Handbook of Nature-Study 



PETUNIAS 

 Teacher's Story 

 HESE red-purple and white flowers, which, 

 massed in borders and beds, make gay our gar- 

 dens and grounds in late summer and early 

 autumn, have an interesting history. Professor 

 L. H. Bailey uses it as an illustration in his 

 thought-inspiring book, "The Survival of the Unlike;" he says that our 

 modern petunias are a strange compound of two original species; 

 the first one was found on the shores of the La Plata in South America 

 and was introduced into Europe in 1823. "It is a plant of upright 

 habit, thick sticky leaves and sticky stems, and very long-tubed 

 white flowers which exhale a strong perfume at nightfall." The 

 second species of petunia came from seeds sent from Argentina to the 

 Glasgow Botanical Gardens in 1831. "This is a more compact plant 

 than the other, with a decumbent base, narrower leaves and small, red- 

 purple flowers which have a very broad or ventricose tube, scarcely twice 

 longer than the slender calyx lobes." This plant was called Petunia 

 ■violacea and it was easily hybridized with the white species; it is now, 

 strangely enough, lost to ctdtivation, although the white species is found 

 in some old gardens. The hybrids of these two species are the ancestors 

 of our garden petunias, which show the purple-red and white of their pro- 

 genitors. The petunias are of the Nightshade family and are kin to 

 the potato, tomato, egg-plant, tobacco and Jimson-weed, and, like the 

 latter, the flowers are especially adapted to give nectar to the long- 

 tongued sphinx or humming bird moths. 



The petunia corolla is tubular, and the five lobes open out in salver- 

 shape; each lobe is slightly notched at its middle, from which point a 

 marked midrib extends to the base of the tube. In som.e varieties the 

 edges of the lobes a.re ruffled. Within the throat of the tube may be seen 

 a network of darker veins, and in some varieties this network spreads out 

 over the corolla-lobes. Although many colors have been developed in 

 petunias, the red-purple and white still predominate; when the two colors 

 combine in one flower, the pattern may be symmetrical, but is often 

 broken and blotchy. 



