62 Addisonla. 



information supplied by Mr. J. K. Alexander of Bast Bridgewater, 

 Massachusetts, the variety was originally named "Annie Bird" 

 but after the purchase of the stock by W, W. Rawson & Co., 

 seedsmen and market gardeners of Arlington and Boston, it was 

 renamed "W. W. Rawson" in honor of the head of the firm, the 

 Honorable Warren W. Rawson.* It was first advertised as "W. 

 W. Rawson" in 1907, but as an unnamed seedling it appears to 

 have been awarded Honorable Mention by the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society in 1905. 



The variety has been grown in the dahlia border of The New 

 York Botanical Garden since its establishment, beginning with the 

 season of 1918. The flower-head shown in our plate was collected 

 September 28, 1920, and was drawn in its natural size. 



A tall plant, commonly six to eight feet high, with moderately 

 large fully double flower-heads, which are white, suffused with 

 lavender or amethyst-blue, and are of the balled-shaped or "show" 

 type. The stems are smooth. Most of the leaves have three or 

 five lobes or leaflets, which are dark green, short-pointed, coarsely 

 dentate, the teeth cuspidate and the margins also minutely ciliolate- 

 serrulate; the terminal leaflets are elliptic-ovate to elliptic-lanceo- 

 late, the lateral smaller and with inequilateral bases, but otherwise 

 rather similar, all nearly smooth on both surfaces. The flower- 

 heads are mostly three and a half to four and a half inches broad, 

 and are held erect or slightly nodding on strong peduncles. The 

 bracts of the outer involucre are usually seven or eight, irregularly 

 disposed, elliptic-ovate, becoming lanceolate, subacute, and coria- 

 ceous. The bracts of the inner involucre are mostly sixteen to 

 twenty-five, oblong-lanceolate, membranaceous, pale green or straw- 

 colored, and subacute. The ray florets, comprising all ordinarily 

 visible in the head, number usually one hundred and fifty to one 

 hundred and seventy; their ligules are all more or less regularly 

 quilled or tubular by the involution and overlapping of their 

 margins, the color is white, more or less suffused at the apices with 

 amethyst-blue, lavender, or mauve. The disk florets are commonly 

 ten to forty and they are exposed only in the very latest stages of 

 the development of the head, usually after the outer florets have 

 withered; the most central are often imperfectly and irregularly 

 developed. 



Marshali. a. Howe. 



* For biography, see Florist's Exchange 26: 196. 1908; and American Florist 

 31: 110. 1908. 



