538 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The changes are mostly in the colouring matters of the cell-sap 

 alone. These may be in a single layer, or one coloured layer of 

 cells may be superposed on another, their colours becoming 

 thereby blended. 



^Yith regard to the supposed evolutionary sequence of colours 

 in flowers, I will here quote what I have written elsewhere * : — 



Botanists are pretty well agreed in their belief that yellow 

 was the primitive colour of true flowers, which were first 

 evolved through the missing links between Gymnosperms, i.e. 

 Firs and their allies, and Angiosperms, which include all other 

 flowering plants ; then pinks, reds, mauves, purples, and lastly 

 blues were gradually acquired ; though as yet the last colour 

 has not appeared in the genus before us. 



When, therefore, a coloured or white Chrysanthemum sports 

 to yellow, which is frequently the case, it may be regarded as 

 a reversion to the typical or original colour indicated by the 

 name Chrysanthemum, i.e. a Gold-flower. 



White is, of course, the arrest of all colour, and Mr. Forsyth 

 observes f : — " It appears that lilac flowers are the most sportive, 

 and that they frequently change to yellow. . . . Also that 

 nearly all the colours are capable of sporting to white," the 

 exception being the primitive colour, yellow ; the nearest 

 approach to this is perhaps seen in the early flowering Madame 

 Desgrange, the flowers of which open of a sulphur yellow, but 

 change to a pure or nearly pure white in the fully expanded 

 flower. 



Mr. John Salter mentions the peculiarity of some Chrysan- 

 themums of sporting and then reverting : — " The variety called 

 ' Changeable Buff ' is a remarkable instance of this, and has 

 been known to produce on the same plant buff as well as rose- 

 coloured flowers ; another season the blooms from the same 

 root have been entirely buff, while the following year every 

 flower has been rose. The same mutability occurred in the 

 sulphur variety, which was apt to change, either wholly or in 

 part, to golden yellow, and after a lapse of time to return to its 

 original colour, as is sometimes the case with 1 Formosum.' " % 



* " Chrysanthemum Sports." A paper read at the Conference of the 

 National Chrysanthemum Society, Nov. 10, 1891. Paragraphs from that 

 paper are embodied in the present one. 



f Gardeners' Magazine \ April 20. 1872. 



\ " The Chrysanthemum," p. 41. 



