United States or Falkland Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There were fruit-orchards and olive-groves on the foothills, and clear streams ran murmuring down through glistening oleander thickets. Wild flowers sprang in every untilled corner; tall spikes of hollyhocks, scarlet and blue anemones, clusters of mignonette, rock-roses, and cyclamens, purple iris in the moist places, and many-colored spathes of gladiolus growing plentifully among the wheat.
The gladiolus opens its first flower in the morning, and the work of going over a bed containing hundreds that have just bloomed for the first time, and marking the finest with tags upon which are inscribed a few characters that mean much to the owner, and almost nothing to anyone else, will give one an undercurrent of joy for the rest of the day.
They will be found among the most useful of our late flowers for large vases, and where striking and brilliant effects of color are desired. The Gladiolus is also well adapted to cutting, and is very effective when used in tall vases, the entire stalk being taken.
No tribes of flowers have had so great, so varied, or so healthy an influence on man as this great group of Drosidæ, depending, not so much on the whiteness of some of their blossoms, or the radiance of others, as on the strength and delicacy of the substance of their petals; enabling them to take forms of faultless elastic curvature, either in cups, as the crocus, or expanding bells, as the true lily, or heath-like bells, as the hyacinth, or bright and perfect stars, like the star of Bethlehem, or, when they are affected by the strange reflex of the serpent nature which forms the labiate group of all flowers, closing into forms of exquisitely fantastic symmetry in the gladiolus.
He finds the delicious huddle of the gabled, pigeon-haunted roof of a certain brown old building at Frame, with poppies and gladiolus and hollyhock crowding the beautiful foreground. He finds apparently in the same place the tangle of the hardy flowers that come while the roses are still in bloom, with the tall blue larkspurs standing high among them.
Finally they set off, and it was a sight to see the long procession of dry-land Tortoises heavily laden with savants, scientific instruments, Glow-Worms and Fire-Flies for signal service, provisions, Ants and Tumble-Bugs to fetch and carry and delve, Spiders to carry the surveying chain and do other engineering duty, and so forth and so on; and after the Tortoises came another long train of ironclads stately and spacious Mud Turtles for marine transportation service; and from every Tortoise and every Turtle flaunted a flaming gladiolus or other splendid banner; at the head of the column a great band of Bumble-Bees, Mosquitoes, Katy-Dids, and Crickets discoursed martial music; and the entire train was under the escort and protection of twelve picked regiments of the Army Worm.
One of the most interesting branches of gladiolus culture is the growing of seedlings, and a very important part of this is producing the seed. Of course, seed can be bought, but it is more satisfactory to the grower to raise it himself, as far as practicable, and know what it is, besides eliminating an item of expense.
Last of all, it is seen in the house of mourning, and at the graves of the dead, where its sweet cheerfulness seems to speak a message of comfort to the living. Habits of Growth. The gladiolus is a bulbous plant that grows only in the warm season of the year. It may be grown from bulbs, bulblets, or seeds. Amateurs have to do mainly with bulbs, as their chief object is to produce flowers.
These expressions seem to be popularly used in a rather free way, as applied to the gladiolus, to denote the bringing together of different varieties, for the purpose of obtaining seed, which shall produce new and diverse kinds, combining in some degree the qualities of the parents, and presumably of superior excellence.
"I was told to see you about these. They're only four dollars a dozen, and the smallest school children love 'em." Miss Abigail straightened herself with difficulty. She had been weeding the gladiolus bed. "Four dollars," she mused, "I was going to put four dollars into rose-bushes this fall." She put out a strong, earth-stained old hand and took the chair.
Word Of The Day