LECTURE ON THE PELARGONIUM. 



19 



raised by Mr. Bailey, then gardener at Nuneham Park. Mr. King- 

 horn selected this Lee's Variegated to supply pollen for a cross on 

 the old Compactum, which was the seed parent, and in the first 

 batch of seedlings from this cross he obtained the celebrated Cerise 

 Unique, and the much more celebrated Flower of the Day, the most 

 useful and most famous of all known variegated-leaved Zonals. Mr. 

 Kinghorn to this day considers this was the greatest advance ever 

 accomplished at one bound in work of this kind, and I thoroughly 

 agree with him. The large seedling plant and two smaller plants 

 of Flower of the Day were purchased by Messrs. Lee in August, 1849, 

 and in August, 1850, they had a stock of 1500 plants of various sizes 

 to offer for sale — a wonderful sight in those days, and one worth 

 seeing even now. 



It so happens that the last-named, most useful of all the silver- 

 leaved varieties, conducts us direct to the fountain head of the whole 

 race of the tricolors. In the year 1850 |Mr. Kinghorn raised from 

 Flower of the Day the beautiful variety known as Attraction, the 

 leaf of which has a silvery margin and a dark zone, diffusing sub- 

 dued rays of red and rich brown outwards upon the creamy band 

 that girdles it. The Attraction was the first silver tricolor, and one 

 of the parents of the first golden tricolor. Mr. Grieve, in his admi- 

 rable History of Variegated Pelargoniums, tells that he fertilised a 

 dark -zoned variety known as Cottage Maid with the pollen of Attrac- 

 tion. Amongst the seedlings occurred one that was the parent of the 

 dark-zoned Emperor of the French, from which came the whole race 

 of golden tricolors. From Cottage Maid and Golden Chain (the 

 latter being the pollen parent) Mr. Grieve obtained Golden Tom 

 Thumb, and from Emperor of the French and Golden Tom Thumb 

 (the latter being pollen parent) he obtained Golden Pheasant, the first 

 true golden tricolor. This same Emperor of the French, grandson of 

 Attraction, produced by the pollen of Golden Pheasant the two most 

 famous of the tricolors, Mrs. Pollock and Sunset. 



The double Pelargoniums have had a career of fifty years at least. 

 A handsome double purple, named Veitchianum, not of the zonal 

 section, but allied to Barringtoni, was raised by the late Mr. J.Veitch 

 at Exeter about the year 1828, and its portrait appears in Sweet's 

 supplementary volume (81), where nearly next door to it is another 



