On Gardeners' Flowers 



" But study the single Rose as I may," 

 you perhaps tell me, " I cannot like it 

 much after the double one. I think it 

 wants body, it seems loose and weak, 

 and I really care little for it. My feeling 

 is altogether so different when I come 

 to the double Rose from the single. 

 These little points you mention, the 

 stamens and the pistils, never enter my 

 head for a moment ; I do not feel the 

 want of them, they are wholly forgotten 

 in that luxuriant fulness of beauty. Does 

 not this prove the absolute superiority 

 of the double flower, seeing that I feel 

 no loss in it, and that it gives me all 

 which is essential for my pleasure ? " 

 By no means. The one thing really 

 proved is this, that your taste is most 



for a moment that those alternating bands of pink, white, 

 and orange are but changes in the tints of the corolla, 

 you will find that their value is half lost. The effect of 

 the stamens and pistils, and the highest value of their 

 colour, depends upon their being quite unlike the petals 

 in make, being quite new and dissimilar structures. It 

 should also be remembered that double Roses are some- 

 what difficult to find perfect. A well-formed Cabbage 

 Rose, and especially, perhaps, a Moss Rose, will serve 

 to illustrate what I have said in the text. Here the 

 petals fold closely over one another, so that we get a 

 solid rotundity of form, which is too often frittered away 

 in those blossoms where the petals are erecter and their 

 concentric rings more open. The best of this latter 

 class are very good indeed, but the worse ones ex- 

 ceedingly poor. 



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