326 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
BROMELIADS OBTAINED BY HYBRIDISATION. 
By Monsieur Duvat. 
THE nurseryman is glad to receive plants from the various regions where~ 
collectors go to hunt for them in order to send them to Europe. 
It is with certain of these plants which he is able to cultivate and 
propagate that he enriches the horticultural world and satisfies the taste 
of the public, and at the same time he contributes, to a certain extent,. 
towards the wealth of the country he lives in. 
But his aim is frequently higher, for he is not always satisfied with 
the beauty or distinctness of the plants which he has received as new or 
rare; he is anxious to transform them, to improve them, and to give 
them more brilliant flowers, more perfectly shaped and of longer duration, 
together with a more generally pleasing appearance, and to render them 
hardier, &c. He consequently becomes a true creator, a transformer of 
the plant, for he acts according to his own judgment ; he pursues a line 
of action which he has traced for himself beforehand, and he works often 
with confidence, sometimes with success, but always with forethought. 
And it is thus that he manages to obtain plants possessing such merits. 
and so original in appearance that they have nothing in common with 
the types from their native countries ; indeed, the collector himself would 
find it difficult to recognise them. 
Edouard Morren, a very learned man, but at the same time a charming 
companion, and a great lover of plants, said one day in showing me his. 
collection of Bromeliads : 
“You ought to hybridise these plants. I assure you that there are 
some fine things among them, which if they were crossed would produce 
plants of considerable commercial value.” 
‘“T have myself,” said Edouard Morren, “ some crosses of which I am 
impatiently waiting the results, and I will show you shortly what can be 
done by artificial fertilisation, especially among the Vrieseas.”’ 
Alas! Edouard Morren died soon after this conversation, and I 
ascertained that the majority of his seedlings, the distinctive numbers of 
which were certainly somewhat mixed, were dispersed. In order to tell 
what they were, l-was obliged to wait until they flowered, and then to- 
sell under various names the Vrieseas, which so amply fulfilled the expect- 
ation of the late Edouard Morren—under the names of V. Leodinense,. 
V. brachystachys major, V. Closoniana, V. intermedia, &c. Then 
appeared M. Truffaut’s successes, Vriesea Marie, Alberti, and Versail- 
liense ; those of Kittel, those of Makoy and of Maréchal of the Liége 
Botanic Gardens, all these plants having various merits, some having a 
tendency towards a diversity of the forms of the bracts, and others 
possessing new colours, their principal merit being especially in their 
arrangement. 
Struck with these results, and being already interested in what might 
be obtained by sowing Vrieseas crossed with each other, I obtained a 
