THE 



AND 



GARDEN 6UI0E. 



Eebbuaey, 18G5. 

 NEW VARIETIES OF BEDDING GERANIUMS. 



HOUGH we are never tired of talking 

 about the rapid improvements effected in 

 the forms, and colours, and habits of our 

 favourite flowers, it is certain that not one 

 of our many favourites has been so much 

 improved of late years as that which, for the sake of 

 a collective term, may be designated the S cablet 

 Geeanium. The immense diversity of characters to 

 be found in this section of decorative plants, renders 

 it impossible to designate them by any collective term 

 which will bear critical examination. Pedantry pro- 

 nounces them to be " zonale pelargoniums," but a large pro- 

 portion are not zonale, and pedantry comes to grief as usual. 

 To call them " Bedding Geraniums" is equally incorrect, be- 

 cause many of them are unfit for bedding, and in strict botanical classi- 

 fication, they are not geraniums at all, but pelargoniums. Never- 

 theless the term "bedding geraniums" is preferable to the pedantic 

 designation, " zonale pelargoniums," because it is one which everybody 

 understands, and it conveys to the public apprehension a distinct idea 

 of a purely objective kind, never requiring the unlearned to evolve out 

 of their own internal consciousness the idea of a group of plants which 

 naturally group together, and yet have amongst them no single type of 

 the whole. "When the proposals of the pedants arethoroughly reasonable, 

 mankind will not hesitate to adopt them, and the adoption will remove 

 them from the domain of pedantry into that of common sense. There- 

 fore, until the pedants provide us with a term having a true collective 

 power, and which needs not to be received with any reservations or 

 exceptions, I shall use the term " Bedding Geraniums," because of its 

 obvious usefulness, and take to the new sign, whatever it may be. 



In preparing the lists for this year's " Garden Oracle," I had more 



TOL. Till. — > T 0. II. C 



