Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

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edge and application of botanical facts and principles. Plant pathology—the study of plant diseases in relation, more especially, to economically important crops—is another specialized phase of botany, the importance of which is widely recognized. So also is plant breeding—the systematic attempt to develop new and better varieties of plants. And so on. “In short, knowledge concerning plants is quite as essential to a broad scientific understanding of the world around us as is knowledge of animals or of rocks; and, in any well-rounded scheme of education, botany, the study of plants, well merits a position alongside zoology and geology. In its relation to human life and activity it is only less important, among the natural sciences than physiology.” Miss Carter received this delightful letter, dictated by one of the old colored milkers on the Water Oak Plantation. We should feel much gratified that she could bear to leave such devoted friends, to come back and take charge of the school for us. Tallahassee Florida April 7, 1924 Rout A, Box 52. c|o Mr. R. J. Mathuus Miss Louis Carter My dear i woulder dun rote you Before now But i Bin so worrid About you untill i dident have no mine to rite you Miss Carter i shore study About you all the time untill i dont have no mine to rite you Miss i dident not no that i love you that well i am so worrid About you i dont wont to here your name call i thraught that i like you But then i found out i love you Miss louis use send me some thing if it ant nothing But one of your potergraf if you ant got no one taking please take one and send it to me so i can look after you all the time Becous i wont to put it in my pocket i dun put a pocket in my dress to toat the picture in it Every day to look after you So nothing more to day so by by from Carrie Jeffersson. THE NEW YORK FLOWER SHOW “New York, the blase, the jazz-hunting, has sent its grateful throngs to enjoy the week of flowers—the gai'den exiles, hungry for a sniff of white lilacs and the crocuses of a country dooryard, commuters armed with seed catalogues, and the patrons of the florist world, who weed not, neither do they 13

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any merely as the 'study of flowers', and the botanist ‘as a man who gathers flowers, names them, dries them, and all of whose wisdom consists in determining and classifying this hay which he has accumulated with such zeal.’ Yet how can it be expected otherwise when even the erudite university professor talks about “Botany and Biology , failing to distinguish the fact that biology embraces the study of plants quite as much as it does the study of animals. “A hundred years ago the study of the identification and classification of plants was indeed the outstanding phase of botany; it is still a field which demands the serious attention of a diminishing number of specialists. The ‘study of flowers' will continue always to be a source of pleasure to the ‘amateur botanist,' and perhaps a source of amusement to his friends. But this is not the sort of botany which today occupies the attention of thousands of professional botanists in this country; it is not the sort of botany which is recognized in the majority of our universities and colleges as one of the outstanding divisions of natural science; it is not the sort of botany that confronts the undergraduate electing his first course in this field of science. How far the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction is witnessed by the scant attention paid in our modern botanical text books to matters which pertain to the identification and classification of plants. In fact, there are not a few botanists in the rising generation who have attained that culminating goal of graduate endeavor, the Ph. D. degree, and who are yet blissfully deficient in what a century ago would have been regarded as the very essence of botany. “The botany of today is a subject which bears a vital relationship to man's welfare—in fact, to his very existence, since plants represent an absolutely indispensable feature of the human environment. In the absence of green plants there would be no food to eat, no oxygen to breathe. Fuel, whether in the form of wood or of coal, comes from plants. Plants, in the form of fibers, such as cotton, linen and hemp, furnish man with the raw materials for clothing, to say nothing of rope and twine and a whole series of textile products too numerous to mention. Wood, so irreplacable in its multifarious uses, from construction timber to paper pulp, is a plant product. So also are rubber, turpentine, various vegetable oils, tannin, the so-called cellulose products, and divers other materials which are of outstanding importance in relation to the industries. Quinine, strychnine, and cocaine are merely examples of the many medicinal substances for which the physician is indebted to plants. Agriculture and horticulture, forestry and landscape gardening, are but specialized branches of botany; the materials with which these arts have to do are plants; and their successful practice is based on the knowl- 12

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prune, but by their zeal for beauty do their part to maintain the high standards of American horticulture.” Such was truly the case — the early-comer avoided the vast crowds and was able to view the exhibits in their minuter aspects. But the swarming crowd—what did it see?—a riotous mass of color—from gay yellow daffodils to darkly glowing tulips and perhaps it saw “The Cymbedium Diana, variety Mary Pickford” presented to the fair lady. “The Garden of Vistas” of John Scheepers, was one of the six lovely gardens of this year’s show. A notable feature of this garden, with the little Dutch boy among the crimson tulips and masses of purple hyacinths bordering a pool, with Courtesy of “Horticulture a stone pathway leading to a marble niche with seats and bluish lights shining from above, reflected on marble and water, was the outer border of especially imported tulips. There was “The Lady Tulip—Tulipa Clusiana”— a delightful miniature; the reds of “Pride of Haarlem”, “Mrs. F. Sanders”, and “Eclipse”; the white-edged pink “Centennaire”; the yellow and bronze tones of “Yellow Perfection”, “Moonlight”, “Gesneriana lutea” and “Bronze Queen”, and many more striking shades. This garden of bulbs was awarded the Holland Challenge Cup, of solid gold, tulip-shaped, embossed around the chalice with crocuses, tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths—the most valuable trophy ever offered for competition among horticulturists. The gold cup, valued at $3000.00, is 14