56 Addisonia 



late appearance of peony-flowered varieties in trade catalogues. 

 And it may well be that the same explanation accounts also for the 

 delayed appearance of dahlias of the "cactus" type. Mr. Joseph 

 Paxton, in discussing the "characteristics of excellence" in dahlias 

 in 1838, alludes to the sentiment then prevailing in the following 

 words :* 



"Any irregularity in the shape of the petals, such as their being 

 notched, quilled, convex, or too much concave, pointed, etc., is at 

 once sufficient to render the flower unfit for public exhibition and 

 competition. ... In some full-blown flowers the eye or disk is evi- 

 dent, and no flower can be brought into competition, with any 

 chance of success, when it is thus defective." 



The variety "Marguerite Clark," named for a popular American 

 actress, was originated by George h. Stillman of Westerly, Rhode 

 Island, who first advertised it in 1915. It is said by Mr. Stillman 

 to be a seedling of "Mme. J. Coissard," a French variety, shown on 

 our plate 219. It was first grown in the dahlia border of The New 

 York Botanical Garden in 1918, from a root supplied by the origina- 

 tor. The drawing was made, natural size, from a flower-head taken 

 on September 28, 1920. 



A low plant, commonly three or four feet high, with moderately 

 large semi-double cream-colored and cerise-rose flower-heads of the 

 "peony" type. The stems are smooth. The lower leaves have 

 three or five lobes or leaflets, the upper are simple; the leaflets are 

 dark green, short-pointed, dentate, and the margins also minutely 

 and obscurely ciliolate-serrulate; the terminal leaflets are elliptic- 

 ovate, the lateral ovate with a pronouncedly inequilateral base, all 

 nearly smooth on both surfaces. The flower-heads are mostly four 

 and one half to five and one half inches broad and more or less 

 pendent. The bracts of the outer involucre are five to seven, 

 lanceolate or lanceolate-spatulate, subacute, and coriaceous. The 

 bracts of the inner involucre are mostly ten to fourteen, oblong- 

 lanceolate, and membranaceous, pale green or straw-colored, and 

 acute or subacute. The ray florets are commonly forty to sixty 

 in four or five series; their ligules are broadly elliptic to narrowly 

 elliptic, sometimes with narrower, redundant or accessory ligules 

 springing from various parts of the tube, concave, convex, or vari- 

 ously curled or twisted, obtuse or rarely subacute, the inner faces 

 cream-yellow, deepening towards the base, the outer faces with 

 streaks and flecks of cerise and old rose on a background of cream- 

 yellow. The disk florets are usually about one hundred. 



Marshai,!. a. Howe. 



* A practical treatise on the cultivation of the dahlia, p. 103. 



