16 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



The question is asked why were those magnificent carnations 

 with monstrous corollas spoken of in history as existing from 

 fifty to two hundred years ago discarded. The answer is, they 

 were not carnations at all, in the sense the term is now used. They 

 had none of the elements that make Alegatiere's new species valu- 

 able, they were not perpetual bloomers, and could not be forced 

 to yield their flowers in a season when they were wanted. They 

 were highly stimulated pinks, Titanic flowering Picotees, mon- 

 strous Selfs, Bizzars or Fancies, which produced a few prodigious 

 blooms and died in the throes of parturition. 



In 1775, Linnaeus having differentiated the various organs 

 of flowers and particularized their functions, seemed to make 

 artificial poUenizaiion possible, and experiments were successfully 

 made on many species of flowers. Mens Dalmias, vSchmitt and 

 Alegatiere, of Lyons, France, were the first men to attempt it on 

 the domesticated and improved species of cultivated carnations 

 chronologically referred to. Their crossings and re-crossings con- 

 tinued from 1844 to 1856, when Alegatiere evolved the first type 

 of the remontant carnation. The product of his crosses had stiff 

 lower stems, flowers 2 inches in diameter; they would bear forcing 

 and bloom continuously. In 1894 John Thorp predicted that this 

 species of carnation would evolve a flower 4 inches in diameter. 



The conditions in America have developed the remontant car- 

 nation, the California thermal carnation, and also improved the 

 hardy pink. These differences have been fixed by heredity through 

 generations of plant life, prompted by local climatic conditions, 

 and are not successfully transferable from one of these localities 

 to another without requiring a corresponding period of adapta- 

 tion. No European or California carnation has ever been im- 

 ported into the remontant zone of America, and been immedi- 

 ately successful. The parents of the species with which we have 

 to do, grow wild through southern Europe. It was named Dian- 

 anthus Caryophylhis by Linnaeus, from the strong clove fragrance of 

 its flower; Caryophyllus being the botanical name of the clove, it 

 literally means the Clove Diaiithus. It had nothing to distin- 

 guish it from its related species but its exhilarating perfume. It is 



