Varieties in Alien Soil and Climate 199 



another season — and seldom is it seen in the 

 catalogues of to-day. 



Shortly after that came Riesen Edelweiss, a 

 truly beautiful white peony, into whose face one 

 could look and whose purity, fine substance, and 

 form won admiration everywhere. It, too, seems 

 to have disappeared, as it was born in 1914 on the 

 banks of the Rhine; but it deserves a better fate 

 in spite of its heritage. 



Many of the whites from foreign lands do not 

 do well in this country. Ivory "White and 

 Frances White become quite green in some 

 localities where the sun is hot, while Duffryn, an 

 especially fine white cactus from England, and 

 the decorative Polar Star, show no such ten- 

 dency. Madonna, on the other hand, behaved 

 beautifully when she first came over; a refined, 

 pure-white flower called decorative, yet — except 

 that she shows no centre — ^has all the gentle 

 grace of a peony. The past two years in many 

 parts of New Jersey Madonna has had temerity 

 to blush! — but is no less beautiful, for all that. 



The white dahlias from our own coxmtry are 

 far ahead of those from overseas. For ten 

 years or more hybridizers have struggled to 

 produce a pure-white cactus dahlia which does 

 not modestly hide its head among the foliage. 

 It seems to have come at last, for there is no 



