A Perfect Pot Plant
The brightest thing in the house is a pot or two of the Golden Gleam nasturtium. The plants have never seen the inside of any glass house. They were dug up in the garden before the frosts began and put into a pot. Bright, floriferous, sweet smelling, dwarf in habit but long in stalk the flowers
are a delightful winter decoration. They have every virtue desired in a pot plant and are equally good for a hanging basket, a device of which some of the more botanical station- masters have made excellent use. The plant is a puzzle in one regard. It resows itself with great persistence. If you once have a plant in a congenial bed you will have its descendants there for several years ; but their successors, at least in my small experience, increase their climbing or straggling habit. There are, of course, the two types, the dwarf and the rambler, but the degenerate dwarfs seem to me to relapse to the wander- ing habit that is strong throughout the race. They give a good example of the skill of the florists and seed specialists. Only constant and conscientious selection enables varieties (if not species) to maintain this quality. Perhaps the best example is the Shirley poppy. Self-sown it degenerates greatly after one season and presently relapses altogether to the size and colour of remoter ancestors. Since the above was written I see that the now various varieties of the dwarf Gleam nasturtium are strongly urged as pot plants in -Messrs. Suttons', and doubtless other of the catalogues that are now being sent out.
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