GARDENING NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 22 April 1915, Page 51

GARDENING NOTES

{By Me. J. Joyce, Landscape Gardener, Christchurch.)

-H VARIEGATED PLANTS. Nature’s laws have decreed that trees and plants \ of every description should be clothed with a garment of green. As we wander in the dense forest, every tree we gaze on has a canopy of green foliage. Most of the trees and plants which we admire in our gardens and shrubberies are also clothed in green. But though a I* 1 those trees and plants have a green dress, yet they vary in their depth of color. Some are a 'dark green, others light, and in fact all the different shades of green are to be found in the different varieties of trees and plants. Generally speaking Nature’s color is green, with a few exceptions. Here and there we see some New Zealand plants with whitish foliage, such as the olearia, senecio, and a few others. But occasionally we find an intruder into the vegetable kingdom in the form of a variegated tree or shrub, and naturally we want to know how the change has taken place, and how the law of Nature has been violated by the introduction of a foreign individual into the family. This is how it has come about. Now, there is a great number of variegated trees and plants in our flower gardens and pleasure grounds. They have all come by chance in the form of sports. This sport is a variegated shoot which comes out by chance from a green parent plant. To put it more plainly ; a tree with green foliage throws out a variegated shoot from one of its branches. It is a phenomenon that no one seems to be able to explain. To propagate this variegated shoot, and convert it into -independent plant, it is taken and planted as a cutting, or grafted on to another young plant of the same green variety, and thus a new plant is introduced. This is how all our variegated plants have been established. Variegated plants are always inclined to revert back to the parent color. Sometimes a green shoot starts from the variegated one. This, if not interfered with, will outgrow the parent, so that the variegated tree must be carefully watched, and all green shoots pruned off. This is how we have got our variegated trees, shrubs, and other garden plants, such as the variegated • holly, the silver and golden Irish and English yews, the golden and silver euonymus (or Japanese laurel), the silver and golden box-tree, the different geraniums, and others too numerous to mention. All those plants have been propagated and perpetuated by the observant gardener, for the beauty and embellishment of our flower gardens and shrubberies. To illustrate the mode of procedure I will describe my method of raising a new plant—a variegated cocksfoot grass, for which, as a new and rare plant, I received a first-class certificate from the Christchurch Horticultural Society. On going through a paddock one day, I observed a tuft of cocksfoot grass, in which was a very tiny shoot with a light tinge of variegation in it. It was not much to look at, and hundreds would pass by without taking the slightest notice, but I thought there was something to be got from it, so I carefully dug up the clump, potted it, and allowed it to come to seed. The seed pods were slightly tinged with variegation, so I saved the seed very carefully, and, when the time came on for sowing it, I put it in a flower pot. I suppose I had about fifty seeds, and out of those, every plant except one was green. I discarded all the green ones, and carefully cultivated the variegated specimen. With care knd attention it became a very large plant, and was a really beautiful specimen, with alternate stripes of white and green. It grew to a length of fully eighteen inches, and developed all round the pot. It was very graceful, and was much admired at the time. The mode of propagation was by separation of the clump, with a little root attached to each part. This will give an idea how new plants are raised and introduced into our gardens. I also saved seed from this plant, in the hope of raising some more specimens, and perhaps a new varietjn But my labor was in vain all the seeds

cam© up, but were too delicate. All the leaves: of the seedlings were white, without a tinge of green, but they very; soon perished. It is a well-known fact that no plant will grow unless it has a certain amount of green interspersed through the foliage. This green coloring is called clorifel, and any plant devoid of this is doomed to extinction. All variegated trees and plants must' have a certain quantity of green foliage, otherwise they will not live. It is 1 also a well-known fact'that variegated trees and plants cannot be perpetuated by i seed, as the young seedlings always come up with their leaves all white, and consequently the young plants very soon die off. All variegated plants - are propagated by layers, grafting, budding, cuttings, or separation of the roots. In a word, variegated plants are not natural growths, they are a freak of nature.