484 
THE PETUNIA. 
PROPERTIES. 
1. A petunia should have strong stems and 
a close habit — large, thick, round, and flat 
flowers; abundance of bloom, while short and 
handsome. 
2. The colour or shade is a matter of taste ; 
but sucli is the fancy of people in these days, 
that a new ugly colour would be thought more 
of than an old handsome one. 
Such is the state of inglorious confusion 
into which modern botanists have brought 
things by their silly antics, that when Mr. 
Tweedie sent home the purple variety, Dr. 
Hooker called it Salpiglossis integrifblia ; 
Professor Don, Nierembergia phcenicia ; and 
Dr. Lindley, Petunia violacea. Yet these are 
the people who pretend to teach the uniniti- 
ated how to know plants ! 
PROGRESS OF THE PETUNIA AS A FLORIST'S 
FLOWER. 
This flower does n;;«c advance as it ought, 
and chiefly because the properties of the 
flower are neglected, and new varieties of no 
merit are put out from season to season only 
to disappoint the buyers. The raisers of 
Petunias do not read, or reading, they do not 
understand that substance is the great desi- 
deratum. If the flowers are flimsy, the variety 
is worthless ; half-an-hour's sun will make the 
ordinary run of flowers flag and look as if 
they were dying ; when the texture is thin, 
the warmth of an ordinary summer's day will 
make it shrivel, and nothing can be done 
with them; they always look untidy, and no- 
thing will make them otherwise until we 
obtain thick corollas. We have said that no- 
thing compensates for the bad form of a flower, 
— and if. they are not well formed we should 
throw them away ; — but the finest form is of 
no use if the flower be thin and flimsy ; it has 
no power to hold its form against a puff of 
wind or half-a-minute's sunshine. It may be 
a stepping stone to thicker ones of the like 
form, but we should be quite as anxious to 
see a thick corolla as a fine form, because it 
would be an equally desirable stepping stone 
to a better form with the thick corolla. The 
best way to advance the flower would be to 
select the stoutest corollas that can be got, 
and the finest forms that can be procured, 
and seed from these indiscriminately, but 
away from all others, because it is the rubbish 
among general collections and seedlings that 
spoils all the seed for the next year. We 
would rather have none but those we seed 
from, or at any rate have those we had, placed 
too distant from all others to be damaged. 
It may be worth while, in a case like this, to 
save the seeds of the thick-petalled flowers 
separately from the others at the gathering, 
and also to save that of any other remarkable 
plant apart from the rest, merely to indulge a 
natural curiosity to know which yielded the 
best flowers. It would be well also to sow 
all these seeds in pans directly, that is, the 
same autumn it is saved, and to really gi'ow 
them all the winter, so as to be able to turn 
them out in beds at the end of May, and see 
the flowering the first year. 
Having due regard for the seed which we 
may be able to save from any remarkable 
flowers that may turn up among them, we 
must watch their opening, and, as rapidly as 
a single flower opens on a plant, decide upon 
its fate ; nothing but a fine circular form, a 
very remarkable colour, or a thick corolla, 
should save it an hour from the dunghill. 
Ordinary varieties, things no better than we 
have, would be entirely useless, and should 
not be tolerated an instant ; nor ought a 
moderately good flower to save a plant at all, 
unless there was a fine habit. Petunias, from 
want of attention to habit when selecting for 
novelties, have become weedy and bad ; the 
most straggling ugly growth has failed to 
condemn a variety, if it were no better than 
scores that we have ; and it is tiresome to 
be obliged to walk through gardens where 
the habits of the bedded-out plants completely 
spoil the intended effect, and give an appear- 
ance of carelessness to the whole place. The 
Petunia should be dwarf, shrubby, and strong 
in the stems, and not run, or rather lop about 
without strength to sustain its own weight, 
yet such is the majority of new varieties sent 
out. 
Those who desire to begin growing the 
Petunia, with a view of raising good ones, 
should not begin by buying seed ; it is com- 
pletely losing all the trouble, time, and room 
devoted to the effort. Nobody will sell seed 
that is likely to produce anything better than 
we have ; the only seed sold is that gathered 
from the general collection, or from a batch of 
seedlings, in both which cases most of the free 
seeders supply the bulk, and the worst and 
wildest of the plants are always the most free 
seeders. Go to a nursery where Petunias are 
grown in pots as well as in beds, see all you 
can see, and pick out two or three which are 
the most circular, and two or three, if you 
can find them, with good thick corollas ; find 
one, at any rate, and if there be anything of a 
remarkable colour, you may add one of that 
sort, but reject any that are of bad habit. 
Get them home, plant them a foot a-part in 
an open bed, cut every pod and expanded 
flower off the whole, and you will be sure 
that you have no seed pods already spoiled by 
the general collection. From this patch of 
half a dozen, or even a dozen, if you have 
made it so, you will have seed which at least 
promises something better than themselves ; 
