THE 
FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
PETUNIA PHGENICEA,—HENDER^S STRAIN. 
WITH AN ILLUSTRATION. 
HE original type of tins handsome and deservedly popular garden flower was 
introduced to this country from Buenos Ayres, about forty-five years ago. 
It was a freely-branched plant, growing remarkably well in the open air 
during summer, and producing its bright magenta-purple, funnel-shaped 
flowers in great profusion, so that it soon became popular as a bedding-plant. 
The stronger-growing, larger-flowered nijctaginijiora^ with its broad white 
hypocrateriform flowers, had been introduced some few years earlier from La 
Plata and it was not long before the blossoms of the comparatively small- 
flowered P. phosnicea^ or violacea as it is also called, became enlarged by inter¬ 
marriage with its robust cousin, the flowers retaining in great measure the form 
peculiar to the latter, by acquiring its broad flat expanded limb, and by losing 
much of the open throat of the former. The crossing and inter-crossing which 
produced these results have gone on more or less freely from that day to this, 
so that the Petunia of the gardens has, like the Pelargonium, lost its specific type, 
and has in reality become a kind of florists’ flower. So much is this the case, 
that many strains of the Petunia seed of the present day will yield flowers of 
great variety and beauty, but amongst them all, we have seen none which surpass, 
even if any of them equal, that of Messrs. Render and Son, of the Bedford 
Nursery, Plymouth, some of the varied forms of which are represented in the 
accompanying plate. 
For this strain of Petunias, then, we may certainly claim that it is amongst the 
best to be anywhere met with. The plants present flowers of every colour, from 
pure white to brilliant crimson and deep purple—in some cases whole-coloured, but 
these freely intermingled with others which are beautifully striped and spotted, 
like those we have represented, and with others again showing a variety of distinct 
markings, which the space at his disposal would not permit our artist to portray. 
What more can we say in praise of them ? This—that they are remarkable for 
their short-jointed bushy habit of growth, so that at the shows of the West of 
England, where Render’s Petunias are well known and thoroughly appreciated, 
plants may be met with in 8-in. pots, dense in growth, with large flowers, and 
without a stick to support them, which is a sufficient guarantee as to their un¬ 
exceptionable habit, while our plate shows that the flowers are remarkably 
beautiful in colouring as well as refined in quality.—T. Moors. 
3rd series.—IX. B 
