Tanacetum indicuni, Schultz. Bip. Tanacet. p. 60. 

 Tijetti-pu, RJieede Hort. Mai. vol. x. (1690) p. 87, t. 44. 



The vegetable kingdom offers few instances of floral 

 disguises more complete than those under which the two 

 plants known to horticulturalists as the Indian Chrysan- 

 themum masquerade. 



Until comparatively recently the wild forms of these two 

 plants were not even approximately identified, and now that 

 we have large series of specimens supposed to represent 

 both, from China and Japan, their delimitation appears 

 to me, after some study of them, to baffle description, so 

 variable are they in habit, foliage, inflorescence, and 

 pubescence. In the cultivated forms, on the other hand, 

 there is less variety in habit and foliage, with no limit to 

 vagaries assumed by the flower-heads, due to the suppres- 

 sion of the disk florets in a greater or less degree, and 

 their assuming, with more or less variation of form and 

 colour, the characters of ray florets. On the other hand, 

 it is, in very many cases, impossible to say to which of the 

 two species a given cultivated garden specimen is refer- 

 able, which may be due, in part, to hybridization. The 

 two recognized species are 0. indicnm, Linn, '(partim), of 

 which a very widely spread wild Chinese form is here 

 represented, and G. morifolium, Earn. (C. sinense, Sabine. 

 Their distinctive characters, as given by Mr. Henry (Gard. 

 Chron. I.e.), who has collected the plants in various parts 

 of China, and studied them at Kew, are : — 



G. indicnm; leaves thin, flaccid, pinnatipartite, serratures acute or macro- 

 nate; outer invol. bracts scariou?, except the narrow herbaceous nerve; 

 lignles yellow, shorter than the diameter ot the disk.— China and Japan. 



C. vwrifolium ; leaves thick, coriaceous, entire or slightly incised; outer 

 invol. bracts short, linear, acute, densely albo-tomentose ; ligules white, longer 

 than the diimeter of the disk.— N. China, Mongolia, Japan. 



In a letter, Mr. Henry informs me that he recognized in 

 China two status of G. indicnm. 1, A graceful, small, 

 delicate plant, growing in coniferous forests, at eight 

 thousand five hundred feet elevation; 2, a large straggling, 

 weedy, very fragrant plant, common in ditches and^nelds, 

 on^the banks of the Yangtze Kiang at Iehang. 



"The Chrysanthemum" is the subject of an essay by 

 Mr. W. B. Hemsley, published in the Gardeners' Chro7iicle in 

 1889 (cited above) which is a model for the treatment of 



