CHAPTER IV. 



HYBRIDS AND CROSSES -NEW CARNATIONS— HOW TO FERTIL- 

 IZE—CHANCES FOR SUCCESS— OPINIONS OF EXPERTS. 



CARNATIONS produce comparatively few seeds, most 

 double flowers being barren. High culture modifies their 

 generative organs, the stamens and pistils, into petals. 

 Mr. Rudd reports having obtained 72 mature seeds from one pod, 

 Mr. Dorner 116; but these are notable exceptions, from 10 to 20 be- 

 ing the more common number. Seed sown in the early fall will 

 grow, stand the winter with little protection and bloom the follow- 

 ing season. Most of them will be abnormal products and lapses into 

 primitive single types. When an improved specimen is, by acci- 

 dent, obtained, the only known method of continuing the variety 

 is by cuttings taken from this parent plant. The features of life 

 sculptured in Nature's work-shop are never changed. The torrent 

 of life in a mighty tree flowing through a little graft will not mix, 

 mingle or modify its life. 



New carnations are obtained chiefly by crossing. A cross is 

 a sexual fertilization between two members of the same species. 

 Daybreak and Portia are two varieties of the same species. The 

 seed of one of these fecundated with the pollen of the other would 

 germinate and grow, and blow a flower different from either of its 

 parents. This would be a cross; and, by this law, varieties are 

 produced and may be indefinitely continued by cuttings from the 

 plant. 



A hybrid is a sexual union between different species. 



Dianthus Plumaris (Sweet William), is one species of the 

 genus Dianthus; order, Diggnia; class, Decandria. 



Dianthus Semperflorens (common carnation), is a different 

 species. The seed of one of these fecundated by the pollen of the 

 other would produce a hybrid pink, likely to differ from its par- 

 ents in the ratio they differ from each other. 



