoine: varieties are very prolific in this respect, 
and the bulblets are more loosely attached to the parent aa in the gandavensis 
varieties. 
Prepare a bed for these as you would a seed bed, and plant them in drills, 
marking your varieties. Many of them will soon grow, and soon become fair 
sized corms, and will flower in the following season. If kept too long, they 
lose their vitality. 
This is the proper way to keep up a sound and healthy stock, and, but for 
this, the propagation of choice new varieties would be exceedingly slow, and the 
price, high enough as it is now, next to prohibitive. When grown on year by 
year from the original bulb, deterioration seems to come on, and the original at 
last runs itself out. 
There appears to me in Queensland in most varieties a tendency to 
deteriorate in colour. Some of my darkest—notably one Le Veswve—becomes 
lighter in shade year by year, while whiter varieties develop a pink tint. 
Yellows generally are unsatisfactory and of poor constitution. They seem 
to lose brightness, size, and quality. 
I have seen the question asked several times in horticultural literature, 
how it is that, in a choice collection, the old gandavensis soon comes to the top 
and predominates ? 
There is no doubt this variety 1s prepotent in vitality. It increases fast by 
subdivision, by bulblets, and by seed, while choicer varieties do not. To keep 
a collection intact this variety should not be grown, and if it appears it should 
- be ruthlessly destroyed. 
Many growers hold that other varieties frequently lapse back into this, but 
the point is not, I believe, established. 
Gladioli are readily raised from seed, and, so grown, flowered in the second 
year, even occasionally before. Save seed from favourite and hest varieties. 
Prepare a seed bed as for annuals, and have it in best possible condition. Sow 
the seed in drills about 1 inch deep, and from 8 to 10 inches apart. Keep the 
bed clear from weeds, and give the young plants every chance to grow on strongly. 
When the tops die down lift the bulbs and store them till next planting time. 
If you allow your plants to seed, and the seed to scatter, you will probably have 
a number of self-sown plants come up. If not in the way, these may be allowed 
to grow on, and gathered at the proper time for planting again. You may raise 
some real choice varieties in this way. 
Should any of the amateur members of this society intend to take up the 
cultivation of this beautiful flower, I would strongly recommend them to be content 
with a few well-selected varieties. It is a great mistake to try a large number, 
especially if you wish to keep your varieties distinct. To do this from season 
to season entails very much trouble and work; unless great care is taken, 
confusion will come in. Your plants can only be distinguished when in flower, 
and in other stages of growth resemble each other. ‘Then you must provide 
