The Gladiolus

Two thousand miles from Ohio to Montana, a gladiolus spike traveled in bud; after its faded flowers were stripped away, the remaining buds kept opening, one after another. What other flower can keep such a promise?

In the early twentieth-century garden, the gladiolus was changing fast: generations of crossing had turned modest wild flowers into bold spikes in a remarkable range of colors and markings. Matthew Crawford traces that transformation, from the old Gandavensis to Lemoine’s velvet-blotched varieties and the elusive “New Blue,” then turns to the practical art of growing them. He explains how a bulb feeds its young plant, why letting seed ripen can weaken the next bulb, and what makes one bulb more promising than another. For the gardener, beauty is only part of the fascination: what small choices will bring the finest flowers into bloom?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.