FIRST ENGLISH SEEDLINGS; MR. FORTUNE'S INTRODUCTIONS. 



33' 



CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 



Beyond all comparison the most stately and imposing of all autumn and winter 

 flowers, as in diversity of colour and massiveness, chrysanthemums are unequalled in 

 their season. They are cultivated by an enormous and ever-increasing number of 

 persons, not in the country alone, but in near proximity to towns. 



Chrysanthemum societies are established nearly all over the kingdom, and have 

 in the aggregate, no doubt, ten thousand members, while the National Chrysanthemum 

 Society is the largest special floral society in the world. The November shows are 

 attended by dense throngs of admiring visitors ; huge trade establishments have 

 been founded for meeting the demand for plants, and scores of acres of ground 

 have been covered with glass for the preparation of flowers for sale in a cut state 

 in our markets. 



The literature pertaining to the chrysanthemum is voluminous, as represented in 

 scientific and practical treatises, the instructive catalogues of the National Chrysan- 

 themum Society, and illustrated descriptive lists of florists in which varieties are 

 represented up-to-date yearly. Thousands of pounds are invested in chrysanthemums 

 annually, and hundreds of persons are dependent on the plants and their require- 

 ments as a means of livelihood. In a word, the crysanthemum would seem to have 

 become a necessity of life in our flower-loving kingdom. 



The first European seedlings are said to have been obtained in France in 1826, 

 and Mr. "Wheeler, of Oxford, was the first English raiser, flowering seedlings in 1832. 

 Many were soon after raised in Jersey also, and notably by Mr. J ohn Salter, who 

 established a nursery at Versailles in 1838, for the purpose of ripening seed. One of 

 his greatest triumphs was raising the variety Queen of England in 1847, and it still 

 ranks among the best in its section. 



In 1845 Mr. Fortune introduced from China two miniature flowered varieties, 

 " Chusan Daisy" and "minimum." From this dainty pair seedlings of various colours 

 were raised in France. In England these were popularly known as " Liliputians " ; but 

 the name was superseded by the French " Pompon," derived from a fancied resemblance 

 of the round compact blooms to the knobs on the soldiers' caps. 



Once more Mr. Fortune enriched the "Western world by introducing from Japan, 

 in 1861, seven varieties, so different from the ideals of our florists, by grotesqueness in 

 form, that they were at first more ridiculed than admired, and were also late in flowering. 



XI TJ 2 



