136 
FLORA AND SYLVA 
SCENTED-LEAVED PELAR- 
GONIUMS.* 
Though scented-leaved Geraniums have 
disappeared from many gardens, they 
have never been without friends, and 
among such I think may place 
George Eliot, whose appreciation of 
them is shown by a well-known passage 
in " Janet's Repentance." Theyhaveal- 
ways been loved by cottagers, and years 
ago when we had to distribute plants in 
connection with a country flower show, 
we were constantly asked for an " Oak- 
leaved Geranium," a term covering all 
the scented kinds, though the variety 
specially desired w^'^ Pela?^go?iiu7n capi- 
tatu?n. I have been told that scented 
Geraniums and other fragrant-leaved 
plants are even more welcome than 
flowers to the sick in hospitals . Growers 
of these scented-leaved Pelargoniums 
have long bemoaned the confusion of 
their names. More than thirty years 
ago. Miss Hope in her delightful book 
"Gardens and Woodlands," says of them 
that great confusion prevailed among 
even the few names that she was able 
to give, a complaint that growers at the 
present day will certainly echo. I am, 
unfortunately, quite unable to give in- 
formation on the subject; my object is 
to elicit it, and if possible to induce those 
interested in these plants to adopt means 
to establish some uniformity of naming. 
There are standard works upon Ge- 
raniums, such as Sweet's and Andrews', 
but my experience when trying to name 
a collection of some fifty varieties from 
Sweet's Ge?^a?iiac<^ — in which 500 or 
more are described — has been hopeless- 
ly bewildering. Most of the beautiful 
varieties figured in his book seem to have 
been lost, or at all events, I have failed 
to find them, while the greater number 
of those we grow do not appear there 
at all. To take such a well-known va- 
riety as Peppermint ; Miss Hope speaks 
of it as lobatum. In Sweet, lobatum is 
called the Cow-Parsnip-leaved Stork's 
Bill, and the plant so described has not 
even a distant resemblance to Pepper- 
fni?it. Plants have reached me ^.^pilosum^ 
toine?itosum^ and Mrs. Seymour^ and in 
each case my old friend Pepperjjtint ap- 
peared. G. tojnentosujn I believe to be 
its correct Latin name; Sweet says that 
it is often called Peppef^mint^ though he 
calls it "Pennyroyal-scented." Nutmegs 
too, is a variety that I have long wished 
to feel sure about ; doing duty for it I 
have had both forms of capitatum sent 
to me, with several of the forms of cris- 
pum , and also Tiirpe7itwe. Sweet figures 
Turpeiitme (Pelarg07iiujnfragrans) ,and 
calls it "Nutmeg-scented," though any- 
thing less like nutmeg it would be hard 
to imagine. The Ginger-scented Ge- 
ranium we have vainly sought for ; it is 
figured in Sweet as P. zingiberirmin and 
appears to be one of the crispums^ but 
in none of those known to me is there 
the slightest trace of ginger scent. Miss 
Hope mentions capitatufn as " Rose- 
scented." The two forms of capitatum 
— or what I grow as such — are the 
commonest of all, but though strongly 
fragrant they are notrose-scented. Miss 
Hope may perhaps have meant the va- 
riety that we grow as Attar of Rose; the 
plants are entirely different, but so great 
* With coloured plate of Pelargonium Ladv Mary Fox, drawn at Alexandra College, Dublin, by Miss iMary Cameron. 
