My Garden in Spring 



reticulata. These were surprise gifts to me from my 

 garden, spontaneous seedlings, unbirthday presents, as the 

 Red Queen called such pleasant windfalls. I believe their 

 mother was the dwarf, early plum-red form known as 

 Krelagei, which is a great seeder here, but, as so often 

 happens with plants that seed freely, after producing well- 

 filled pods it feels it has done its duty, and is content 

 to die. Except for its precocity in flowering, and its 

 motherliness, 1 do not greatly care for this variety, but 

 as a parent I advise all to grow it until they have a 

 generation of its babes from which to select better forms. 

 Experiments carried out by Mr. Dykes and others 

 show that the purple red colouring of Krelagei appears 

 in self-fertilised seedlings of the deep blue form known 

 in gardens as the typical reticulata. This dark blue is 

 furthermore the rarest colour form in its native home, 

 and here without artificial fertilisation I have never seen it 

 set seed. The red forms, on the contrary, bear pods in 

 most seasons when left to natural causes for pollination. 

 If their seeds only reproduced the squat, liver-coloured 

 charms of their dowdy mother they would not be worth 

 sowing. But among the gifts of the gods that appeared 

 round my dead-and-gone Krelagei's label, then only its 

 tombstone, first came a deep, indigo-blue youngster with 

 only a slight improvement in stature, not a first-class 

 plant, but as early as ever its mother was, then came 

 one of the greatest surprises and joys of this garden, a 

 posthumous son and heir to a once-cherished treasure, 

 /. reticulata, var. cyanea. This variety cyanea is now 

 nothing more than a mysterious memory. Mr. Dykes 

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