CHRYSANTHEMUM SEEDS AND SEEDING. 



157 



which be and his father, Mr. John Salter, raised the many 

 varieties of Chrysanthemums for which they became famous 

 was ripened by them on carefully crossed flower-heads cut from 

 the plants, and placed in jars of water, where they often took 

 three months to ripen their seed, but that in almost every 

 instance they did ripen it perfectly and thoroughly, a circum- 

 stance which could not be depended on if the flower-heads were 

 left on the plants, where they usually damped off without 

 ripening any seeds. (W. E. G. in Garden, vol. v., p. 304.) I 

 have written to Mr. Alfred Salter, who kindly replied cor- 

 roborating in the main the facts as above given. "It is quite 

 true," he writes, " that I ripened seed from gathered flowers at 

 Versailles Nursery, Hammersmith, W. They were Japanese 

 varieties, and it was done in the following manner. It had been 

 a warm autumn, and some varieties had flowered early. The 

 flower-heads of these were taken off with about six inches of 

 stem attached, and were then placed in bottles of water on a 

 shelf in a warm house, where they remained for nearly two 

 months, and I was rewarded by a nice lot of plump seed, one of 

 which produced the well-known James Salter." 



It seems probable that the first seedlings were raised in 

 England a year or two later than in France. Salter, at p. 9 of 

 " The Chrysanthemum," tells us that " in 1830 seed was first 

 saved in the South of France." Chevalier Bernet, of Toulouse, 

 has generally been credited as having been the first raiser of 

 seedling Chrysanthemums in Europe in (?) 1826 ; but if he really 

 was the first in the field with bond fide seedlings, he must have 

 been very closely followed by Mr. Isaac Wheeler, gardener at 

 Magdalen Hall (now Hertford College), Oxford, who is also said 

 to have reared seedlings from home- saved seed in 1830, or in the 

 following year. Mr. Haworth tells us in his " New Arrange- 

 ment of the Double-flowered Chrysanthemum," published in 

 1833, that Mr. Wheeler's seedlings were chiefly obtained from 

 the Early Blush, the Early Crimson, and the Two-coloured 

 Red, all originally imported from China. His eldest son, Mr. 

 Rowland Wheeler, tells me that he was too young at the time 

 to know anything of his father's process ; but what he does 

 remember is " the fact of his having dried the various flowers in 

 order to procure the seed." I want you to notice this fact of the 

 seed-bearing flowers having been dried — a point of importance 

 to which I shall again return. 



