Cut Flower at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

There need be no question in your mind about the market for good cut flower photography. One of the big slide film distributors has found cut flower fanciers the most consistent buy ers of all among slide collectors, even though the pictures offered are strictly of specimen cut flowers. These cannot possibly have the same appeal as pictures of cut flowers grown by the buyer in his own soil. The only cut flower fancier who is not an eager prospect for pictures of his blooms is one who has never seen a color slide transparency of a beautiful cut flower projected. A close-up of a lovely cut flower on a screen is a sight to make anyone, cut flower lover or not, gasp at its beauty.

Floiver festivals are frequent in the cut flower belt between Haarlem and Leiden. When the tulips are at their height in April, every Sunday is Tulip Sunday. A National cut flower Show (mid-March to mid-May) is held on the Keukenhof Estate at Lisse. Later in the season (not the bulb-cut flower season), two magnificent festivals occur. The Hague stages a brilliant cut flower Festival (early in August), with election of the Flows Queen (parade) and with special prizes such as that for the best bicycle Decoration (open to children); and an Aalsmeer-to-Amsterdam cut flower Parade (September) culminates in the Olympic Stadium, for the award of prizes. The floats are always marvelous.

Inward of the corolla the stamens are found. These are the male reproductive parts of the cut flower. Each stamen consists of an anther which is usually sac-like and pollen-bearing and a stalk. Together the stamens form the androecium. Occupying the central region of the cut flower is the female reproductive part of the cut flower, the gynoecium. The fundamental unit of the gynoe-cium is the carpel.