The Weigelas 



ages it deepens in colour. This enrichment of hue not 

 only helps to make the whole flower cluster more con- 

 spicuous, it also serves to show the bees which flowers 

 to avoid, for the visitors are cunning enough to realise 

 that in the paler flowers the honey and pollen are best 

 and most abundant, so they waste no time over played- 

 out blossoms. 



Since Fortune's day other species have come from 

 China and Japan, notably D. floribunda, with purplish 

 flowers, D. grandiflora, with pink flowers, and D. 

 iaponica, with red flowers, and a great number of 

 hybrids and varieties have been raised from among 

 them, and hence one rarely gets a pure-bred plant 

 nowadays. " Eva Rathke," with deep crimson flowers, 

 is much favoured ; D. Candida and Hortensis nivea, 

 both white flowers, are also liked. 



The Weigelas form handsome big bushes, 4 to 10 

 feet in height. The blossoms are borne on young 

 shoots of one season's growth. But they do not meet 

 with universal approbation. Thus, an enthusiastic gar- 

 dener* writes, " Of the scores of Weigelas or Diervillas 

 under cultivation, I know of few to be recommended 

 for the choice collection of hardy shrubs," though he 

 admits that the white varieties are desirable. And it 

 is true, that as the shrub grows old, it tends to straggle 

 and look untidy and poor, but even so it is difficult to 



* George Ellwanger, " The Garden's Story." 

 127 



