Morning Glories

In looking for beautiful plants for the window garden, in winter, or at any time for that matter, do not overlook the importance of this little old, well-known, and ever beautiful annual, the morning glory. It seems especially adapted for a house plant; in pots it loses its rampant growing habit, adapting itself to the situation with commendable propriety. We have just seen at the house of a friend, a four-inch pot, in which there are half-a-dozen plants growing, yielding each day their beautiful flowers, the most remarkable peculiarity being that when grown in pots, they flower when not more than four inches in height The flower remains open throughout the day. The first flowers appear with the second part of leaves. Make the morning glory as rare as an orchid, and as expensive, and it would have the preference.

The Most Vigorous Tea Roses

Experiments carried on by 53 amateurs, and as many professional growers of roses, show that the following roses, in the order named, are the most vigorous : 1, Mad. Lambard ; 2, Marie Van Houtte ; 3, Anna Olivier ; 4, Souvenir d'un Ami ; 5, Gloire de Dijon ; 6, Rubens; 7, Francisca Kruger Hon. Edith Gifford, Jean Ducher; 8, Catherine Mermet, Mad. Willermoz, Mad. Bravy. - Rerme de l' Horticulture Beige.

Mulching Apple Trees. J. B. A

We should not advise the use of sawdust as a mulch, while advocating mulches in general, especially for newly-set trees. Sawdust becomes too compact, and is also the favorite resort of many kinds of insects injurious to the trees. One of the most productive orchards known to us is, every few years, covered to the depth of six inches with marsh (salt) hay. The hens and chickens have a full range and delight in scratching it over and over, for the insect food which the mulch harbors. While, therefore, the hay secures all the benefit of a mulch, it never becomes compact or infested with fungii and insects.

Mulching Strawberries With Coal-Ashes

Three years ago, says Professor Goff, at Dr. Sturtevant's suggestion, a bed of Sharpless strawberries was planted out and heavily mulched with coal ashes. The object was to see if this material would not act beneficially in keeping down weeds. It has done this in a marked degree, but this is not all. The yield from the plants has been more abundant than from another bed of the same variety that has received excellent culture of the ordinary kind. The plants have been almost entirely free from blight, though the Sharpless blights badly here when grown in the ordinary way. I should have stated that the bed has received no culture since the mulching except to remove the weeds that were strong enough to grow through the three inches of coal ashes.

Musa Sumatrana

Allow me to call your attention to a mistake in your musa nomenclature (page 332, June issue). I think, if you were served at breakfast with fried fruits of M. Sumatrana instead of the M. paradisiaca, the plantain of Pisang, you would soon conclude there was not only a distinction, but a difference as well.

The fruit of Musa Sumatrana is a woody pod filled with small black seeds that are as hard as shot, and it belongs to that section of the musa that are grown as decorative plants only. As we are advertising M. Sumatrana, we don't want people to buy it with the impression they are getting plantains, or vice versa. - R. D. Hovt, Bay View, Fla.

[The article in question did not say that Musa Sumatrana is an edible plantain, but only "a cultivated plantain in the West Indies." But we are glad of Mr. Hoyt's remarks concerning the true nature of the species. - Ed].