54 



FLORA AND SYLVA. 



GERANIUM* 



It is not proposed to give anything like a monograph of the large genus 

 Geranium, which is spread over the temperate regions of the whole globe, but 

 to note a few of the best of those which the writer cultivates in his garden in 

 Cheshire, without giving a botanical description of any, for which the reader 

 is referred to works on botany. 



Three or four years ago I saw in the flower garden at Warley a beautiful 

 hardy Geranium a foot high, with large blue flowers, called there G. grandi- 

 florum. It had been raised by Herr Max Leichtlin from seed collected in 

 Sikkim ; he adopted this name for it, and sent a plant and seed of it to Miss 

 Willmott, who gave me seedlings. It bears seed freely, and the seedlings 

 flower the second year ; some I raised have come quite true, and are a valuable 

 acquisition. The accompanying coloured plate is a very good likeness, and 

 tells more to amateurs than a detailed description of botanical characters would 

 do ; but whether it has a right to the name of G. grandiflorum (Edgeworth) 

 is doubtful. This name is found given in Sir J. Hooker's " Flora of British 

 India" as a synonym of G. palustre (Lin.), though that authority tells us that 

 the identity is doubtful. " Index Kewensis " also refers G. grandiflorum 

 (Edgeworth) to G. palustre (Lin.), a plant found in several parts of Europe, 

 of which I have never seen a living specimen ; but from its portrait in Sweet's 

 "Monograph of the Genus Geranium" it must be very inferior to the plant 

 here figured. The name G . grandiflorum does not appear in the latest edition 

 of the Kew hand-list of hardy plants, though G. palustre does ; but I have 

 heard that botanists at Kew think that the subject of our plate may be a 

 Himalayan variety of G. pratense, though that occurs in the Himalayas in its 

 typical form. Gardeners will not be content to wait till these doubts are 

 settled before obtaining for their gardens this beautiful plant, which will soon 

 be in all nursery catalogues. Meanwhile G . grandiflorum is a good provisional 

 name, which the flower well deserves. G. pra tense, a native which we all 

 know, varies much in merit according to soil and situation. In the dry gravel 

 of the lower Thames Valley and by the sides of the Kennet, masses of it make 

 a fine show in June and July ; and on the banks of the river Weaver in 

 Cheshire, close to the smoky town of Northwich, and within a very short 

 distance of huge alkali works, it displays flowers of a brighter blue than I ever 

 saw them elsewhere, but whenever I plant it in my garden the growth is 

 succulent and coarse and the colour of the flowers pale and washy ; and, 

 though I retain the double form for the abundance and long season of its 

 flowers, I cannot call these of a good shade. 



The few Geraniums described below are intended to be in order of merit 

 as garden ornaments. Next to G. grandiflorum I place G. ibericum, often sold 



* With coloured plate of Geranium grandiflorum from drawing made at Long Ditton Nurseries, Surrey. 



