THE COLORS OF FLOWERS. 389 



" Change in this respect is effected in two ways: sometimes there 

 is a simple discoloration, drawing the red, yellow, or blue tints 

 of the corolla toward a more or less pure white; sometimes there 

 is a radical substitution of one color for another. Flowers in 

 which red or blue are the dominant tints are most subject to turn 

 white, but the change may also be observed on some flowers that 

 are naturally yellow, such as the disk of the daisy, the dahlia, and 

 the chrysanthemum when those flowers suffer ligular transforma- 

 tion. Nothing, on the other hand, is more common in our gardens 

 than white varieties of pink or of red roses, lilac, scarlet runners, 

 larkspur, purple digitalis, Canterbury bells, etc. in fact, nearly 

 all plants with lilac, rose, red, purple, blue, or violet flowers. There 

 are some flowers, however, in these categories the coloration of 

 which is very persistent, and rarely fades perceptibly as may be 

 seen in the purple petunias, the hue of which does not lose its 

 vivacity even when it is crossed with the white variety. 



" The radical substitution of one color for another, whether 

 over the whole corolla or only on some of its parts, in the form of 

 spots, stripes, or variegations, is also of frequent occurrence, and 

 is one of the sorts of modifications which horticulturists have used 

 with great advantage. A considerable number of ' fancy ' plants 

 derive almost all their importance from the facility with which 

 the liveliest colors replace one another, blend, and intermix in a 

 thousand ways and in relative proportions of which nothing is fixed, 

 so that we can not find in these collections, when they are well 

 chosen, two plants out of a hundred that are exactly alike in the 

 tone and distribution of their colors. These multicolored varie- 

 ties, all the offspring of cultivation, are generally perpetuated true 

 by cuttings, while the seedlings compensate for the uncertainty 

 of what they will produce by the certainty that they will give rise 

 to new combinations of colors. This is not the case with single- 

 colored varieties, which, unless they are crossed with others, tend 

 to perpetuate themselves through their seedlings. The yellow, 

 white, and purple varieties of the four-o'clock, for example, when 

 they are pure, reproduce themselves constantly; when crossed with 

 one another they give rise to intermediately colored flowers, and 

 more frequently to variegated ones." 



Mr. Hughes Gibb observed, in the mild winter of 1897-'98, 

 that flowers blooming out of season were liable not to have the 

 same color as regularly blooming ones. 



The cactus dahlia, usually red, has put out flowers almost orange 

 and with exterior florets sometimes nearly yellow. On the other 

 hand, these dahlias have often shown a marked tendency to return 

 to the simpler form. 



