September 21, 1882. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
273 
Messrs. Sutton & Sons, Reading. Messrs. Primrose & Co., Shef¬ 
field, also state that the greenhouses glazed on the Eclipse system 
exhibited by them were highly commended by the Judges. 
- Mb. Kirk, of The Gardens, Norwood, Alloa, N.B., com¬ 
plains to us that in the report of the Edinburgh Show in a con¬ 
temporary he is spoken of “as a new competitor,” and requests 
us to correct this in our “ first number.” For the last six or 
seven years Mr. Kirk has been a constant exhibitor, and in our 
pages his name has frequently appeared as such ; notably, on 
September 26th, 1878, we find the following—“ Mr. Kirk has 
taken good prizes in Scotland this year, and it redounds much to 
his credit as a cultivator that all the Grapes he has exhibited have 
been grown in a house 30 feet long.” Mr. Kirk was then gardener 
to Mrs. McKie, Castle Douglas. 
- Writing respecting the vagaries op flowering 
plants, “ G. 0. S.” observes :—“ I have a Cyclamen in my open 
garden unprotected. Three years ago it flowered freely in March, 
the year after it was planted out. For two years it has not bloomed 
at all; but this year the last week of August it has thrown up a 
very pretty head of flowers. Some Primulas which would have 
bloomed in spring, but were injured by snails, are now flowering, 
and in a neighbour’s garden the Gentianella is in bloom.” 
- Messrs. James Carter & Co., High Holbora, announce 
that they will shortly send out the scarlet-flowered Clematis 
COCCINEA, a very distinct and rare species of the C. tubulosa type. 
They have issued a coloured plate, which fairly represents the 
characters of the species, a single flower of the full size being very 
truthfully depicted. The species is not, however, as they state, 
unknown in this country, as it has been in cultivation at least ten 
years. 
- A Chippenham correspondent writes in reference to the 
FRUIT CROP :— “ The Apples, save in very sheltered gardens, are 
few, almost nil, also those few are blighted, spotted, and mis¬ 
shapen. I have no crop except on the Ecklinville Seedling trees ; 
these are many and fine, and altogether good. Peaches are 
absolutely flavourless.” 
- Mr. George Rudd, Undercliffe, Bradford, Yorkshire, 
sends us some blooms of the white Clove Carnation Virgo, 
which has been in cultivation several years, and is justly esteemed 
for the excellent form and purity of the white rounded petals ; 
in fact it is equally as good as the white Clove Carnation we 
recently noticed in these columns. 
- Messrs. Stuart & Mein, Kelso, send us 6ome fine blooms 
of their striped French Marigolds, the excellence of which 
indicate a thoroughly good strain. The blooms are of moderate 
size but very full, and most richly coloured with orange and 
maroon. 
THE SUNFLOWER. 
Fancy verily has strange freaks and plays odd tricks. We 
can understand how she (for Fancy must be a lady) may alter 
dresses, blowing out or collapsing skirts as she chooses ; now putting 
out something really graceful, and bringing in something by all the 
laws of art utterly hideous. But can she, does she, dare she bring 
in and bring out a flower, making a flower the rage ? To a Peter 
Bell “ a Primrose by a river’s brim ” may be only a “ yellow 
Primrose ” and nothing more, but surely educated and refined 
minds ought not to be influenced by fashion in regard to that 
“thing of beauty” a flower, “that thing of beauty and joy for 
ever.” 
However, so it is, and so it has been, and will be no doubt to 
the end of time. Let the flower at the head of this article bear 
witness. Until a year or two since in the garden of some very out- 
of-the-way farmhouse you might have seen uprising by a wall a 
Sunflower or two ; and my lady or miss driving past, if they could 
see such vulgar things, would have said in scorn, “ What horrid 
staring things those are ! ” They would not have called them 
flowers. But now Sunflowers are in bonnets ; Sunflowers are in 
the hand, or pinned on the dress, or are laid on the book board at 
church by hands wearing No. 6, or even dainty No. 5^ gloves. 
Enter houses, there amid some pretty white fluffy stuff in the 
drawing-room hearth are Sunflowers, larger higher up ; while on 
the hearthstone itself lie a perfect flooring of little Sunflowers like 
shells on the seashore ; while on brackets around in some queer, 
dingy, ill-shaped, but aesthetic-coloured bit of crockery stands up 
a Sunflower. 
In modern books on gardening, published, say, between the 
years 1856 and 1876, the very name Sunflower does not occur. 
The flower had died out, and its name ceased to be printed—nay, 
if it had become spoken of at all it was as an agricultural plant. 
I have searched through twenty volumes of this periodical, and find 
it mentioned once or twice as affording by its dried seeds good 
food for fowls, and that it gave a gloss to their plumage. In so 
recent a number as that for September 2nd, 1875, there is an 
answer to a query in these words to one “ H. W.”—“We presume 
you wish to cultivate the Sunflower for its seeds.” Hark ye to this, 
0 ye aesthetic people, wild disciples of Mr. Oscar Wilde ! “ These 
are to be sown early, the beginning of April being most desirable, 
and the crop will be fit to harvest ” (only the seeds thought of) 
“ at the close of August or early in September. Drills 30 inches 
apart should be drawn, and the seeds disposed evenly or drilled 
in about an inch deep. The plants should be kept clean and 
thinned to 18 inches distance apart.” All this from a purely agri¬ 
cultural or poultry view. Then there is a quotation in the number 
for September 19th, 1872, to the effect that, according to the 
“ Argentine Republic,” Sunflowers are strongly recommended be¬ 
cause the flowers afford the best material for wax and the best 
honey ; the petals yield a valuable dye ; the seeds give 50 per cent, 
of oil, excellent for cooking and illuminating purposes, while they 
are also a superior food for poultry and for cows, increasing the 
flow of milk. The bottom of the calyx may be used for food in 
the same way as the Artichoke, which it closely resembles. The 
leaves may be used as food for animals, or made into good smok¬ 
ing tobacco ; while the bark affords material for the manufacture 
of paper. All these very practical uses, but decidedly not aesthetic. 
Then there is another answer to a query to “ A Constant 
Reader” in vol. xxv., some nine years ago, in which the Sun¬ 
flower is described as having the power to purify the air—that 
its leaves make excellent fodder, and the stem, being rich in 
saltpetre and potash, makes good fuel, and the seeds are good for 
fowls. Some wise man, if I remember aright, advocated Sun¬ 
flowers being grown solely for fuel. Methinks I hear some 
aesthetic damsel exclaim to her beloved flower, “ Oh ! to what base 
uses thou mayest come.” Still the fact remains, that until quite 
recently the floral beauty of this high-growing plant was abso¬ 
lutely ignored. 
It was always a beautiful flower, though its charms have been 
unnoticed so long, and now it is regarded favourably in a laugh¬ 
ably exaggerated sense. 
Let me next trace a little the history of the Sunflower as con¬ 
nected with English floriculture. John Parkinson, an apothecary 
of the sixteenth century, sufficiently distinguished to be employed 
in that capacity, mentions the Sunflower among his list in a 
chapter entitled, “ Of the Nature and Names of Divers Outlandish 
Flowers,” and his directions in regard to raising the Sunflower 
are as follows :—“ It requires to be raised early in a hotbed, or 
they never perfect their seed, but in very hot summers ; ” upon 
which Mr. Johnson makes this remark—“Either these plants have 
changed their habit or our climate is much ameliorated.” But 
among writers I have come across, Gerard, A.D. 1597, writes in 
his “ Herbal ” most fully of the Sunflower. In a pretty, taking, 
old-fashioned way he speaks of “ the Flower of the Sun or the 
Marigold of Peru,” dividing it into two sorts : No. 1, Flos Solis 
major, and No. 2, Flos Solis minor. Of the former he says, “ The 
Indian Sun or the Golden Flower of Peru is of such stature and 
tallness that in summer, being sown of a seed in April, it hath 
risen up to the height of 14 feet in my garden.” This giant sort 
appears to have produced but one flower of “ the size of 16 inches 
across.” The stalk was the bigness of a man’s arm. Gerard 
prettily and accurately says, “ The middle part of the flower is 
made as it were of unshorn velvet, or some curious cloth wrought 
with the needle, which brave work, if you mark it well, it seemeth 
to be an innumerable sort of small flowers resembling the nozzle 
of a candlestick broken from the foot thereof.” 
Of the Flos Solis minor Gerard says that it was altogether 
lower and the leaves more jagged and very few in number ; that 
the flower is smaller, and I infer there were more than one. “ The 
thrummed middle part is blacker than the last described.” 
To come now to the present time. In cottage gardens, unin- 
