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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



figured in the Botanical Register, 1822, t. GIG. Here you have an 

 extremely beautiful flower, with narrow rosy florets which incurve 

 slightly, showing their silvery undersides at the points, and in the 

 centre appears a half-concealed button, suggestive of a disc, in a 

 state of transition, having become sterile possibly, but not yet 

 having completed the doubling process. It is described as " re- 

 markable for the incurved form of its florets, which shorten 

 regularly and gradually towards the centre, forming a brilliantly 

 pink full flower of about four inches in diameter." Sabine's 

 indicum has a distinct disc which appears to consist of aborted 

 tubular florets. Sweet's tripartitum of " British Flower Garden," 

 vol. ii. plate 193, is a single indicum differing but little from 

 Sabine's type. The Kiku of 1789 shows a centre likely to be 

 fertile. The six beautiful flowers figured by Sabine in "Horticul- 

 tural Transactions," 1822, include four singles, while the other 

 two, though figured as doubles, would probably prove to have 

 fertile centres could we but examine them as we do the flowers 

 on the show table. 



It is of the greatest interest to observe that, while we have in 

 our system of selection co-operated with our cold damp climate 

 in sterilising this flower, nature has not been utterly thwarted 

 in her passion for multiplying varieties. The additions that have 

 been made from year to year to our collections have comprised a 

 large proportion of sports, these representing, probably, an initial 

 power derivable from the seed, and possibly indicating that the 

 pollen parent was of a different colour to the seed parent, for the 

 stigmas of composites are not of necessity fertilised by pollen 

 produced in the selfsame disc. This suggestion does not meet 

 the case of any more than two forms of one variety, but as we 

 have four Christines we shall want four pollen parents, unless we 

 stretch the imagination to a case of the conjoint influence of two 

 or more pollen grains from diverse sources. 



Passing from the occult to the practical, we have to note 

 that while on the one hand we sterilise the flower, and so 

 reduce the probability of seed production, the plant, no longer 

 having to prepare for that business, devotes its energies to the 

 production of ligulate florets in profusion, and in what we may 

 term gigantic proportions. Could we have an incurved flower -with 

 a fertile disc it would be but a poor thing, for the absorption of 

 energy by the tubular florets would effectually check the develop- 



