February L9. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
is the strongest grower and the best one to seed. They 
seed easier if grown in peat, and kept as cool as possible 
while under the operation ; but the best plan would 
be to use their pollen with the Yetmanianum breed, 
and with all those between that breed and the new 
fancies. The habit of flowering on long footstalks, and 
the length of time the flowering season would extend, 
are the only good qualities that can be expected front 
A rdens, except, perhaps, helping us to get striped flowers. 
Bipinnatifida. —The Horticultural Society distributed 
tbe rasp-leaf geranium by this name, but Sweet has a 
beautiful cross belonging to the Oak Leaved section under 
the name, and he gives quinquevulnerum and triste as its 
parents; the flowers are a striped lilac. I have seen 
this plant in flower, and I doubt its parentage; I also 
think it is bad to seed, but I have not tried it much, 
neither do I know which is the true name, that by tbe 
Society or Sweet’s name, but the striped flowering plant 
I mean is Sweet’s, and is one of the most promising we 
have for getting striped flowers like those of Siilonia. 
Scepeflorens. — This is highly to be recommended 
for getting deep, reddish-pink crosses from, it passes for 
a wild species with most growers, but it is a cross 
between reniforme and echinatum, the latter being tbe 
mother plant. I have seen it confounded with its pollen 
parent, reniforme, but the two are very distinct, reni¬ 
forme is a dull, reddish-pink, with a distinct black 
mark in the two upper petals, and I take reniforme to 
be the original from which the dark blotch in the show 
Pelargoniums originated. The flowers of scepeflorens 
are of a brighter colour than those of reniforme, and 
instead of the black marks in the upper petals, the 
flowers of scepeflorens are dotted all over with faint 
black spots, and sometimes a little veiny; the leaves are 
larger than those of reniforme, and much softer, and 
the stems are much more gouty, a quality inherited 
from its mother— ecldnatum; by these marks, the two 
can easily be distinguished; they are very common in 
the nurseries, and every one who is looking out for cross¬ 
breeders, ought to possess them; they were extensively 
crossed thirty years ago, and some of their seedlings, 
now lost, would be considered good bedders at the 
present day. Most people know how shy echinatum is 
to flower, and that it blooms early in the season, and 
after that goes to rest like a Cape bulb; on the other 
hand, reniforme is a most free bloomer, and continues 
to blow till late in the autumn, and its pollen has at 
once conquered the natural habit of echinatum, and 
turned scepeflorens, their offspring, into a free and per¬ 
petual bloomer, so that we need not*despair, in crossing 
this family, if one of the parents exhibits qualities we 
do not approve of, provided one of them is to our mind. 
Cortuscefolium. —This has a bright pink flower, and 
belongs to the same group or section as Echinatum and 
Reniforme, and like them, has been the parent of many 
of the old greenhouse kinds, that we should be now 
thankful if we had them to bed out; it is common where 
the wild ones are kept. One of the best crosses from 
this species was called Comptum, and a figure of it is 
given by Sweet. Scepeflorens was the other parent, and 
as we have the two now to work from, Comptum, though 
long lost, may easily be originated a second time, and 
all of them may be tried with crosses of the present 
day, particularly with the fancies or little geraniums, as 
Ibrahim Pacha, and if they will cross, the fancies may 
soon be brought out with a more hardy constitution, 
and their flowering time extended over the whole 
season, two qualities which every lady sighs for, when 
viewing the most extraordinary specimens that are 
yearly exhibited for competition at the great London 
shows. “ Oh ! doctor, doctor, what a charming flower¬ 
bed that and that geranium would make, if one could 
keep them so all the summer.” I have had a hundred 
such remarks made in one day, no matter who the 
n 1 iy 
O 1. i 
doctor was, or whether he was a doctor at all. The best 
doctor for our present purpose, is he who can infuse the j 
hardihood of the wild Cape Geraniums into the new r 
race of fancies, for most of the wild ones are much 
more hardy than the generality of the prize sorts, as 
I have proved over and over again, having the two 
growing side by side in the borders of a conservatory 
wall, where it was very rare indeed to lose a Cape 
species in winter, and where no winter passed, however | 
mild, without leaving blanks in the large sorts. 
Echinatum. —This is the most common of all the j 
original species, and the name of it means hedgehog- ! 
like, because the stems of it are prickly. I have said j 
already, that its natural habit is to go to rest soon after | 
it has done flowering, and that is also the natural habit 1 
of many of the tuberous-rooted, and the fleshy-stemmed ! 
soi'ts from tbe Cape, but it is not difficult to cause them J 
to change this habit under cultivation. If they are 
turned out of the pots in May, and planted out-of-doors, I 
or in a cold pit, and well watered at first, till they take ! 
to the new soil, there is not one in tbe whole tribe, as 
far as I have tried, but will go on growing to the end of 
the season, and then the spring or May flowering ones 
will all flower again in the autumn, and far superior to 
anything we have seen under pot-culture. I once had 
a patch of reniforme —no matter when in full bloom—in 
a south border, late in the season, and the man from 
whom I had it, and who flowers it in a pot every year, 
took it for an entire new species, and asked for a piece 
of it, as something quite new to him. A great botanist, 
who saw it soon after this, was taken in the same net, 
and declared the plant w r as new to science, and that I 
ought to take special care of it, being one of tbe finest of 
the race for a border plant. I was wicked enough in both 
instances, not to say what made all tbe difference. This 
echinatum will flower just as well as reniforme, in the 
autumn, if it is planted out in time, and of all the wild 
species that I have seen, it has the best habit of flower¬ 
ing for the flower-beds, the foot-stalks being stiff and 
erect, throwing up the flowers far above tbe leaves, like 
Tom Thumb. I therefore recommend it most strongly 
for a breeder, and it seeds freely in its own section, 
which is the same as that of reniforme, scepeflorens, 
&c. A fine cross from it, by tbe pollen of scepeflorens, 
was figured by Sweet, by name erectum, which is now 
lost, but may easily be bad again, and will be an acqui¬ 
sition for the flower-garden, as tbe foot-stalks stand 
quite erect, as the name implies ; the flowers are of a 
beautiful lilac cast. This seedling, when we shall again 
possess it, should be tried with the pollen of Sidonia, 
and the high-coloured fancies for an entire new cast of 
bedders. Indeed, without some such experiments with 
these wild species, we may just as well go to bed at 
once, for all that we can do with the worn-out crosses 
we now possess, as far as the flower-garden is in question. 
Cortuscefolium, reniforme, echinatum, are all of them ex¬ 
cellent breeders, and their first and second crosses will 
unite with many of the other sections, witness flexuosum, 
which they pass off as a species, but it is a cross from 
fulgulum, the finest of them all, and scepeflorens; it 
originated in Colvill’s nursery, under Sweet’s crossing, 
with his own hands, and is the only one of the hundreds 
he originated that is now exhibited at om’ metropolitan 
shows. It also blooms in the open ground from May to 
October, and being so near akin to fulgulum is one of 
the very best crosses that one can now take in hand to 
go on for high-coloured seedlings, unless, indeed, the 
black markings of its grandfather, reniforme, should 
reappear in the seedlings from it; but I shall treat of 
how this is to be avoided under fulgulum. For the 
present I must name one more belonging to the reni- [ 
forme section called crassicaide , or thick-stalked, and the 
stalks or stems of this one are really very thick indeed, 
much more so than those of echinatum, which is in th« j 
