The Garden Magazine, February, 1922 



305 



participation in active gardening, her achievements and high 

 ideals have left their indelible record in gardening annals of 

 the last sixty years. 



From Munstead Wood in March, 1918, Miss Jekyll 

 wrote to Mrs. Carter as follows: 



"""T^HE beauty and sweet scent of Prim- 

 1 roses had always given me great de- 

 light, and 1 had a great wish to raise an 

 improved strain of some good garden kind. 

 My choice fell on the many flowered forms 

 of white and yellow colourings, which we 

 call Bunch Primroses, to distinguish them 

 from the old florists' Polyanthus. It was 

 as long ago as in the sixties of the last 

 century when no such strain was availa- 

 ble for garden use. I had found one whit- 

 ish Bunch Primrose in a cottage garden, 

 and from somewhere — I cannot now re- 

 member where — had obtained a yellower 

 one. The seed was saved from both of 

 these and a few of the seedlings showed a 

 slight improvement. Year after year the 

 same process was repeated, seed being 

 kept from the very best only. In ten 

 years' time there was a considerable ad- 

 vance both in size and quality; in twenty 

 years the improvement was much more 

 marked, and now, after more than half a 

 century of patient observation and selec- 

 tion, it is really a fine strain of handsome 

 garden plants. I had to deny myself the 

 pleasure of growing the other coloured 

 kinds, much as I delight in their rich reds and tender lilacs, 

 because I wished to keep my strain pure, and pollen carried 

 by bees would have caused undesirable crossing. The seed 





BUNCH PRIMROSES" 



has now been put into trade and was introduced by Jas. 



Carter & Co. 



"Another plant that I thought might be improved was the 



pretty annual, Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena). This was 

 grown for many years in the same way and 

 seed saved from selected blooms. When I 

 was satisfied with the degree of doubling 

 and the exact shade of soft blue that seemed 

 desirable, it was given to the world through 

 the seedsmen. I am not always in agree- 

 ment with their way of describing it, for 

 sometimes I see it extolled as if a Cornflower 

 blue or even a Gentian blue. The quality 

 of colour has no affinity whatever to either 

 of these, for Nigella blue is a blue special 

 to itself, of a quite distinct and curiously 

 soft tone and texture. 



"The old biennial Honesty (Lunaria 

 biennis) was another plant that seemed 

 capable of some advance in colour. By 

 degrees a fuller, deeper tone was secured 

 and fixed and now finds general favour. 



"As a general remark 1 may mention 

 (though merely as my own opinion) that 

 the improving of colour in a flower is by no 

 means always gained by making the colour 

 more intense. In many flowers this has 

 been carried too far, and harsh garishness 

 is the result, whereas a tone of either rich 

 or tender beauty is what should be aimed 

 at. The way is to study the nature of the 

 plant, and to come to some conclusion, 

 partly by the help of an educated colour 

 sympathetic insight, such as may guide 

 that the colour of the flower has come to 



eye and partly by 

 one to a conviction 



the point of its utmost possible beauty." 



HOW MOUNTAIN PLANTS BEHAVE WHEN THEY 



GO TO THE SEASIDE 



D. T. MacDOUGAL 



Director Department of Botanical Research, Carnegie Institution of Washington 



The Beneficence of "Moving Day" among the Plants — Some Scientific Experiments of In- 

 terest to the Gardener Revealing the Fact that Plants do not, as Commonly Supposed, Always 

 Flourish Best Where Placed by Nature, but Sometimes Prefer Quite Other Environment 



Editors' Note: Dr. D. T. MacDougal came well equipped to his present work of directing the botanical research of the Carnegie Institution, having previously 

 had much to do with horticultural activities as Assistant Director of the New York Botanical Garden. He is now occupied with investigating the elusive mysteries of 

 the reactions of plants under varying conditions, a matter which in the long run is of profound importance to the gardener. In this article, the first of a series of 

 several that Dr. MacDougal will contribute to The Garden Magazine, he lays before our readers some important evidence on the different ways the same plant may 

 behave when grown under different conditions. That all plants do not react in a corresponding way tends to add interest to the problems of the cultivator. 



PLANT on the top of an isolated mountain lives on a 

 climatic island. On such "insular" ranges as fur- 

 nished the material for my experiments with various 

 forms of vegetable life, the plants might not spread be- 

 yond an area the size of Manhattan Island without going down 

 the slopes into a climate and into soil conditions utterly strange 

 to them. 



As will be seen from the following account of the behavior of 

 trees shrubs, etc., when arbitrarily shifted by man from one 

 set of conditions into other and quite dissimilar ones, certain 

 deductions of considerable significance and rather wide applica- 

 tion have been suggested. 



No further detail than given below is necessary to emphasize 

 the fact that the place in which we find a plant as a native may 

 not by any means offer the best conditions for its development 

 or survival. It is also to be seen that mountain species taken 

 to the seaside may, in their luxuriant growth and abundant re- 

 production, display unusual features and a modified behavior in 

 response to the new environment. We have not established, 

 however, that the new characters could be carried back to the 

 old habitat or taken to a newer one that might be reached by 

 further migration. The apparent separation of closely related 

 strains or species in a new habitat raises a point of equal im- 

 portance in the study of heredity and evolution. 



