September 9, 1875. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



219 



WEEKLY CALENDAR. 



SEPTEMBER 9—15, 1875. 



Crystal Palace Show closes. 

 Kilmarnock Show. 



16 SONDAY AFTER TRINITY. 



Edinburgh Great International Fruit Show com- 

 [ meacsg. Burghley Park Show. 



From observations taken near London daring forty-three years, the average day temperature ot the week is 61.3'; and its night temperattiro 



CARNATIONS AND PICOTEES. 



HE same wet weather that had spoilt much 

 hay was also greatly against our Carna- 

 tion blooms. Buds had to be carefully 

 watched and protected in good time, and 

 such as were not, soon had the outer petals 

 rotted as they rose from the pod. He who 

 would grow a florist's flower must needs 

 have a genuine love for it, and love can 

 always take pains. 

 Carnations and Piootees are not the least 

 troublesome of florist flowers, but there are so many care- 

 ful and hearty growers that, weather notwithstanding, we 

 had a very good show at the National. It is impossible 

 to fix such a date as shall suit all members of a large 

 florist society scattered over a wide area. We can be 

 national in name, sympathies, and numbers, but never 

 so in one general exhibition. Climate inexorably divides 

 us into north and south ; and in the northern counties 

 even subdivides us. So, in the proposals for date of next 

 year's show, taking Yorkshire opinion only as showing 

 how they differ, there was the range of a whole fortnight 

 given in. The first week in August would be a very safe 

 time and suit a large breadth of district ; and I am speak- 

 ing without any partiality towards my own, because my 

 Carnations and Picotees are never at their best till the 

 third week in August, so hopelessly late that I gave my 

 vote — perhaps to spite them — for the earliest date — Au- 

 gust -i. The latest proposed was August 18, and the date 

 finally arranged for the Show of 1870 is August 11. Had 

 this year's Exhibition been held a week earlier there was 

 a wide belief that greater competition and better flowers 

 would have been produced. We should then have seen, 

 what has never yet been accomplished, a stand of twenty- 

 four staged by one exhibitor, and the whole of them his 

 own seedlings. As it was, twenty-two out of Mr. Si- 

 monite's twenty-four were his seedlings, but his bloom 

 was at its best when I saw it ten days before the Na- 

 tional. The judging in the leading class was not easy 

 work. In several stands the twelve Carn.ations did not 

 support their companion twelve Picotees, or vice versa. 

 The Carnations in Mr. Bower's stand were bright blooms, 

 fall of life, but his Picotees were by no means equal to 

 them, or to some in lower places. Mr. Simonite's Pico- 

 tees were splendid in all great pi'operties of the Picotee, 

 but his Carnations were unable to back them up, through 

 being past their best. 



No one has such fair and honest reason to be proud of 

 his work with seedhng Carnations and Picotees as my 

 friend Mr. Simonite of fiery awful Sheffield. It was 

 almost a new wonder of the world to see how for the 

 Eoyal visit the other day that red-hot town cooled down, 

 how her one stern industry of steel and iron was hushed 

 and laid aside, and her great smoke passed away till the 

 air in Sheffield was almost as bright and pure as the 

 breath of country villages. The whole place was changed, 

 and largely by the influence of flowers, many of which, 

 and plants also, were expressly brouglit from continental 



No 751.— Vol. XXIX., .New Sebies 



gardens. It was a sudden marvel, but it is a standing 

 wonder how a florist's garden can exist in the scorched 

 black air of every-day Sheffield, and how flowers of such 

 tender texture as the Auricula, Carnation, and Picotee 

 can be grown in wonderful condition and beauty, and not 

 only that, but also seeded, and led on. Without one 

 sweet natural advantage in air, light, aspect, or soil have 

 Ben Simonite and his father grown florist flowers for 

 many years. It is a great struggle, only to be carried on 

 with a complete armoury of simple, ingenious, and quaint 

 contrivances for keeping every plant and bloom from 

 deadly winds and poisoned smoke and the inky mixture 

 of Sheffield rain. 



These Sheffield Carnations and Picotees when known 

 will be invaluable as illustrating and helping to fix the 

 properties of these flowers : perhaps especially in Pico- 

 tees. Pods are full of shapely petals that come down in 

 their places and form a flower that barely needs a touch 

 of dressing. Petals are of truly marvellous breadth, fine 

 substance, kindly tempered and flaky, lying in beautiful 

 form round the flower, and broad to the very centre of 

 the pod. Another grand point attained is perfect smooth- 

 ness on the edge as if " engine-turned." This great pro- 

 perty of the Picotee is exquisitely tested and proved in 

 the Sheffield light edges by the thin unbroken line of 

 the colouring. It is the true and coveted " wire edge," 

 the one perfect standard of marking in a light-edged 

 Picotee. The wire edge is a finished excellence that 

 cannot co-exist with the slightest roughness of petal edge, 

 as every indentation there would eat into and break the 

 " wire." Another high property now attained is perfect 

 purity in the light and heavy reds. They have long had 

 a flush or pinky tinge in the white gi-ound of the petals, 

 and no colour looks well upon an impure white. 



Though dressing is legitimate in the Carnation and 

 Picotee, yet it is no small virtue for a flower to " come 

 down " without it, and to have few or no waste petals. 

 We shall come to that, and indeed there are flowers that 

 have ; but at present growers of the older kinds must, 

 if exhibitors, learn to be dressers. It should be reckoned 

 as part of the necessary knowledge of the flower, and you 

 certainly cannot make the best of your flowers, and they 

 will not do themselves justice without it. 



There is no trickery in fair dressing. It is much as 

 simple and reasonable as brushing your own hair. Ton 

 certainly cannot make the best of yourself without that 

 dressing. Carnation petals either in getting the wrong 

 way out of their green bed, or in being disarranged by the 

 wind, get laid one upon another and lumped together. 

 Dressing is to bring them each to light, and arrange 

 them so that each may show its form and marking. The 

 flowers are placed on cards to bring into sight their full 

 circumference. Petals self-coloured and of malformations, 

 known as "strap" and "finger" petals, may be drawn 

 out, but no correct petals may be inserted. They could 

 be, and even a new pod can be put upon a flower in place 

 of a spht one. Perhaps after these dark revelations I 

 had better say I do not myself know how it is done, but 

 it has been. It must be a delicate feat, almost as wonder- 

 No. i ti.— VuL LiV., Old Sebies. 



