THE PLANT WORLD UNDER CARE. 



105 



FIG. 3. VIOLA CORNUTA 



FIG. 4. "LADY BATH" (1834). 



ticulturists introduced another species 

 of Viola namely the yellow V. lutea, 

 and that a double-flowered variety was 

 known as early as the year 1629 ac- 

 cording to Parkinson. About one hun- 

 dred years later Philip Miller (1731) 

 states that Viola tricolor was culti- 

 vated very extensively in England, and 

 in many varieties as to size and color 

 of the flowers, beside that V. lutea was 

 also grown occasionally. That the 

 pansy was also grown in Denmark and 

 Sweden as early as the middle part of 

 the seventeenth century may be seen 

 from the works of Simon Paulli (1648) 

 and Olof Rudbeck (1658). It is not 

 so strange that this little plant should 

 attain such widespread popularity, 

 when we remember that Linnaeus 

 (1737) recognized not less than nine- 

 teen varieties, several of which are 

 quite showy. 



The pansies that were, thus, grown in 

 gardens during the sixteenth, seven- 

 teenth and eighteenth century were Viola 

 tricolor and V. lutea, especially, though 

 the former. It was not. however, until 

 the nineteenth century that the culture 

 of pansies should reach its climax. 

 That was when Lady Mary Bennet, 

 daughter of the Count of Tankerville 

 (1810) undertook a rational culture of 

 wild pansies ; she collected seeds of so 

 many varieties as she could find, and 

 grew them in her garden. Her ex- 

 ample became soon followed by Lady 



Monke (1812), and Lord Gambier 

 (1814), whose gardener Thomson of 

 Iver was very successful in producing 

 showy varieties. Seeding was com- 

 menced on a great scale, the most 

 showy specimens were carefully se- 

 lected, and the selection continued 

 from year to year. No artificial cross 

 fecundation was yet attempted, but 

 the flowers were left to the visits of 

 bees and other insects. The fact that 

 Viola tricolor was at that time grown 

 side by side with V. lutea resulted in 

 the development of hybrids, and it was 

 not long before three other species 

 were introduced in the gardens: V. Al- 

 taica, V. calcarata and V. cornuta. 

 These wild species of the genus Viola 

 became actually the ancestors of our 

 cultivated pansy of to-day, and the 

 accompanying figures illustrate some 

 of these. 



Among the very first large flowered 

 varieties that were raised in this way 

 was, "Lady Path" (1834), in which 

 the petals were more brilliantly colored 

 than in the parents, while their shape 

 was essentially the same, somewhat 

 elongated. Then followed a period 

 where English pansy raisers laid more 

 stress upon the production of circular 

 flowers, and "Beauty of Anlaby" is 

 one of these. 



The production of these large flow- 

 ered varieties or rather hybrids marks 

 an epoch in Pansy culture ; the interest 



