301 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE FLORIST'S CARNATION. 

 By Mr. Shirley Hi'bberd, F.R.H.S. 

 [Eead July 23.] 



It is necessary to make a beginning, but it is not necessary to 

 make an end. Let us begin then with a plant known as Dianthus 

 caryophyllus, and proceed to reason upon it without seeing it. 

 We shall haYe to encounter the fascinating subject of evolution, 

 which in part certainly rests on assumptions, and to be in the 

 fashion we will assume that this wild plant, Dianthus caryo- 

 phyllus is the parent of our garden and florist's carnations. A 

 little evidence may be useful, and may tend at last to lead from 

 assumption to proof; and if we do not establish our case by abso- 

 lute proof, we may succeed in establishing a strong probability 

 that our carnation, so various in style of growth, and the size, 

 form and colour of the flower, is of pure descent, as truly aristo- 

 cratic in lineage as it is in appearance and reputation. Our 

 great poet has said — 



" Be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow, 

 Thou shalt not escape calumny " 



and our carnation of unblemished blood is defamed by the deli- 

 cate-minded Perdita, who, from a suspicion of their derivation, 

 refused to grow the flower in her garden. Nor was the error of 

 Perdita— an error so injurious to herself that it excluded from 

 her garden a whole family of the sweetest and loveliest of flowers — 

 a singular instance of unjust aspersion, for the botanists have 

 been wanting in discrimination, the carnation, sweet-william, 

 and pink, having been regarded by some of them as forming a 

 family of mixed descent from several species of dianthus. The 

 question proposed, therefore, to determine the origin of the 

 florist's carnation is one of great interest, and the investigation 

 may prove both interesting and useful. 



In a direct appeal to nature, we observe that the wild forms 

 of dianthus include only three or four that might with any justice 

 be regarded as parents of florist's flowers. The sweet-william 

 may be the garden form of Dianthus barbatus ; the pink may be 

 an improved edition of Dianthus plumarius ; and the carnation 

 differs from Dianthus caryophyllus in no essential particulars, 



