Gladiolus Studies — I • 127 



white, purple, and rose coloured flowers, and (under the name of cameus, which was 

 in truth rather a local variety of the same) of a coppery flesh-colour. The result was 

 a fertile breed of great beauty, of which the prevailing colour was purplish roseate. 

 Crossed again with cardinalis it 3'ielded florid plants, scarlet, copper-coloured, rose- 

 coloured, white, and purple with endless variation. By a cross of the first mule and 

 of cardinalis itself with G. tristis, of which the flower is pale yellow with brown specks, 

 deeper tints and rich speckling were introduced, with a difference in the foliage and 

 seeds, the seed of G. tristis being smaller and longer, its leaves rigid and quadrangular, 

 the transverse section exhibiting a cross. The seeds of cardinalis are like those of 

 blandus, but larger. There can scarcely be two species more dissimilar than cardinaHs 

 and tristis in any genus which has the form of the perianth uniform, the latter having such 

 remarkable leaves, narrow, rigid, and erect, a slender stem, with night-smelling flowers, 

 and the former very broad semi-recumbent glaucous foliage, and an inclined half- 

 recumbent stem with large scarlet and white blossom; yet the produce of these inter- 

 mixed is fertile, and where the third species blandus has been also admitted into 

 the union, it is fertile in the extreme (incomparably more so than the pure G. cardinalis) , 

 and by that triple cross the tall strong Gladiolus oppositiflorus of Madagascar has 

 also produced offspring, which, though not disposed at present to make seed freely, 

 has produced some this year. Again, the first of these mules was fertilized by G. hirsutus 

 (known at the Cape by the name roseus), a plant with flowers straighter than usual 

 in the genus, and strongly scented, the leaves hairy and margined with red. That 

 cross has not as yet proved fertile. The same G. hirsutus was crossed by Mr. Bidwell 

 at Sydney, where the Cape bulbs thrive more freely than here, with G.'alatus (which 

 Ecklon wished to turn off into a genus Hebea), having hard rigidl}- ribbed leaves, 

 a short stem, and orange flowers. The cross-bred plants flowered here last autumn, 

 being intermediate in foliage and flower. The only opportunity I have had of crossing 

 G. alatus with the first-named mules was defeated, n<»twithstanding much precaution, 

 through the introduction of pollen b}^ the humblebees, which are dangerous marplots 

 to such experiments. 



The second important hybrid was G. ramosus, which, according to the 

 Revue Horticole for 1838, was obtained at Haarlem from seed of G. blandus, 

 or "fioribunda." It was first flowered in France by M. Rifkogel in 1838. 

 Meanwhile (in 1835) it had been introduced into England and a figure 

 of it was published in Paxtons Magazine of Botany (volimie 6 [1839], 

 pages 99 and looj. The flower was openly funnel-shaped, bright red with 

 deep blotches at the base of the three lower segments, and resembled 

 G. blandus. The plant was tall, with hea\^-, broad leaves. Although it 

 was not entirely hardy, requiring a heavy mulch for protection, it was 

 necessary to plant it in the fall in order to get results. Nevertheless 

 the varieties of this t\^pe, owing to the fact that they flowered later than 

 those of G. blandus and G. cardinalis, formed an important group for at 

 least the next twenty years and have not yet entirely disappeared from 

 European lists. 



A ntmiber of hybrids were obtained by crossing G. Horibundus and G. 

 ramosus. Some of these, figured by color plates in works of the time, 

 were Triomphe de Louvain (Carolus, 1845), Countess Coghen and 

 Madame de Vilain (Rosseels, 1847), Leopoldii (Carolus, 1848), and 

 Mademoiselle Sosthenie (Truffaut fils, 1848). 



Up to 1840, in spite of the efforts to improve the gladiolus and not- 

 withstanding the amount of variation that had resulted from these efforts, 

 the plant remained little more than a plant for the attention of interested 



