October 80, 1890. J 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
373 
mistake. There are some who do not like to be told that this is a 
fault, and that makes the mistake a double one. 
Some exhibitors make a mistake in staging varieties together 
which are too much alike, although they may be known to the 
owner as distinct, but if there is any doubt about their character 
not being quite clear it is unwise to run the risk of being disquali¬ 
fied for the reason stated. Far better is it to depend upon those 
sorts about which there can be no doubt whatever as to their 
distinctness. 
One further reference only will I make—namely, on the subject 
of dressing the blooms. This necessary item in exhibiting is much 
decried by those who do not practise it as being everything that is 
bad towards spoiling the blooms. At a noted northern show I was 
inspecting the cut blooms, and found a stand of twelve incurved 
specimens of large size, but many of them having a fully developed 
‘eye,” especially in the “ Queen family.” I remarked, “They would 
be_ good blooms if they were dressed.” A bystander, a stranger, 
rejoined, “ If they had not been dressed they would have been 
good blooms.” Now, it was apparent that the 
flowers were staged almost as cut from the 
plants, and it was a mistake to say that dressing 
would spoil them. 
In conclusion, I would say that by a close 
study of what not to do, that which an exhibitor 
should strive to accomplish can easily be learnt, 
it being mainly a question of the proper use of 
what we all possess—viz., “ brains, gentlemen, 
brains.”— Edwin Molyneux. 
mean. Mr. Fortune told us, after his second return from China, 
that the Celestial gardeners did not care for any of the plants 
he took out with him from England, except for the scarlet Zonal 
Pelargonium ; and certainly the faith and persistence with which 
these people have improved their own wildings is very remark¬ 
able, and I have sometimes thought that therein lies, by implica¬ 
tion, the moral lesson to our British gardeners, “ Go thou and 
do likewise.” I am afraid, however, we are too fond of jumping 
to conclusions, too fond of rapid results, to take up the culture 
of our native Corn Marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum), or our 
great Ox-eye Daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum), with any¬ 
thing like the long-suffering faith that must have prompted and 
animated the Chinese gardeners who first began the culture of 
the wild Chrysanthemum centuries upon centuries ago. It is 
not only possible, but extremely probable, that the Chrysanthe¬ 
mum was a popular garden flower in China when Egypt was in 
its prime, and in the future it is likely to remain the national 
floral emblem of a people who will either, as friends, help us to 
CHRYSANTHEMUM FLOWERS 
AND SEEDS. 
Raising Chrysanthemums from seed has 
'become an important matter, and although the 
majority are obtained from imported seed saved 
in the south of France, Algiers, and other warm 
regions, yet it has been repeatedly proved 
that seed can be ripened in this climate. At the 
present time Messrs. Laing & Sons at Forest 
Hill have some seedling Chrysanthemums raised 
from seed saved last season, and as the seed 
parent was the distinct Japanese variety, Edwin 
Molyneux, the flowering will be watched with 
much interest. Several other nurserymen also 
have seedlings said to be from home-raised seed, 
and the matter is worth the attention of 
amateurs who are partial to making experi¬ 
ments. To assist in explaining the character 
of the flower, which is by no means generally 
■understood, the appended illustration is repro¬ 
duced by the courtesy of the Secretary, the 
Rev. W. Wilks, from the Journal of the Royal 
Horticultural Society (March, 1890). The 
accompanying remarks form a portion of a paper 
■read by Mr. F. W. Burbidge at the Conference 
held at Chiswick on November 6th last year, 
which also gave an exhaustive description of the 
experiments undertaken by various raisers. The 
chief condition requisite to success appears to n :rbuen grains, 
be that the seed should be set as early as 
possible, and that it be allowed a long period 
of ripening, at least two months, and no doubt saving immature 
•seed has been the cause of many failures. 
“ The Chinese are a peculiar people, and in many ways different 
to the gardeners of the West. They are more insulated and self- 
contained. Less than a century ago China was the whole world 
■to the Chinese. Although they live much nearer to the tropics 
<j>floret, x. 
synyenesious 
anthers jX. 
Fig. 43.— the chrysanthemum. 
seeds,x. 
а. Diagram showing arrangement and analysis of flower head, or capitulum. 
б. Invoiuc al bracts. c. Hermaphrodite florets. 
d. d. d. Fema e florets,or ray. e, e. Disc of the eapituium. 
f.f.f. Syngenesions anthers. g. Bdurcate stigma, 
i -■ i,Seeds, 
than we do, they have not felt that soul-hunger for the plants of 
other and warmer lands than their own, which is such a charac¬ 
teristic feature in our horticulture of to-day. The mandarins, or 
■nobles of China, allow the aristocratic Orchid to sway and flutter 
neglected on its native bough ; but the one thing they do admire 
and value is their native Chrysanthemum, a flower which, with 
their neighbours the Japanese, they cultivate to perfection. It 
is the national flower of a great and powerful people, and not 
only of the conservative Chinese themselves, but of the more 
liberal Japanese, and also of the people of Siam. But what at 
the beginning of this paper I am anxious to emphasise is the 
broad central fact that the Chinese gardeners have gone out to 
their own waysides and hedges, and have brought into cultiva¬ 
tion their own wild flowers. The Tree-Pmony, the Camellia, the 
Azalea, the Rose, and, above all, the Chrysanthemum, are a few 
only of their favourites, which may serve to illustrate what I 
foes, they may possibly eat 
the eastern half of the 
keep our foothold in the East, or, as 
up the Russian Bear, and then reserve 
world’s loaf for themselves. 
“ We have now to consider the flower itself. I have reasons for 
believing that the small single yellow Chrysanthemum indicum 
(commonly cultivated in India, although only wild in Corea, China, 
and Japan) is the original wild type from which natural variation, 
and culture have evolved all larger growing and more highly 
coloured forms. All the botanists, from Linnaeus and De Candolle 
to Messrs. Forbes and Hemsley (Jour. Linn. Soc., vol. xxiii., 
p.437-8), have considered C. indicum and C. morifolium (=-sinense) 
as two distinct species. I only believe in one species—the sc- 
called C. indicum (of which C. morifolium (C. sinense) is, as I 
take it, a mere geographical variety), since I find that nearly 
every batch of seedlings exhibits a tendency to revert to this, as 
the primitive yellow-flowered type, although all sorts and sizes and 
conditions and colours, are obtainable from seeds gathered from the 
same capitule, be the seed-bearer Pompon (C. indicum) or large- 
flowered (C. morifolium sinense). When the weird forms, now 
known to have been of Japanese garden origin, were introduced by 
Mr. Fortune in 1862, we were very nearly led to believe in a third 
species (C. japonicum), so distinct and different were these flowers 
