ON HYBRIDIZATION AMONGST VEGETABLES. 



23 



from Ajax minor by it, and very neat and pretty things they are. 

 I have also flowered seedlings from N. poeticus by it, and they 

 are remarkable, having the widely expanded limb of poeticus, 

 with the drooping posture and long cup of montanus, in one of 

 them a little edged with red. This is a strange circumstance. 

 A plant, widely distinct from any other species, cultivated above 

 two hundred years, not since found, as far as I can learn, 

 where it was supposed to grow, or elsewhere, except in gardens, 

 producing no seed by its own pollen usually, if ever, yet very 

 ready to fertilize its neighbours, and to be fertilized by a cross- 

 bred plant! If it be cross-bred, I should say that Hermione 

 dubia and N. (Ajax) candidissimus of Redoute are its most pro- 

 bable parents. From Ajax Pseudo-narcissus and minor I have 

 many crosses by Hermione, especially the variety called States- 

 general by the Dutch ; they make the genus Diomedes of 

 Haworth. Pseudo by States-general produces a very handsome, 

 vigorous, two-flowered, yellow Diomedes, with some little variety 

 of shape and tint. I have given a figure of one from A. minor 

 in the Register, and it will serve to show how Diomedes Mac- 

 leayi and Sabini, of Haworth, originated. Sabini produces no 

 seed by itself, but I have had seedlings from it by N. poeticus, 

 which have been rather neglected. 



We must next consider Q. odora, of which there are ten or 

 eleven varieties, but no person has been able to produce to me 

 a seed from any one of them ; and, though several spots in the 

 South of Europe are pointed out as their native places, I cannot 

 learn that any botanist has found their fruit. M. Loiseleur des 

 Longchamps, the author of the 4 Flora Gallica,' to whom I am 

 obliged for the urbanity with which he has replied to my in- 

 quiries concerning the French Narcissi, assures me that it is 

 certainly indigenous in France ; but he admits the fact that he 

 has never heard of its seed being found ; and, although its seed is 

 mentioned in the Neapolitan Catalogue, Professor Tenore could 

 give me no tidings of it. 



Clusius above two hundred years ago received the variety 

 calathinus from a Dutch garden, and was ignorant of its native 

 country. Bulbs of the variety isometra, which I described for 

 the first time (p. 416) from a specimen gathered under the chesnut 

 trees in Madeira, have been since imported from thence, but I 

 cannot learn that any seed of it is discoverable, and I believe it 

 is confined to a particular spot. It is observable, that the ches- 

 nut woods in Madeira are not indigenous ; and in them, and them 

 only, Amaryllis Belladonna is now found abundantly, though 

 certainly not an original native of the island, and not observed 

 there by Masson. It is further to be considered, that as we pos- 

 sess many varieties of Q. odora, they could not have been obtained 



