"8? CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 33 



common name nor the botanical "tropseolum" 

 lends itself easily to the versifier's require- 

 ments. 



As for its colors, I once knew a man who, 

 while enjoying the fragrance of nasturtiums, 

 hated the sight of them. "Yellow dogs," he 

 called them — but that was years ago, before the 

 nasturtiums had suffered a sea change into 

 something rich and strange. From Colombia 

 came a new species, the Tropaeolum lob- 

 bianum, with red flowers, some of them so 

 dark as to be almost black. By hybridizing 

 these with the yellows the seedsmen got nas- 

 turtiums of almost all the colors of the rainbow, 

 with fascinating stripes and blotches and shades 

 in endless variety. Scarlet, bronze, cherry red, 

 chocolate, creamy white, purplish crimson, 

 blush rose — these and other colors you will find 

 represented in named varieties in the seed 

 catalogues. 



Don't order any yellows; you will have 

 them anyway, because some of the flowers 

 revert to the parental colors. As Luther Bur- 

 bank remarks, "It is exceedingly difficult to 

 keep the colors of the various nasturtiums 

 separate." That doesn't worry me. I like par- 

 ticularly the French chameleon and the hybrids 

 of Madam Gunter (also French), off"ering a 

 wide range of exquisite colors and beautiful 

 markings on the same plants. The loveliest 

 nasturtiums I ever had were the "Coquettes" 



