BURBANK'S HORllCULTURAL NOVELTIES 209 



crosses had to be made, and the ultimate result was the 

 combination of the best features of the older garden lilies 

 with the typical form of the California species. Many of 

 the known Hlies of the world have brought their peculiari- 

 ties for the enrichment of the native form, and from half a 

 million bulbs some few were in the end selected as the most 

 promising and were given to the trade. All the remainder 

 of the bulbs were burned, with their stems and flowers, in 

 a great bonfire. 



The clematis has produced a hybrid with bell- shaped 

 flowers of beautiful colors. The columbines have resulted 

 in a variety without spurs. The Cahfornian poppies, which 

 are highly variable as a wild species, have been asked to widen 

 the range of their flower colors, embracing orange, white and 

 purple, and almost all intermediate shades. Common pop- 

 pies (Papaver Rhoeas and allies) have produced not only red 

 and white, striped and spotted varieties, but also a new one 

 of a pale purplish blue, which, in itself, was a ciuite insig- 

 nificant flower, but full of promise of breaking up the exist- 

 ing range of colors and giving, by continued crosses, new 

 combinations and new shades outside of what is already 

 known in this group. The scented tobacco with its large 

 white flowers, which open in the evening, has been crossed 

 with the Mexican Nicotiana glauca, a vigorous shrub with 

 huge clusters of flowers, which, however, are of a pale green 

 color. The combination had in \dew the production of a 

 perennial and richly blooming variety with the odor and 

 the bright flowers of the afiinis parent. 



One of the most notably difficult crosses is that of the 

 common opium poppy with other species of the same genus. 

 Ordinarily the crosses are infertile, and success is thereby 

 excluded. Burbank tried to cross it with the Papaver ori- 

 entale, a perennial garden plant with very large and showy 

 flowers of a fiery orange red. Like the opium poppy it is 



