File:American gardening (1892) (17527723354).jpg

Title: American gardening
Identifier: americangardeni131892newy (find matches)
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors:
Subjects: Gardening; Horticulture
Publisher: New York : Rural Pub. Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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CURRENT GARDEN LORE. 759 only plenty of moisture to make them crack open well. Many a fruit-grower buys his pits in early fall, before they become dry, mixes them with damp sand and places them in some cave or cellar until spring. If the earth has been very moist and the cellar rather warm, he finds his stones cracking open fast, sometimes too fast when spring comes. Sometimes the pits get too dry at first; then nothing seems to bring them round again. Keep them moist from the St a r t. They can b e sown outdoors as soon as pro- cured, or kept in boxes of damp earth, and will grow very well either way. They generally grow e X c e e d i n gly well when they lie u n d e r a heavy coat of snow all winter where, while free from the
Text Appearing After Image:
CaNDLEWOOD (Fouqimra spUndens.) hanges of weather, they are kept moist all winter long. -Joseph Mcehan, in Practical Farmer. The Vine-Cactus in Mexico.—In the coarse gravel on Mexican hillsides is found the vine- cactus (Fouquiera splendens). This is not a true cactus ; its appearance led to the name. The plant consists of from one or two to half a dozen stalks, about an inch ameter, nearly straight, and about five feet tall. The stalks are gray in color, armed with abundant spines, and bear comparatively few small green leaves. At the top of the stalks are one or more clusters of orange-colored flow- ers or fruits. These plants, as in- significant in appearance aso the mullein-stalks of the east, serve many useful purposes. Set up in a line close together, they make a living hedge that even a jack-rabbit cannot pass, and many yards and gardens are fenced in this manner. Set more closely in line around a rectangle five feet wide and ten feet long, with an opening at one end and a covering of brush over the top, they make a complete house for a family of Mexicans of the poorest class,—Report of Departmant of Agriculture. Flowers of Ficus elastica.—A cor- respondent sends us some buds taken from the axils of the leaves of an india-rubber, which he took to be an abortive flower- bud, but which, on being cut open, ap- peared more like an immature fig. This is not a freak, because the plant usually known as india-rubber is really a fig. These little buds frequently appear in india-rubber plants, but we have not known them to perfect themselves in our country. We should be glad to know whether this does occur at times under cultiva- tion. An examination of these buds is verj interest- ing to those who under- stand the structure of the fig. We may say, in com- mon language, that the fig is a bunch of flowers turned inside out. The flowers of the fig are all on the inside of this bud— some of them are purely staminate and others pis- tillate. We are quite sure, thstanding the opinion of some botanists, we have found both barren and fertile flowers in the same fig. And they will be found occasionally in the fruit of Ficus elasticas. When examined with the lens, these little flower.

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