RED-HOT POKERS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 109, 1 February 1935, Page 18

RED-HOT POKERS

Brilliant Summer Display Red-hot pokers, known as kniphoflas and tritomas, have been more than usually brilliant this season, the heads of blossom in many instances being like burning coals, with scarlet and yellow making the floral Are. This noble herbaceous plant is one of our best midsummer workers that will thrive in sea sand a few yards back from a harbour-side beach, or make just as good a display in a sunny place in a garden on the hills. The poker blossoms are made up of more than a hundred tubular blossoms in cone-like formation on a sturdy green stalk, not unlike that of a minor bulrush. The leaves are long, narrow and arching, and quite graceful. This perennial plant can be easily grown by almost any amateur, and is worth massing in a big way for a brilliant summer display. Clumps are divisible in the winter or early spring. They make a quick recovery, and sometimes flower the first summer after being transplanted. Massed pokers should be a feature in the sandy gardens around the. harbour suburbs. Seeds ripen early, germinate freely, and can be used for raising a batch of new plants, any of which might show an improvement on the stock in hand. Yellow, orange, orange-scarlet and vermilion flowers are to be had.