5° ALPINE FLOWERS. Part I. 



a great favourite with gardeners, and, being much raised from 

 seed by them, has sported into such a number of distinct 

 varieties in their hands that it forms a sort of little isolated 

 family in a corner away from botanical classification, so to 

 speak. The term is, in short, a bad one to designate flowers 

 that have been much grown by man, or rather which, exhibit- 

 ing considerable variation under his care, have been preserved 

 by him in their most striking and admired forms. They are 

 in many cases double flowers that belong to these florists' 

 groups — the Hollyhock and Dahlia, to wit — though not a few are 

 single, like the Gladiolus and Auricula. Florists' flowers that 

 have sprung from high mountain or rock plants, like the Auricula 

 or the Carnation, are perhaps more worthy of attention than 

 any others, in consequence of their rich and elegant mark- 

 ings, perfect hardiness, neatness of habit, shape of bloom, 

 and adaptability to the wants of cultivators in all parts of the 

 country. They ought to be in every garden — not of necessity to 

 be therein cultivated as " florists' flowers," but treated as ordi- 

 nary hardy plants. The true florist tends his flowers almost as 

 carefully as if they were so many tender exotics, and is precise 

 as to their position, soil, and every other condition ; but these 

 are such very hardy subjects that they may be well enjoyed with- 

 out any attention beyond planting in a suitable position in the 

 first instance. 



We may assign some cause why many interesting plants and 

 classes of plants have gone out of cultivation ; but there is one 

 thing that can hardly be accounted for, and that is, why the 

 fragrant, beautiful, and neat classes of hardy florists' flowers — 

 from elegantly laced Picotees to richly stained Polyanthuses — 

 should have almost disappeared from our gardens, and be now 

 in want of the least advocacy from me. In them we have 

 flowers of unimpeachable merit, equally worthy of admiration 

 in garden of peer or cottager. They are as hardy as our native 

 plants, require no steaming in houses at any time of their lives, 

 are generally pleasing in habit, whether in or out of flower, 

 sometimes useful for the spring garden, and in nearly all cases 

 among the very best plants which the gardener can grow for 

 cutting from ; and yet, with all these undoubted merits, where 

 are they ? Generally speaking, fallen into " the abyss of things 

 that were." They have, of course, been driven from the field by 

 the bedding system ; but so surely as taste and perception of 



