ON OLD-FASHIONED SCENTED PELARGONIUMS. 



103 



ON OLD-FASHIONED SCENTED PELAEGONIUMS. 



Part I. 



By Miss M. C. Troyte-Bullock, F.E.H.S. 



Every gardener worthy of the name has at least one hobby, the joy of 

 his heart, and a constant source of pleasure. I propose in this article 

 to speak of one which delighted our great-grandmothers, but which for 

 some reason I cannot account for went out of fashion, and is now only 

 just beginning to creep into favour again, after long years of neglect. 

 Scented Pelargoniums were in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth 

 centuries favourite plants in the greenhouse (or glasshouse, as it was 

 then called). I have before me as I write a list of 111 varieties from the 

 garden catalogue of Melbury House, Dorset (the seat of Lord Ilchester), 

 dated 1817. They seem to have been imported chiefly from Cape 

 Colony, their native country, presumably, in the case of the earliest 

 introduced varieties, by way of Holland, in or after 1795 probably by 

 the English direct, our fleet having been sent out in that year to the 

 Cape to support the Dutch supremacy there. Constant intercourse 

 went on between the two countries until in 1815 the Cape was finally 

 conceded to England. 



I find these Pelargoniums form themselves into groups each headed 

 by some old form, from which the later varieties may have had their 

 origin — but this idea is very much open to correction. For instance, 

 the earliest types known to me are Pelargonium capitatum and P. 

 cucullatum, boith introduced in 1690. With P. capitatum I group a 

 long family of the sweetest and most popular varieties, such as Radula 

 major (1774), graveolens (1774), variegatum (1817), roseum odorum 

 (1792), to name some of the oldest and best known, which have never 

 lost their place in the affection of garden-lovers. This type is rivalled 

 in popularity only by the P. citriodorum group, the oldest member of 

 which is grossularioides (1731), a less well-known variety than the ever- 

 popular and more delicious variety crispum — the lemon-scented — 

 introduced in 1774. Pumilum and grossularioides variegatum, both of 

 1800, are seldom met with, and the same remark applies to hirsutum 

 (1788), a charming variety also known as ' Lady Mary.' Betulaefolium 

 (1759), with punctatum (1794), come next in seniority as a group, and 

 with them I class diadematum and Balbisianmn, though I suppose none 

 of these are strictly scented Pelargoniums ; still they are included as 

 such in the Kew collection, and are quaint and interesting enough to 

 keep their place in the collector's affection. 



Then come the maddening Quercifoliums and the equally irritating 

 Glutinosums. Anyone who has tried, as I have, to grapple with the 

 nomenclature of these two large and most puzzling classes will wish, 

 as I do, that someone in authority would take them in hand and settle 



