Window gardening : devoted specially to the culture of flowers and ornamental plants for indoor use and parlor decoration . ^. After you have become accustomed to growing ferns in the case, you will per-haps crave a little variety. This can be easily had. Suppose you look a littleinto the curiosities of growth and reproduction. If you look on the under side of the fern fronds, you will find something re-sembling a brown powder, adhering to them thickly in regularly distributedmasses of varied shapes, depending upon the species. Examining with the magnifier or microscope, you find them to be se
Window gardening : devoted specially to the culture of flowers and ornamental plants for indoor use and parlor decoration . ^. After you have become accustomed to growing ferns in the case, you will per-haps crave a little variety. This can be easily had. Suppose you look a littleinto the curiosities of growth and reproduction. If you look on the under side of the fern fronds, you will find something re-sembling a brown powder, adhering to them thickly in regularly distributedmasses of varied shapes, depending upon the species. Examining with the magnifier or microscope, you find them to be seeds orspores. Shake these spores, which appear like the veriest dust, over the surface of theearth in an ordinary fern case, after it has been well smoothened. The earthshould be watered very thoroughly previous to scattering the spores WINDOW GARDENTNG. 175. Fig. 65.—Aiborette. In about a month or six weeks, looking carefully across the surface of theearth, you see the slightest specks of green; again examining with tlie micioscopeyou find them living organisms of vegetation ; and when at a later date they be-come of good size, it is with no little satisfaction to be able to say, that tliey weiethe seedlings sown by your own hand. If in yourtravels in the woods, you carry an herbarium withyou, you can gather the fronds of every variety youmeet, which contains fertile spores. Spores from such an herbarium should be plantedas soon as convenient to insure germination. Sporeshave been known to germinate as long as eighteenmonths after being gatliered, while under favorableciicumstances germination in spores has taken place,when sown eight or ten years after they were col-lected. From your spores you will get a quantity ofseedlings, many of them of strange forms, and some todiffer from the parent plant. We may find frequently several fronds
Size: 1345px × 1858px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1872
