HORTICULTURAL ITEMS-

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11975, 26 May 1902, Page 7

HORTICULTURAL ITEMS-

A good formula for making grafting wax is the following:—Four parts resin by weight, two parts beeswax, and one part tallow, to be used when warm.

The golden elder is a fine, showy shrub, and a strong grower: the colour of the foliage is greatly improved by cutting the growths hard back annually. Bee stings from young bees are not as painful as from old ones. A scientist has found that field bees, or workers, have twice as much poison as the young ones. According to the director of the Kew Gardens no less than six toii3 of solid matter, soot, etc., are deposited on a square mile in London during the fog-bound week. A real yellow convolvulus is the latest outcome of Japanese skill in plant work. This again upsets the theory that one family of plant cannot have the three cardinal colours. Miss Maud Millet, the celebrated actress, lias a useful lobby, for, in addition to keeping canaries in her Kensington conservatory, she also grows mushrooms all the year round. Not long ago, in the streets of London, splendid violets were obtainable at one penny per bunch. The look and smell were lovely, but the perfume was accused of having an unnatural birth.

Four hundred dollars per acre were cleared from some apple crops in Washington the oast season! Little wonder that the Pacific north-west is interested in this splendid orchard product. California was lately credited with producing a daisy measuring more than a foot across. It has been remarked that the big strawberry, and the big gooseberry, having had their turn, the daisy is now in" the running.

At a recent horticultural show in Chicago special prizes were offered for the most interesting grafted specimen plant of any kind. The prize was awarded to a chysanthemum bearing many varieties, and the second was given to a, tomato plant, which had been grafted on a potato. The subterranean clover (trifolium subterraneum) buries its seeds. At first the flowerheads points upwards, like those of other clovers, but as soon as the florets are fertilised the flower-stalks bend over and grow downwards, forcing the flower-head into the ground, an operation much facilitated by the peculiar construction and arrangement of the imperfect florets. In one of the Canary Islands there is a tree of the laurel family that occasionally rains clown in the early evening quite a copious shower of water drops from its tufted foliage. The water comes out throutrh innumerable little pores situated at the edge of the loaves.

It is said to be a common belief among many scientists that the process of nitrification is almost entirely suspended in uncultivated soil._ A German chemist, however, finds that in forest soils the process goes on continuously as well as in cultivated land. The extent depends somewhat upon the depth of soil and the time of year. According to a certain writer the common violet supplies food for reflection. After the first blossoms have disappeared a new set of flower-stalks come into existence; these, instead of thrusting their heads into the open air, keep themselves as retired as possible, and, having fertilised their ovules without the mediation of insects or outside agency, they proceed to bury their capsules near the parent plant. . As an instance of how orchids are used in America, and how money is lavished upon them, it is stated in a recent horticultural journal that a romantic American, once a prosperous business man, of Cleveland, after living! as a hermit for 15 years in consequence of an unhappy love affair, has been buried in a silk-lined grave. Mr. W. C. Whitney, an old friend of his, put, on the coffin a wreath 6 feet,wide, consisting of 1000 orchid blossoms.

While numerous fine varieties of begonias have of late years been produced probably the finest of the lot has been raised by Messrs. Veitch and Son, Chelsea. It has been named Ideala, and was a seedling from B. socotrana, crossed with tuberous-booted varieties. The flowers are semi-double, about two inches across, and of a brilliant rose colour. Like some others of its class the flowers are retained until quite shrivelled. The plant will bloom all through the winter. It is of dwarf, compact habit, only growing about six inches high. Camphor is obtained from a Japanese tree, a large evergreen of symmetrical proportions, somewhat resembling a linden. It boars a white flower, which ripens into a red berry. Some of the trees are fifteen feet in diameter and live to a great age. The camphor is extracted from the chips taken from the roots, or from the stem near the root, the wood yielding about 5 per cent, of camphor, and the root a larger proportion. * "It is interesting to notice," says the Garden, "the strange ways of some flower gardeners, who think a bed 2ft or 3ft above the level 08 the soil is beautiful, and also satisfying to the plants. Of course it is neither one nor the other. We have seen a lot of these mud-pie beds lately, and feel quite sorry for the poor plants perched up, so that no water can reach the roots. Plants at the base of the mound have the best of it. It is better to make them too low than too high." With this we cordially agree, and with a hot, dry climate in summer, as is often the case in this colony, beds below the surrounding surface are preferable to the many little mounds that are only too frequently to be seen in suburban gardens, although they are only, as a rule, two inches or three inches above the surface.

Agricola.