THE COTTAGE GARDENEB. 
February 12. 
aoi 
its right name a week or two after the passing of the 
Catholic Emancipation Bill, and, I think, from Mr. 
Baily, then gardener at Dropmore. It is quite different 
in aspect from the last, having very soft leaves, and 
much darker flowers, with a more close habit of growth. 
Indeed, it is the best-liabited plant of all our bedders, 
except a seedling from it called Regium. I never had 
but this one seedling from it, or from this section. There 
were three or four seeds in the pod, but two only vege¬ 
tated, and one of them I could not rear; but, seeing 
that an only seedling turned out a first-rate bedder, we 
may consider this geranium as at the very head of all 
i our breeders ; and I would strongly advise a whole army 
of cross-breeders to lay siege to this stronghold, and 
strong enough they will find it, I promise them. 
It forces in the spring much better than the original 
Diadematum, and would make a specimen plant as well 
as any of the large prize pelargoniums, for a greenhouse 
or exhibition stage. It comes easily from cuttings all 
through the season, and is not difficult to keep through 
the winter. 
Diadematum regium. —This is a new seedling, which 
I obtained from the last; and, with the exception of the 
leaves being less soft, every word which 1 have said 
about D. rubescens will apply to it also. It comes up to 
D. rubescens in every respect, and, like Spleenii and 
Mrs. Jeffries, it will make an excellent match bed with 
D. rubescens, in a geometric arrangement, and after a 
few years it will very likely seed, but at present it has 
no disposition to do so. I am not quite certain of its 
pollen parent, because I was on the point of giving up 
the cross altogether, when I got a chance pod, after 
applying the pollen of every geranium that I could 
think of as likely to breed in the section, but from the 
beautiful tints of the flower I think The Priory Queen 
was the pollen parent; and I would strongly advise this 
Queen as a breeder for perpetual bloomers, such as we 
require for beds, to be used both ways—to seed and to 
yield pollen ; but it does not easily seed under pot cul¬ 
ture, nor i3 very free to seed even in the open borders. 
I sent D. regium to some of the public establishments 
round London, and I think it must be had now in the 
trade, and that Mr. Appleby could supply it. From him 
I first received the pretty little Diadematum bicolor, a 
striped flower which makes a very pretty little bed from 
two-year-old plants. It is the dwarfest in this section, is 
j quite barren, stands as much heat as a pine-apple, and 
| must be increased from cuttings early in the spring, as 
it is slow to root after it comes into flower, and summer- 
\ struck cuttings of it are bad to keep through the winter. 
When the geraniums come into flower next May, if I 
am spared I shall look round the nurseries, and give 
the names of all those that are in affinity with the 
Diadematums, and are the most likely to breed with 
them. I wish I had made out a list of these kinds 
before, but the truth is, I had no idea, for a long time, 
that these notes would have been called for. 
The Curate. —I have alluded to this little plant already, 
: and shall merely say of it now, that it is the dwarfest of 
all the bedders of this class, and though not very showy, 
l is always in bloom, and is indispensable in a large 
j collection. It borders on the Oak-leaved section. The 
leaves are small, and so are the trusses and the indi¬ 
vidual flowers; they are dark red, with black spots on 
the upper petals, and also a little streaked with dark 
lines. It would match with the Shrubland Pet, and the 
Gooseberry-leaved sort; also witli the Dandy and Golden 
Chain, and Lady Plymouth, or Variegated Oak-leaf, alias 
Variegated graveolens, where a lot of little compact beds 
could be disposed side by side in a lady’s flower garden, 
or, better still, in a children’s flower-garden, where all 
these pet things would be just at home and in character. 
Lady Plymouth, with its variegated oak-leaves, and pale 
lilac little blossoms, -would make an exquisite edging for 
a bed of Curate, or Diadematum bicolor, or it might be 
used by itself. It is a sport from Graveolens, or Rose- 
scented Geranium, and should always be propagated early 
in the spring, long before it comes into blossom, as it is 
difficult to get good cuttings from it in summer without 
taking the flower-wood or shoots ; and they never make 
strong plants, or show the true character of the variety, 
if you keep them ever so long. Mr. Jeffries, at Ipswich, 
grows it faster than any one I know, and he has it 
always in peat, or mostly so ; but the other day I saw 
several plants of it with Mr. Mallison, at Claremont, the 
finest and strongest I ever saw, quite different from the 
usual run. They were growing in a kind of soft yellow 
loam, but quite light, and they put mo strongly in mind 
of what I have often said about particular soils suiting 
or not suiting certain kinds of plants, without our being 
in the least able to say, or tell of the effects before-hand. 
Witness the Solfaterre Rose, which does so well with 
some of our correspondents, but if you take buds or 
cuttings from their plants, and plant them in what you 
may think the very same kind of soil, the chances are 
that they would turn out good-for-nothing, like my old 
plant. There was a fine Strawberry some years since 
called the Downton, which was condemned all over the 
kingdom, while I was growing it the finest of the fine, 
and the family would use no other sort as long as they 
could get the Downton, yet it would not grow but on 
one quarter in the garden, and that I at last foolishly 
trenched, and from that day to this I could never grow 
it again, and I had sad complaints about the loss of it. 
Take, as another instance, The British Queen Strawberry. 
It is allowed to be one of our finest sorts, yet, after all 
we could do with it at Shrubland Bark, it was not worth 
picking off' the ground, nor would a row of it twenty 
yards long produce a fair dish at the height of the 
season. In pots and forcing the same—I even changed 
the stock three times, and at last had runners direct 
from Mr. Ingram, from Her Majesty’s garden at Wind¬ 
sor, with whom I saw the finest crop of it I ever saw of 
any fruit, but, like the rest, they turned out good-for- 
nothing, and I shall be curious to know if Mr. David¬ 
son, my successor, can do anything with it. 
Now, it may turn out that many of those bedding 
geraniums which I have pronounced barren, may not 
be so altogether on a different soil, and I never did 
much with them experimentally but at Shrubland Park; 
I am perfectly confident, however, about all my remarks 
on them in that kind of soil, for I seldom missed a season 
without flowering thousands and thousands of seedlings, 
and, for want of room, I had often to plant whole rows of 
them between the cabbages in the kitchen-garden. This 
last season, I had a beautiful bed of the last seedling 
that was named for me—they named it, by consent, Sir 
William Middleton, after my worthy employer. Any 
one who has visited Shrubland Park in my time, will 
allow that neither he nor his gardener would allow a 
seedling to be so called unless it was up to the mark. 
It belongs to a section in which no good bedder has yet 
appeared, although, judging from the muddlers which 
some growers are contented with in the same breed, it 
is, and must be, a general favourite section for bedders. 
It first appeared in the fourth generation from Jehu and 
Yetmeniana grandifiora. The section of Yetmeniana 
has produced more varieties of bedders than all the rest 
of the sections put together, and yet there is not one of 
them a first-rate sort. Yetmeniana appeared about the 
same time as the fancy calceolarias, in 1881-32. It 
has a reddish ground, with a dark spot in each of the 
three front petals, and the two back petals nearly black. 
It was a seeder, and soon produced a larger flower in 
all respects like itself, only that the plant was a little 
stronger in growth. This was called Yetmeniana grandi- 
Jlora; both of them being good breeders, and not being 
very particular with which kinds to cross, I kept them 
