276 Account of double Herbaceous Paeonies. 



be cut or broken ; it is therefore best, when an increase is 

 required, to take up the whole root before it be divided, in- 

 stead of separating it in the ground by the knife or spade. 



It is singular, notwithstanding the beauty of these flowers, 

 that among the publications in later years of coloured repre- 

 sentations of plants, no figure of any of them has appeared, 

 the small cuts of the ancient writers I have before referred to, 

 being the only ones I am acquainted with. 



The fourth sort is the Double-fringed PceonyiP.paradoxa 

 fmbriata,) which probably originated in the Dutch gardens ; 

 it was known to Morison, who, in his History of Plants, 

 Vol. ii. p. 455, called it P. fore pleno purpureo papaveraceo ; 

 and to Miller, who in his last edition of his Dictionary, 

 1768, has named it P. Tartarica, and says it was raised from 

 seeds imported from the Levant ; it was established in the 

 Hammersmith Nursery before the time of the present pro- 

 prietors of that extensive collection, and is there called 

 Pceonia fmbriata. Messrs. Loddiges of Hackney intro- 

 duced it into their garden from Holland many years ago, 

 as the Double purple Pceony, and have latterly named it 

 Posonia humilis, it having been noted by Wildenow as 

 a double variety of that species ; but this is an error. From 

 these two gardens it has been distributed, though not very 

 generally, into private collections, but it has been so little 

 noticed, that its representation has not been given in any 

 recently published work ; two figures only of it are known 

 to me ; the first is in the plates which accompany Mori- 

 son' s work, where, though in small, it is well represented; 

 the second is in Miller's Figure of Plants, 1760, No. 109, 

 Vol. ii.: this is so badly executed that no one could possibly 



