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26 



The Florists^ Review 



May 18, 1910. 



HATCHER'S WORK ON YARRAWA. 



Winter Tjrpes in Australia. 



In far-away Australia there is a man 

 who is to the sweet pea world what 

 Thomas W. Pockett is to the chrysan- 

 themum. He is William H. Hatcher. 

 Writing for a Sydney paper, he says of 

 his recent breeding work: 



"One glance at Yarrawa was 

 enough. I scrapped the whole of my 

 summer peas for good and all. The lot 

 went straight on the rubbish heap. I 

 have never regretted that vandalism. 



"Arthur Yates claims, and rightly, 

 to be the first to cross Yarrawa. He 

 had it two years before allowing us 

 ordinary mortals to see it. I quickly 

 recognized its possibilities and classed 

 it a true Spencer. In fact, it is Coun- 

 tess Spencer itself, as far as I can 

 judge, sported early for the benefit of 

 Australians in particular and the world 

 in general. 



"It is true that we had some early- 

 flowering sweet peas before this; but 

 while good in color, earliness and free- 

 dom of growth as ypell as perfume, they 

 lacked size and form. Only a few were 

 of the open type, the great majority 

 being badly hooded. Having a few 

 such growing about the place, I crossed 

 them with the first flowers on my Yar- 

 rawa. I was afraid an accident might 

 deprive me of the most magnificent 

 thing I had seen to date. Every pod 

 so crossed set and filled with good seed. 

 I saved everything, and I rowed them 

 out next year, taking care to sow each 

 pod of seed separately. 



Fine Blues Not Fixable. 



"The result delighted me. One cross 

 made with the Marquis gave me six 

 plants, displaying the finest shade of 

 blue I had ever seen in sweet peas. 

 Allied to the color was the perfect 

 Spencer form, with large flowers and 

 long stems, and that without any show 

 cultivation. 



"Saving the whole lot, keeping each 

 color by itself, I harvested about 1,000 

 seeds of the blues and sowed them all, 

 with great expectations of raising a 

 huge crop of the best winter-flowering 

 varieties in existence. Alas! how green 

 I was in those days! Things are not 

 quite so simple. They bloomed surely, 

 but instead of having a crop^ as I ex- 

 pected, repeating the colors of the seed 

 I sowed, with only one exception 1 

 never saw those first flowers again. 

 The thousand plants from the Marquis 

 and Yarrawa cross gave me every color 

 except white and cream. These I got 

 by another cross with Earliest of All. 

 I had at least thirty or forty shades 

 and colors, besides numerous flakes and 

 picotees. The only color to reproduce 

 itself from the first year was the blue. 



but of course mixed as I have shown 

 with innumerable others. 



"Besides colors, the forms were also 

 varied, ranging from the old hooded 

 type through the open to the Spencer 

 type. Here was another dilemma. 

 Providence has a knack of coming to 

 our aid in such moments. 



' ' Knowing nothing of fixing peap and 

 less of the laws of heredity governing 

 such matters, I well remember, while 

 pondering over the matter, picking up 

 one of the daily papers and reading an 

 article on the subject, being referred 

 to books on the subject which were 

 procurable in Sydney. You can weU 

 imagine that I lost no time in making 

 an extended study of this subject, 

 which I still continue, and a most in- 

 tricate one it has proved. So much 

 light was shed on the question that I 

 was enabled to proceed with confidence, 

 knowing what I was about and not 

 groping in the dark after the unob- 

 tainable. 



Many Good Novelties. 



"I succeeded in fixing from the prog- 

 eny of the Marquis cross, several reds, 

 red flakes, purples and pinks, but the 

 original blue I could not fix. Every 

 time I sow it, and I have tried thirty 

 or forty different plants, it breaks into 

 its original color and a proportion of 

 blue flakes and a purple-violet of the 

 old type. I am still trying and hope 

 for success, especially as I have repro- 

 duced it from another distinct cross. 



"Some of these on fixation, although 

 of the same color, were better then 

 others, carrying stiffer and longer 

 stems, larger flowers, more upright 

 standards. I dislike the overcurled 



and waved ones. In some cases only 

 trivial differences were in evidence, but 

 there was quite enough to place one 

 ahead of the others. Those were saved 

 and the others discarded. 



"Exactly the same routine was gone 

 through with all my crosses and then 

 the intercrossing of fixed varieties of 

 my own raising, and also of the best of 

 other raisers, was begun. Here lies the 

 greatest hope of advance in the future. 



What He Is Working to Obtain. 



"There seems to be great diversity 

 of opinion among horticulturists as to 

 the best type of Spencer peas, or even 

 as to the correct type. All sorts and 

 conditions of sweet peas are sold as 

 such, ranging from the enlarged gran- 

 diflora with flat standard, to varieties 

 in which the standards are so distorted 

 backwards as to almost touch. Both 

 types, to my mind, are wrong; the first 

 because it has not -the grace, the light- 

 ness and daintiness of the waved vari- 

 ety, the second because it exaggerates. 

 No one wants to turn a flower sideways 

 to see it and then only have half of it 

 visible. It loses greatly in size and 

 form when bunched and can never give 

 the same artistic effect as the true 

 form. 



"To me the ideal lies midway be- 

 tween these. The standard or back 

 should be upright, as it is in the gran- 

 diflora type, but it must be waved and 

 curled gracefully, with great width; the 

 wings or inner petals should be waved 

 in such a way that they do not open to 

 show the keel. The keel is the seed 

 pod. This fault is common in some of 

 our best summer Spencers. 



"Looking at a bunch of such, one is 

 struck by something incongruous, in- 

 definite, which one hesitates to name 

 and yet knows to exist. Closely scru- 

 tinized, you will find that the fault lies 

 in the open keel. Their color under- 

 neath is of quite a different shade, and 

 does not harmonize with the rest of the 

 flower. The keel coloring is generally 

 a dirty creamy-white, which detracts 

 from the whole and is the reverse of 

 pleasing. 



' ' I am quite aware that few varieties 

 exist combining all the good factors as 

 set out above. Still that is no reason 

 why they should not. Time and work 

 will bring those we seek. All God's 

 mills grind slowly." 



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1 



Hardy Perennial Seeds. 



Probably you have a few frames un- 

 occupied now. If so, you can use them 

 to good advantage by sowing seeds of 

 hardy perennials in them. If they are 

 started now, you will have nice field 

 stock of nearly all sorts before fall, 

 and some of them will flower. If your 

 trade calls for any considerable number 

 of these hardy plants, it will be money 

 well invested to sow liberal batches of 

 the delphiniums, aquilegias, lychnis, 

 poppies, especially the oriental types; 

 campanulas, Shasta daisies and other 

 popular varieties. 



Perhaps some of your customers have 

 got a touch of the rock garden fever, 

 which is spreading fast, especially in 

 the eastern states. A few easily raised 

 and cultivated varieties for this purpose 

 are the following: Viola cornuta, arabis, 

 aubrietias, primulas, alyssums, sedums, 

 Phlox subulata, Iceland poppies, Dian- 

 thus plumarius, dwarf varieties of cam- 

 panulas, linums, linarias, armerias and 

 ajugas. This is only a partial list, but 

 it will be better not to start with too 

 many varieties. 



Stevias. 



Have you a suflScient quantity of 



