182 .JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Then annuals have to be known and understood just as other plants, 

 and grown in proper and suitable places to give proper effect. It would 

 be unwise to grow the tall Larkspurs or the tall Antirrhinums or the tall 

 Clark ia cietjans in small beds, and useless to grow the dwarf Virginian 

 Stock or the dwarf Tagetes signata pumila for tall effects at the back of 

 long borders. I would suggest that varieties that are not known by the 

 gardener sufficiently as to their habit and usefulness, should be grown 

 in the vegetable garden or some more or less out-of-the-way place the 

 first year — not under trees, of course —where one can study them and their 

 habits in order to know better another year how properly to utilize them. 

 Plants so grown need not be wasted, for they will provide cut flowers for 

 the house. 



I will now explain what I understand an " annual " to be. 



The best definition, I think, is a plant which, if the seed be sown in 

 spring, will bloom the same summer and will ripen its seeds in autumn. 

 These may be called true annuals. 



There are many plants which are really perennials, but which may 

 be used as annuals, even in this country with our short summer. Such 

 are Pansies, Violas, Pentstemons, Verbenas, Antirrhinums, Dahlias, &c. 

 These when sown in a little heat in early spring will bloom in summer 

 and autumn, and are very suitable and useful for keeping up the summer 

 and autumn display. 



Annual flowers have been enormously improved and increased in 

 number of varieties and in variety of colours, and in many kinds the 

 habit has been vastly improved, during the last thirty to fifty years, and 

 more particularly during the last ten to twenty years. I certainly think 

 they have been improved as much as Roses, Dahlias, and florists' flowers 

 generally. In the year 1851, a wholesale seed catalogue, which I have 

 been kindly allowed to see, and which I should say was at that time the 

 leading one, contained 760 varieties of flower seeds. To-day my firm's 

 wholesale catalogue contains 2,920 varieties. Of that popular annual, 

 the Sweet Pea, thirty years ago there were but five varieties listed, not 

 one of which was of a blue shade ; now there are probably over 200 

 varieties. There was then but one class as regards habit ; now there are 

 the very dwarf or Cupid, the semi-tall or bush, the ordinary tall, and the 

 early flowering, sometimes called Christmas-flowering or Telemny. 



So it has been with most of our other annuals — improvement and 

 selection have been going on apace. 



I, and many more, have been doing our best, according to our lights, 

 as far as Nature would allow us, to continually improve by selection the 

 many varieties, not only, of course, of annuals, but of perennials. The 

 Rev. W. Wilks, the competent and energetic secretary of this Society, 

 obtained from the common Field Poppy one of the most charming and 

 popular additions to our seed lists, the Shirley Poppies. They are varia- 

 tions from the Field Poppy, with white base to the flower and yellow 

 stamens, and they have varied into many shades of pink, apricot, orange, 

 scarlet, and almost crimson, either self colours, or white edged with one 

 of those colours, or one of those colours edged with white. All plants 

 blooming with a black base and stamens (these show the tendency to 

 revert to the wild state) should be rigorously pulled up, for 5 per cent, of 



