GARDENING NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 1 July 1915, Page 47

GARDENING NOTES

(By Mb. J. Joyce, Landscape Gardener, Christchurch.) CUTTING FLOWERS. Just look at the beautiful bouquet of flowers which that young lady has picked in the garden. They are the choicest blooms she can find. She does this two or three time in the week. The flowers are for the adorning of the drawing-room, in the decoration of which she displays good judgment and exquisite taste. No doubt the flowers are very suitable and appropriate for decorative 'purposes, but one wonders if the young lady has given a passing thought, as she goes from bed to bed selecting all the choicest blooms, to the sad havoc she is playing on the future of those beautiful seedlings which those choice flowers were expected to produce. It must be borne in mind that from the seeds of the choicest flowers are grown the best plants, and no doubt the best and choicest plants will always' have the most perfect blooms. Hence the care and forethought which should be exercised in the proper selection of flowers for the table. Some of the best and choicest of the flowers should be always preserved for a supply of seed to furnish a good display for the next season. Indiscriminate cutting of flowers, without a thought for the future, means an inferior supply of seed for the next year’s display. You will never find a gardener, who understands his work, cutting away the best of his flowers for decorative purposes. * No ; he will jealously guard those precious favorites and watch them carefully until they mature their seed, which will be carefully preserved and laid by until the sowing season arrives. Care should also be exercised in selecting the proper blooms to cut. Sometimes a bloom looks very tempting, but as there are a number of fine buds on the same stalk the cutting of it would mean sacrificing several prospective flowers for the sake of one. Flowers fit to cut, and having few or no buds close to them on the same stalk, should invariably lie selected. Hv a little judicious care in cutting many plants will be induced to flower much later on in the season. Gardeners are very fond of their flowers, and it is very discouraging and disheartening for one of them, on arriving at his work in the morning, to find that his favorite flowers, which he had watched and tended with jealous care, had disappeared. But, the young ladies of the household never gave his feeling a thought. This is an everyday experience. I have known experienced gardeners give up good positions owing to their choicest flowers being cut. indiscriminately. Gardeners like to

make a good display, and they ought to be encouraged as much as possible by their employers. ... THE VARIOUS PARTS OF. A FLOWER. Now we will pull one of those flowers to pieces, and have a look at its different parts. The flower is the part of a plant destined , to perpetuate its species by means of seed, and the different sections of-the flower we are going to study have all their different parts allotted by nature for the development of the seed. First we see a little bud growing out of the plant. This is the starting of the flower. It is called the calyx, and out of this the flower grows. When this calyx or bud bursts, the outside parts are called the sepals. The blossom or corolla then expands into what.are designated the petals, and are usually colored. The male organs, or stamens, have little nobs at the ends, which are filled with pollen. Those stamens stand around the centre of the flower. The tips of the stamens are the anthers in which the pollen is, contained. When the pollen is ripe, the anthers burst and scatter their contents. In the midst of those stamens in the centre of the flowerstands the female organ, which botanists designate the pistil. Some flowers have many, and some only one. The lower part is the ovary, where the embryo seed is contained. The middle part, leading from the seed vessel, is named the style, the top of which is the stigma. This receives the pollen from the anthers, and conveys it through the style, to the seed vessel, or ovary, where the embryo seed gets fertilised. The following are the different parts of the flower with the botanical names in parentheses: —Flower cup (calyx), blossom (corolla), blossom leaves (petals), male organs (stamens), male stalks (filaments), tips of the male organs (anthers), powder (pollen), female organs (pistils), seed vessel (ovary), -pillars (styles), tops of pillars (stigma), scale (scale or lower leaves).