170 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



November, 1911 







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sseli. a plant which imitates the foliage of a marguerite and the inflorescence of a tansy. It 

 has beautiful gray f oliage and the white flowers are an exquisite pink when in bud 



And that is why every garden should con- 

 tain some old, old plants like the grape 

 which has twined its tendrils into the child- 

 hood of the human race. For nothing 

 refreshes the human soul like the old 

 memories stirred by old plants in a garden. 



FENNEL AND SWEET FENNEL 



One of the oldest friends of humanity 

 among the umbrella-bearers is the common 

 fennel, Fig. 5. This particular specimen, 

 having plenty of room and food, grew six 

 feet high and was crowned with yellow 

 flowers in clusters about four inches across. 

 For many centuries fennel has been grown 

 in Europe partly for its aromatic seeds, 

 but chiefly for the young* leaves which 

 are still used for flavoring soups, etc. 

 To most Americans, however, the sweet- 

 ness of the umbrella-bearers is rather 

 sickish. Certainly we have many better 

 vegetables nowadays, and the time has 

 come for fennel to enjoy a green old age 

 in decorative herb borders, because of its 

 beauty and because the seeds are pleasant 

 for children to nibble. The market gar- 

 deners treat it as an annual, but the ama- 

 teur may consider it perennial. Fennel 

 has two characteristic beauties; the foliage 

 has the delicacy of an ornamental aspara- 

 gus, while the stems are as strong as canes 

 and have a striking bluish green color. 

 The whole plant is full of athletic slender- 

 ness and graceful strength, like an Athenian 

 soldier beside which the giant parsnip is 

 coarse and heavy — Spartan. The scien- 

 tific name of common fennel is Fceniculum 

 officinale. 



My friends who have been to Italy often 

 ask "What is that curious vegetable we 



liked so much at Florence which they 

 called finocchio?" The Florence or sweet 

 fennel {Fceniculum duke) is valued for the 

 thickened bases of the leaf-stalks which 

 are oval and almost bulb-like. They are 

 earthed up for blanching and are not fit 

 to eat until boiled. The edible part is 

 about three or four inches long. It is 

 an annual vegetable which quickly matures 

 from spring-sown seed, whereas the com- 

 mon fennel is perennial and the seed is 

 best sown in late fall to ensure early ger- 

 mination. 



THE GIANT FENNELS 



The finely cut beauty of the fennels 

 rises to a climax in the giant fennels, a 

 superb example of which is shown in Fig. 3. 



Although the stems tower to a height 

 of ten feet, there is nothing bold or coarse 

 about them. The whole plant is a marvel 

 for softness of texture and fineness of 

 division. The clusters of white flowers 

 are molded into soft, fluffy balls. The 

 excessive fineness of the foliage baffles 

 the eye at first, but there is system in all 

 this bewildering detail, which is expressed 

 in the botanical language by the phrase 

 "four times ternately pinnatisect." Fancy 

 such a plant against the dark background 

 of a cedar of Lebanon or a broad-leaved, 

 evergreen bamboo! 



The most heartfelt appreciation of this 

 noble plant that I know of is Robinson's 

 account of it in "The English Flower 

 Garden," from which I shall quote freely. 

 Ferulas, he says, are "among the finest 

 umbelliferous plants that have so long 

 remained unnoticed in our botanic gardens, 

 their charm consisting in large tufts of 



the freshest green leaves in early spring. 

 The leaf is apt to fade early in autumn, 

 but this may be retarded by cutting out 

 the flower-shoots the moment they appear, 

 though these are not ugly. Where bold 

 spring flowers are naturalized a group of 

 these fine-leaved plants will be valuable, 

 with their fine plumes rising in early spring. 

 A good way is to place them singly, or in 

 small groups, just outside a shrubbery, 

 or isolated on the grass, so that their 

 verdure may be seen in early spring. 

 Ferulas are readily raised from seed. The 

 plants do not bear division well. One of 

 the most valuable is F. Tingitana. It 

 takes several years to form strong plants, 

 and they look like massive plumes of large 

 filmy ferns. F. communis is also a good 

 species, and others, including F. glauca, 

 Neapolitans, Ferulago and Persica, may be 

 added where variety is sought, but the 

 first two are not surpassed." 



WONDERFUL VARIETY IN FOLIAGE 



The great family of the umbrella- 

 bearers might be likened to an oriental 

 army come to overwhelm the Greeks. 

 All bear aloft the common standard, a 

 flower, but no two are dressed alike. 

 Thousands of types are mixed in hopeless 

 confusion, gigantic and dwarf, in raiment 

 that is coarse or fine, green, gray or blue — 

 but all wild and picturesque. My eyes 

 were first opened to the pictorial possi- 

 bilities of these umbellifers by a chapter in 

 Robinson's "Wild Garden." For Robin- 

 son is one of the best friends the weeds have 

 ever had. Artists have always loved to 

 paint them, and all of us have been im- 

 pelled to buy pictures of plants we would 

 never tolerate in our gardens. But Robin- 

 son invented the wild garden for the special 

 benefit of picturesque plants which are too 

 savage for polite places. The giant parsnip 

 (Fig. 4) is a splendid example of the umbel- 

 bearers, whose chief fault is that they tend 

 to multiply too fast. But in the wild 

 garden they require no care after planting 

 except beheading at the proper moment. 

 For we wish to enjoy the flowers of such 

 plants but not let them go to seed. This 

 is a man's game which ought to appeal 

 more to some Americans than pottering 

 over seedlings on hands and knees. 



But to return to the variations in foliage 

 among the umbel-bearers, I can give only 

 a few examples which delighted me so much 

 in the botanic garden at Cambridge that 

 I asked Mr. Wallis to go there and picture 

 them for readers of The Garden Magazine. 



First we get a plant in Fig. 2 that mimics 

 the clothing of a marguerite. And yet 

 the flower has had its head turned by 

 the finery of tansy. Gum seseli is made 

 from this herb, which is known to botanists 

 as Seseli gummiferum. As usual, Robinson 

 is the only author who seems to have seen 

 and loved this plant, for he speaks of the 

 "pleasing glaucous or almost silvery tone" 

 of the foliage. My notes say that the 

 flowers are white, and that they are par- 

 ticularly lovely in bud, when they are pink. 

 Everyone who appreciates the importance 





