792 



GARDENERS' MAGAZINE. 



December 3> ^ 



The Daffodil in Cornwall. 



On a March evening, after my journey of over two hundred miles to judge at the 

 first Cornwall spring flower show, I was asked, " Is it too late to go round the 

 garden ? " It is never too late to go round a garden. The new beauty of plants 

 by lantern-light may have struck other stalkers of the midnight slug than myself. 

 That first vision of a Cornish spring garden is unforgettable ; the fair reaches of 

 Falmouth Harbour and the pale gleam of the lighthouse in the distance, the mild 

 air loaded with the scent of violets— those same wonderful violets which came in 

 first by several lengths, or rather breadths, at the show next day — Marie Louise 

 and Neapolitan the size of half-crowns— and, everywhere luminous in the half 

 light, the daffodils, massive in bloom, tall in stem, and broad in leaf, haviDg the 

 air of opulent contentment peculiar to plants that have found all their heart's 

 desire in both soil and air. Here, then, was the promised land of daffodils ; here 

 was the Mecca to reward a nearly twenty years' pilgrimage through long tracts of 

 less perfect flowers. To predict of the treasury of spring blossom unlocked at 

 Truro nefct day that this must forthwith rank! as the premier English spring show 

 was no breach of the sound rule not to prophesy until you know. It is outside 

 the limits of this article to descant upon the glory of the great rhododendron 

 trusses, ruby, pink, and white, or dappled with a score of lovely tints, except to 

 note that they seldom or never reach London shows in perfection, and are literally 

 a revelation to the March visitor from the bleaker shires, and a sight well w 7 orth a 

 journey across the breadth of England, whether massed on the show tables, or, 

 still better, shining against their superb foliage in the Cornish valleys. Nor must 

 I dwell upon the Anemone fulgens, larger and of more dazzling scarlet than any 

 before seen by me, except to here tender my regrets, apropos of this flower, for a 

 misconception of the Cornish character. When the competitors for the anemone 

 prize, and, indeed, in other departments of that first show, insisted on putting 

 into their bunches more than the twelve blooms prescribed by the schedule, it is 

 recorded in the book of the hon. secretaries that the judge betrayed impatience. 

 From his after experience of invariably receiving thirteen to the dozen in all 

 Cornish courtesies and hospitalities he is now well aware that the occurrence was 

 owing, not to perversity cr arithmetical incompetence, but purely to the fine 

 lavishness of the Western temperament. 



But to return to the daffodils. The Truro shows of 1897 and 1898 have 

 convinced me that the daffodils of Cornwall are, or certainly ought to be, unsur- 

 passed. The qualification of the M ought " will be explained presently. This 

 judgment may be arrived at by the several criteria of excellence. Earliness is a 

 point of great value, to the market-grower especially, and it is needless to demon- 

 strate this quality of Cornish spring produce. Size is usually ranked next, and 

 being fully familiar with the growth of all parts of England, of Ireland, the Channel 

 Islands, and Holland, I can confidently give the palm for size, compatible with 

 qu.dity, to the flowers of Cornwall. The wonderful trumpet maximus of Captain 

 Pinwell, Mr. Charles Dawson's giant Sir Watkin, and Mr. Andrew Lawry's 

 Grand Monarque may serve as examples. In actual measurement of flower some 

 Dutch blooms may possibly exceed these, but the latter are coarse in texture and 

 literally dropsical, being grown in land half sand and half manure, their roots 

 almost in the water. Colour counts next, though in my judgment it should reckon 

 before mere size, and here the Cornish flowers hold the field. Mr. T. A. Dorrien- 

 Smith has written of the Scilly narcissi, " I have never seen such colour as we get 

 in C. J. Backhouse, Barri conspicuus, and other of the crimson-rimmed varieties. 

 • . • The great feature in all the flowers is the purity and intensity of colour ; 

 whether this is caused by the salt in the air or by a porous soil ... I cannot 

 say." This holds good also of the mainland of Cornwall. I cannot answer the 

 question whether this enhancement of the colouring is due to the air or the soil, 

 but it is certain that some kinds put on a vividness which makes them almost un- 

 recognisable by, say, the London grower. An instance is Cynosure, a tail-grow- 



mg incomparabilis, with flowers of flimsy substance, worthless in my Hampshire 

 garden, but having the characters of earliness and freedom of bloom, and in 

 Cornwall developing so bright an orange in the rim of its cup as to be a very 

 valuable market sort. The magnificent collection of cut narcissi from Scilly, 

 contributed to the Truro Show this year by Mr. Dorrien-Smith, included 

 specimens of the shapely Princess Mary, with a depth quite unknown to me cf 

 orange red in their broad saucer eyes. The red and yellow of the bunch- flowered 

 Soleil d'Or from Scilly and the mainland are extremely pure and rich. 



Of the first impression made by the Cornish daffodils as seen growing a word 

 has already been writien, but for magnificence of these plants grown to perfection 

 on a large scale I have seen nothing to equal Mr. Andrew Lawry's flower 

 farm in Mount's Bay. The view of acre upon acre of the silver Poeticus 

 ornatus and the great waxen clusters of Grand Monarque stretching, under the 

 brilliant spring sky of Cornwall, far away towards the blue bay and the ancient 

 mount of St. Michael upstanding in the sunlight, would need the idyllic gift of 

 a Theocritus to describe worthily. There can be no finer narcissi in flower, 

 leaf, or bulb than those grown in this warm, alluvial soil. On the higher 

 ground?, too, of the county, especially on the slopes of the southern valleys, 

 and where there is much detritus of moist sandstone and granitic rock in the 

 staple, they flourish exceedingly; indeed, no spot has come under my notice 

 where they do not appear at home and happy. One garden has proved a perfect 

 sanatorium for consumptive bulbs of certain beautiful but, in my less kindly 

 soil and harsher climate, delicate varieties. The daffodil, to use the name in 

 its modern application to all plants of the genus Narcissus, can but do well in 

 a land to which it is in a manner indigenous. The cream white Tazzetta, 

 nearly, if not absolutely, identical with the Scilly White of the winter market, is 

 an immemorial dweller on the rocky slopes of St. Michael's Mount. Not to 

 assign it to the inevitable Phoenician, that dens ex tnachimi to cut all Cornish 

 antiquarian knots, who is unlikely to have traded in «■ Dutch bulbs," its age is 

 respectable enough if we suppose it to have been introduced by the monks half a 

 dozen or more centuries ago. They probably had not our esthetic enjoyment of 

 its great tufts of pale bloom against the lichened stone, but employed it for medi- 

 cinal or still-room concoctions. One ingredient of the celebrated liqueur of 

 the < .rande Chartreuse is said to be the expressed juice of a yellow daffodil. But 

 possibly it is a true native, a western outlier of the widely distributed race of 

 Van^ Portugal to China, and from Switzer- 



n ?hlir rl M fnca \ The P° ,nt > however, is that the » Mount lilies" are glad 

 ih ch kSl^'ST'TISS untended > except by Lord St. Levan's anxiety, 

 the tourist! P fCSpCCt ' tbat the > T sha » be held sacred and inviolable h Y 



Cor?L\^^n1L 0 l1 the l0ng a PP roach t0 one of the most beautiful homes in South 

 of chofc^ Sp >f C ? betWCen '^odendrons, hydrangeas, and what not 



iett^ r y , be seen in FebJuary great colonies of the 



b oa 1 ^italled .n'rl X "T*' ° f * early Wericg trumpet daffodils, 



^iSSo^ X "* it&t P a,e >' ellow - This is a local kind, collected 

 th^rrito ^thi 2* *here it has been - always.- (No; neither 

 um writer nor the editor will g lve the address or forward begging letters for a 



bulb or two 

 sorts which 



wo.) It was the existence in the isles of similarly wiM nr 1 

 ich suggested to Mr, Augustus Smith the «^ 



successful, of the Scilly narcissus industry. It is owing to no KckJ ° S P lend % 

 of this work that it is scarcely mentioned here, but onlv bera * pp u reciatio & 

 written of again and again, from both the picturesque and the stSrli 

 view, and my subject is rather its extension to the mainland, which i 

 confessed, has but taken a leaf out of Scilly's book— ' U 



" Most can raise the flower now, 

 For all have got the seed, 5 ' 



from the foresight and the labours of the Scilly dynasty, to whom all entire • 

 due from the Cornish flower farmer h 79 Jm au B ratl tude is 



The increase in population of our great towns is expressed in bewildering fcS2f"« 

 and, though these millions may still be mostly fools, yet they buy flowers and have 

 an insatiable appetite for the first flowers of spring. Climate is not to be mad 

 artificially, nor can flowers, like fruit, be brought thousands of miles ever sea to 

 undersell home produce. Moreover, the growing demand is not for cut flowers 

 only, but also for plants, or, in the case of daffodils, for bulbs. This is an age of 

 gardening ; dwellers in the country make more of their gardens than in any past 

 time, and never before was his daily or week end escape to ihis garden so prized 

 by the man whose business or profession holds him in town. Put briefly all 

 respectable people nowadays have gardens, and all respectable gardens must have 

 their complement of daffodils. The competition for new and fine varieties is 

 sharp, and long prices are cheerfully paid. However lugubrious the talk of bad- 

 ness of times and reduction of establishments, rarities do not remain unsold. 

 " Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with the necessaries." Ten 

 or twelve years ago half a guinea each was about the top value, until, with the 

 advent of the white trumpet, Madame de Graaff, it rose to £5 5s. Messrs. Ban's 

 large yellow trumpet, Monarch, now fetches £15 15s., and it is known that 

 desirable seedlings, not yet in the general market, have sold at something like 

 £3$ per bulb. The shapely, clear-skinned bulb, weighty for size, small at base, 

 can be harvested nowhere more surely than in Cornwall, and nowhere can valuable 

 stocks be increased to better advantage. The excellence of the flowers shown at 

 Truro has already induced at least one London firm to make overtures for a 

 Cornish nursery. The bulk of the more ordinary commercial sorts has hitherto 

 been supplied by Holland, but it is yearly more evident that the Dutch soil, a 

 sand loaded for many generations past with cow manure, is not permanently suited 

 to the cultivation of the daffodil. The Dutch bulbs are large, but rough, and, 

 unless difficult precautions are observed of fallowing and alternate cropping, 

 unwholesome of complexion and beset with the deadly " basal rot." 



Great and increasing multitudes of bulbs are now grown on the alluvium 

 round the Wash, mostly in the neighbourhood of Spalding and Wisbech — good 

 bulbs, but in my judgment inferior to the best Cornish samples. The Cornish 

 soils will probably prove more enduring, i.e., possessed of a larger reserve of 

 daffodil-food in their phosphatic and potassic constituents, and climate is all in 

 favour of the western county. The daffodil is rightly called a hardy plant ; few 

 of its varieties are killed by cold, but it is a mistake to credit it with enjoyment of 

 frost and cutting winds. The winter temperature of the high mountain pastures, 

 whence the ancestors of most of our garden daffodils came, is very low, but it 

 must be remembered that they are protected throughout the inclement months by 

 a thick coverlet of snow. The habitat of those found on lower ground, as N. 

 maximus from near Biarritz, is outside the zone of severe frost. A mild moist 

 winter, with a sunny March and April, are the most favourable English con- 

 ditions, and the earlier the plant matures the earlier the bulb can be lifted and 

 placed on the market, a very important consideration. It has suited the 

 convenience of the retail dealers to catalogue and distribute daffodil 

 bulbs in autumn, together with their hya cinths and tulips, and 

 unknowing customers still plant largely in October and November. But the 

 daffodil by nature starts quickly into growth, and much of the preparation for its 

 spring effort is made before winter. In proof let any reader lift a few bulbs at 

 the end of July and note the length of fresh white roots. For the finest bloom 

 and fullest increase planting should be completed by the end of August ; 

 my own more valuable seedlings are planted, when possible, in July. The time 

 is not distant when this will be generally understood, and the district which can 

 lift early in June and sell in July will forestall the market. The quite brief 

 period of quiescence is indicated by the partial withering of the leaf, not by its 

 total disappearance, and this may happen in Cornwall as early as the end of Mw. 

 For the first bloom under glass bulbs should be potted or boxed proportionately 

 early, and for the earliest supply of good bulbs there is and will be an unlimited 

 demand. Mr. Dorrien-Smith alone forces a million Poeticus ornatus annually . 

 In short, then, looking to the opportunities of the daffodil trade alone, every loot 

 of suitable soil in Cornwall must steadily rise in value. 



(To be continued.) 



Tomatos against Walls —The past exceptionally dry, hot su ^^ er ^ a c s 



been specially favourable to the development of tomatos against walls out 01 aoor.. 

 We sow tomato seed about the middle of February, grow on the young P ,a ° ls 

 good heat, and harden off in greenhouse temperature in May, pk^J, F"jJ fruit 

 the first week in June, sometimes before, weath * 

 are set at this time, and if fine weather prevails 

 the end of July or early August. But this last s 

 early in June, and the plants were 



Some of the fruit 



ipen by 

 lly cold 



fruit 



% . . _ . much injurea, some ui ;/f rlll > hv the 



and this caused them to be exceptionally late. The new growths set m 

 end of July and through -August, and we have had the largest 

 formed fruit this autumn we have ever had, but late in maturing, ™ c * u ^ but 

 check the plants received early. The heaviest fruit was twenty-onc ounce . 

 there were bushels from nine to twelve ounces each ; most of tne.e 1 ^ 

 ripened under glass, and in October they were splendid. Many] TO* ^ 2 , 

 them were surprised to see such fine samples from out of doors, un i>o ^ 

 we sent in several stone weight of the latest fruit for preserving. an j 

 the best main crop varieties, such as are usually grown under glass, j $ - de 



all of them have done well ; they were grown from four to SW OT ;o* h\ k r , 

 shoots removed, and carried four to six bunches of fruit.- CjEOR k 



Alnwick Castle Gardens. 



ught for prior to 

 _ j u«* tV»#» amount 



a r.y i'f ' nr 



of taomf 



removal of rheumatic pains 



