This is a term often used by foreign floricultural writers, and one we are frequently asked to define. They are flowers with established characters or habits, and such as can be propagated by cuttings or division of roots or tubers. The term is generally applied to greenhouse and hardy plants that have been produced by hybridization and selection. When a cross between species has been secured, an innumerable number of varieties will be the result; some of these are desirable, and can only be retained by cuttings, as seedlings of any variety are not constant. This is particularly the case with the verbena. If we saw the seeds from any desired plant, for instance a scarlet with a white eye, there is no probability that we should get one plant in a hundred like the parent, and in a hundred plants we could not get two precisely alike. Therefore, to reproduce these varieties we must propagate by cuttings, which is the work of the florist; hence, the name "florist's flowers," in distinction from such as are grown from seed.

The term is also applicable to such as the gladiolus and the hyacinth, which, when propagated from the small bulblets that form at the base of the old bulb, will reproduce the variety, but never when grown from seed. - Queens.