Decamber 16, 1837. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
511 
‘‘big ’uns ” can be sorted out without much grumbling 
from a crop of 200 sacks, or 20 tons to the acre, this 
having been produced on good warp land. Imperator is 
•believed to be of German origin and will perhaps be heard 
of again.—A Northern Grower. 
[ Relative to the second growth of Magnum Bonum 
Potatoes this year, we have samples before us, grown by 
Mr. Thomas Holman, a medical gentleman and intel¬ 
ligent cultivator, in Sussex. Mr. Holman was advised to 
•dig up his crop when the rain commenced in September, 
to avoid supertubering. Fortunately he only acted on the 
advice to a small extent. The early dug tubers are small, 
malformed, and unsaleable in comparison with the later 
sample which developed afterwards. These were pro¬ 
duced from the main stems of the plants above the first 
formed tubers, and are from 3^ to 4 inches long, faultless 
in shape, with well set skins, and in all respects excellent, 
ithe crop being 400 bushels, or 13 tons per acre. Mr. 
Holman also sends us a second growth sample, dug while 
the plants were green. These are much smaller and of 
good shape, but with ruffled skins, which spoils their 
appearance. Probably if kept in a dry dark place they 
may be found of fairly good quality very late in the spring. 
The samples demonstrate the great loss that would have 
been incurred by taking up the whole crop, as was advised, 
prematurely. After the extreme heat the ground was like 
a hotbed when the rain fell, hence the rapid growth and 
maturation of the second crop. The original tubers do 
not seem to have enlarged as appears to have been the 
case in the north, where the crops weie, perhaps, less 
advanced to maturity when the rain fell there.] 
“OLD LACHARME.” 
Now that the Chrysanthemum mania, as my friend ‘‘A. C.’ 
rails it, has lessened, there may be the possibility of something 
being heard about the Rose, and, by-the-by, I do not think that we 
Rose lovers have any right to complain, for when the month of 
July sets in, is not the Rose the prominent theme of the Journal ? 
Its pages diffuse a delicious “ attar,” and we almost expect to find 
it printed on rose-coloured paper. So that while we are getting 
about our denuded beds, we may well let the Chrysanthemum lover 
have his fling. It is everybody’s flower, which the Rose is not. 
She is too dainty to put up with the smoke and dust of a great city, 
while the Chrysanthemum (I will not say revels in it; seems to 
grow quite as well there as anywhere else; and as I want to remind 
the readers of the Journal that there is after all really such a 
flower as the Rose, I cannot do any better than put down a few 
notes concerning one whose death has made this an “ annus memor- 
abilis" to the Rose lover, and whom even a quarter of a century 
age we used to know by the familiar title of “ Old Lacharme.” It 
was not because there was a young Lacharme, as in the case of the 
Guillots, but it wa3, I think, a title of affection for one who was 
then in the prime of life. We never used to speak of the elder 
Guillot as old Guillot, but “ Guillot pere,” while of the galaxy of 
Rose raisers at Lyons—Guillot, Schwartz, Levet, Boucharlat, Ducher, 
Liabaud, Pernet, and others—Lacharme stood a very Saul amongst 
them, nay, I venture to say a head and shoulders above all the 
Rose raisers of the world. 
It is now more than twenty years since I first visited Lyons 
as a Rose lover. I had been there fifty years ago. Rumours had 
reached us that old Lacharme had at list gained the much-desired 
yellow Hybrid Perpetual, and as I was on my way to Paris I was 
asked to go down and see it ; but, alas ! when I got to the nursery 
and was cordially welcomed by Lacharme, he told me that he had 
been deceived, and that what the bud promised the opening flowers 
had belied, and that the long-wished-for Rose had not yet arrived. 
There was about the mau the unmistakeable signs of hard work, and 
in all his conversation you noted that his love for the Rose was not 
•of a purely commercial character. Like every grower for sale, he 
liked it to be a source of profit to him, but it was above all neces¬ 
sary that it should be a source of pleasure, and ambition also that 
his name should be associated with it. There was not about his 
nursery, any more than in most French nurseries, any attempt at 
tidiness, but everywhere signs of hard work, nor did his garden 
.contain that enormous number of plants that used to be found 
about Brie Comte Robert. His role was essentially that of a raiser 
of new varieties, and how well he fulfilled his mission the catalogues 
of the present day tell us plainly. He worked hard, and his health 
was not of the best. He felt that Lyons was at times too cold for 
him, and not so favourable for the seeding of his Roses as he 
wished, and so a few years ago there was a proposal made by him 
to the son of one of our principal Rose nurserymen that he should 
join him and migrate further south towards Montpelier or Toulon. 
It however came to nothing, but it was an evidence of the strong 
will and enthusiasm of the old man, for then he was approaching 
his threescore years and ten. 
I have called him the most successful Rose raiser that has ever 
lived. Success is to be measured, not by the amount of money 
made by flowers nor the quantity of seedlings sent out, but by the 
quality of those that bear his name ; and there is this to be remem¬ 
bered, that while many Rose growers who have let out large num¬ 
bers of varieties have purchased many of them from others and 
then sent them out in their own name, Lacharme never put his 
name to a Rose that he did not himself raise, and that therefore his 
success as a Rose grower cannot be measured exactly with others. 
He is handicapped in this respect. 
We have the means of testing this success, for the National 
Rose Society has published in its catalogue of exhibition and garden 
Roses the names of the raise: s of the flowers admitted into it, and 
also the year of their being sent into commerce There are 115 
Roses in the list, and of these there are several synonymous Roses, 
which brings the list down to about 105, and of these eleven are 
Lacharme Roses, while the remainder have been raised by twenty- 
eight other raisers. Thus, while he has raised one-tenth of the 
whole number, the others have contributed a little more than three 
each, taking them in the aggregate. This of itself would be a 
sufficient indication of his success, but this is still more remarkable 
when we take the names of his Roses. Of dark Roses he has raised 
Alfred Colomb, Charles Lefebvre, Louis Yan Houtte, and Xavier 
Olibo ; of light Roses, Captain Christy, Catherine Soupert, Com- 
tesse de Serenye, Hippolyte Jamain, Madame Lacharme, Victor 
Verdier, and Violette Bouyer. What a galaxy of grand Roses is 
here ! All, with the exception of Comtesse de Serenye, which I do 
not think will long last amongst our exhibition Roses, owing to its 
habit of becoming dirty (unless when the weather is of the finest), 
likely to last for many a long year, as some of the choicest 
favourites of the Rose growers, and appearing in almost every exhi¬ 
bition stand, and some of them the very grandest Roses in existence. 
Who will ever put aside such flowers as the grand old “ Charley,” or 
Louis Yan Houtte, or Captain Christy, Madame Lacharme, or 
Yiolette Bouyer ? and surely such a man ought to be ever held in 
affectionate remembrance by those to whose pleasure and enjoyment 
he has so largely contributed. Nor was he idle amongst Teas. To 
him we owe the robust and ever changing Madame Lambard and the 
old but beautiful Madame Willermoz. 
There was another class of Roses which, a'though not exhibition 
flowers, are amongst the most beautiful of our garden Roses, I 
mean those that are sometimes called Hybrid Noisettes, those 
beautiful white Roses of the Boule de Neige type. He worked 
vigorously at these, and it was from them that he hoped to obtain 
his yellow Perpetual, and in 1860 Madame Gustave Bonnet was 
sent out. In 1861 he produced Louise Darzens, and in 1862 he 
brought out Madame Alfred de Rougemont, named after the wife 
of a Swiss lover of Roses ; Lady Emilie Peel and Perle des Blanches 
in 1864, followed by Baronne de Maynard ; and in 1867 by Boule de 
Neige, the greatest favourite in this class, Coquette des Alpes, often 
with a faint edging of pink. In 1872 came Perle des Blanches, 
and in 1877 Madame Francois Pittet. These all run upon the 
same lines. There is in some of them a faint suspicion of yellow, 
especially when in the bud state, and for continuous blooming and 
purity of colour it is hard to beat them. 
It will thus be seen from this rapid survey of the old man’s 
lifelong work what p'easure and enjoyment he has been the means 
of giving to the Rose-loving community, and it was a graceful 
thought that impelled the members of the National Rose Society 
to send, through their Secretary, a letter of sympathy with his 
widow in her bereavement. There is no Lacharme to carry on the 
work, and his name will be associated with some of the finest Roses 
we have ; for while it is never safe to predict what may be done in 
floriculture, there is a limit beyond which it does not seem possible 
to go. We have reached it in Fuchsias, Pelargoniums, &c., and the 
experience of the last few years, while it indicates fresh grooves 
into which we may run, at the same time teaches us that it will 
never be easy to beat such Roses, in their own line, as are associated 
with the honoured name of Francois Lacharme. 
In appearance he was a man of ab)ut middle height, latterly 
much stooped with age and hard work. He had a fine expressive 
countenance, and what was really a noble forehead ; a3 one who 
