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CHAPTER XXI. 

 AUTUMNAL FLOWERING PLANTS. 



977. Three species of herbaceous flowering plants, 

 the Dahlias, Chrysanthemums, and Hollyhocks, although 

 diflfering widely in their botanical characters, form, with 

 tbe perpetual roses, the glory of the garden in autumn, 

 and up to the verge of ice-bound winter give brilliancy 

 and colour to bed, border, and clump. 



§ 1.— The Dahlia, 



978. So named after Dahl, the Swedish botanist, be- 

 longs to the same family, and is a native of the same 

 country, as the potato,— namely, the mountains of 

 Mexico. There it was found in the sandy plains 5,000 

 feet above the level of the sea. It was sent to Europe 

 in 1789 by Cervantes, the Spanish director of the Mexi- 

 can Botanic Gardens, who named it Dahlia coccinea. 

 Under the impression that sandy soil was its proper compost, it lingered in our 

 gardens, a miserable scraggy plant, till 1815, when a fresh and improved stock 

 was introduced from France and it was taken up by the florists. Under the 

 influence of cultivation, it has been so much improved in form as to become one 

 ■of the finest flowers of the garden, while the shades of colour are so numerous, so 

 diverse, and so oppoate, and in so many shades, that it would be difficult to find 

 another plant at once so hardy and so showy. Probably its importer never 

 dreamed that the naked stem and imperfect flower of i>. coccinea would, by 

 the efibrts of cultivation, become so ornamental in European gardens ; never- 



