This section is from the book "A Dictionary Of Modern Gardening", by George William Johnson, David Landreth. Also available from Amazon: The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses.
Six species. Hardy herbaceous perennials. Division. Light sandy soil.
Whortleberry. Thirty-two species and some varieties. Chiefly hardy deciduous shrubs; V. caracasa-num and V. meridionale are stove evergreens; and a few are hardy and half-hardy evergreen trailers. Layers, seeds, and the stove species cuttings: Bandy peat.
Valerian. Nineteen species. Hardy herbaceous perennials, except V, capensis, which belongs to the green-house, and V. sisymbrifolia, is a hardy biennial. Division. Loam, peat, and sand, for the natives of warm climates, and common soil for the hardy species.
Three species. Hardy annuals. Seeds. Common soil.
Vallaris pergulana. Stove evergreen twiner. Cuttings. Sandy loam and peat.
Two species. Stove evergreen shrubs. Cuttings. Sandy loam and peat.
Vallisneria spiralis. Greenhouse aquatic perennial. Seeds. Water.
Vallota purpurea, and its variety. Green-house bulbous perennial. Offsets. Peat and sand.
Five species. Stove epiphytes. Division. Wood, and some of the stronger kinds, sphagnum and potsherds.
Four species. Stove annuals, except V. hirsuta, which is hardy. Seeds. Sandy loam.
Three species. Stove evergreen shrubs. Cuttings. Loam and peat.
Three species. V. bi-color, a stove epiphyte, increased by division, and growing on wood. The other two increase by cuttings. Moss and turfy peat.
Variegation is the colour of leaves different from green, such as "the silvery and golden margins, and varieties of spots, which are common among garden plants, as in myrtle, sage, ivy, holly, the Agave Americana, Sempervivum arboreum, and many of the Pelargonioe. These spots are not diseases, for the whole plant has all the signs of being in a perfectly healthy state. But neither are they effects of a law of nature, like the spots of Orchis inaculata, and the red-coloured leaves of Caladiwn bicolor and Amaranthus tricolor, inasmuch as they are not continued by propagation by seed. Such discoloured spots are incapable of performing the usual function of leaves, namely, the exhalation of oxygen gas." - Decandolle.
Yet this variegation does not render the plant more tender; for the variegated holly and ivy are as hardy as those with leaves entirely green.
V AS CO A. Two species. Greenhouse evergreen shrubs. Young cuttings. Loam and peat.
See Green Manures, Ashes, Manures.
See Gourd.
Velezia rigida. Hardy annual. Seeds. Light soil.
V E L L A Pseudo - cytisus. Cress Rocket. Green-house evergreen shrub. Young cuttings. Common soil.
Three species. Greenhouse herbaceous perennials. Division or seeds. Loam, peat, and sand.
Three species. Green-house bulbous perennials. Offsets. Light loamy soil.
See Stove.
Scandix pecten-veneris.
Dionoeamus-cipula.
 
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