The Zinnia Family. 323 



THE ZINNIA FAMILY : THEIR HISTORY AND CHARACTER. 



By Joseph Bkeck, Ex-President of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. 



Loudon informs us, that this old denizen of the flower-garden was named 

 after Godfrey Zinn, who published in 1757 a Catalogue of Plants of the 

 Garden of Gottingen, &c. It is placed in the Linncean system in the class 

 syngenesia (in allusion to the peculiar union of the anthers), and in the 

 order supcrflua. This order is characterized by producing two kinds of 

 florets in the same common calyx ; those in the ray styliferous only, and 

 those in the disk tubular and perfect. The species are showy ornaments 

 to the flower-garden ; chiefly annuals, originally from Mexico and some 

 parts of North America. They have a look like the marigold, with an im- 

 bricated, round-scaled calyx, and five or more remarkably persisting broad 

 rays. The receptacle is chaffy, and the pappus consists of two awns. Be- 

 sides these, now well known in every garden, three or four beautiful species 

 (some of them perennial), not yet published, have been discovered near 

 the Rocky Mountains. 



In one of these the flowers are yellow, so says Nuttall ; but the peren- 

 nial species have not yet been introduced, to my knowledge. Zinnia multi- 

 flora, or many-flowered, was introduced into England in 1770, from some 

 part of North America. I became acquainted with this species seventy 

 years ago in my mother's flower-garden, where it was commonly seen in 

 company with the old-fashioned marigold. The flowers are of a persisting 

 character. The rays are a dull red, turning to a faded brown, and so continue; 

 while the disk, which at first is flat, projects as the florets successively 

 bloom, until it forms a cone, when it presents an unsightly appearance. 

 This species has long since been discarded from the flower-garden. Zinnia 

 pauciflora, or few-flowered, was introduced from Peru in 1753, and has a 

 great resemblance to Z. multiflora, except the small number of flowers, and 

 the color, which is a brownish yellow : this has also gone into exile with its 

 relative. Zinnia elegans was introduced from Mexico in 1796, and is a 

 great improvement on the exiled members of the family. The flowers are 

 much larger, and, when they commence blooming, are very ornamental ; but 

 as the florets of the disk begin to form seed, and it assumes the conical 



