" Jane " says: " Our gardener insists that I must only twist off the Camellia flowers, and put a wire through for a stem; that it will injure the plants if I cut a piece of the stem off with the flower. How is this?"

[It will not injure the plant in the sense in which we generally understand injury; but if you cut off the terminal growing bud when you cut the flower, you will not have a flower from that branch the next year, which you may have when you only "twist off" the flower - Ed. G. M].