THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, November 6, 1860. 
Some gardeners and patrons of gardens have never yet 
seen Gazania rigens at all; they have been growing the 
cross-bred plant in its stead ever since the latter was 
raised, and now they find there is no difference between 
it and itself at its second appearance. Of course there is 
not, but I should like to get the names of all who have 
proved themselves so false to their fellows as to hide 
the secret of their Gazania-beds from the rest of the 
world for the space of twenty-four or twenty-five years ; 
for we lost the improved Gazania about London the 
season that Her Majesty succeeded to the throne, and no 
one of the many earnest pens and penmen who plied for 
the decorations of our country or town gardens had ever 
heard of a single bed of Gazania rigens from that day till 
the reappearance of the same improved sort in London, 
in 1859, when we booked it and gave it the name which 
best tells its merits. 
Some did, and some could not do beds of Gazania 
uniflora. For some years past a great deal of Gazania 
discussion went through the gardening press. The best 
beds of it spoken to in The Cottage Gabdeneb were a 
pair one season at Kew, but by common consent it was 
voted down, as giving too much growth and leaf for the 
quantity of blossom ; and now we must needs hear and [ 
learn that a splendens was in the hands of civilised people 
all this time, who fattened on the crumbs from our tables, 
and kept their own pot luck to themselves the while. 
Next summer you will see two match beds of Gazania 
splendens on the Lose Mount at the Crystal Palace ; but 
who can send a patch or two of rigens, true as Prince 
Alfred fresh from the same quarters, to let the plants tell 
their own tale ? 
A much more interesting tale it would be to find out 
and relate by what process of genuine gardening the 
Chinese have converted their form of our hedge Bind¬ 
weed—Convolvulus sepium of old authors, and Calystegia 
of our own times. 
That there is only one kind or species of this Calys¬ 
tegia all over the world is a fact ascertained by the 
travels and researches of Dr. Hooker ; and that Calystegia 
pubescens, in its natural state of singleness, is the merest 
variety or variation of sepium I have myself proved, by 
producing the single form of the China plant, which is 
now not nearly so distant from our hedge sepium as is 
the other English form of sepium itself—I mean sepium 
flore rubro of British botanists, and probably the sepium 
incarnata of our compiled lists. There is no other plant 
of the order of Bindweeds that has even been seen with 
a double flower except Calystegia pubescens; and this 
pubescens itself is the first instance on record in which 
a very double flower turned to the most single form 
and perfect bloom per saltern, as naturalists say—that 
is, at one bound or step. To prevent doubts as much 
as in me lies, I have sent lots of the single Calystegia 
to the Crystal Palace. I shall also send it to Ken¬ 
sington Gore and to Kew; and along with it, I am now 
glad to be able to report, a specimen of the flore rubro, 
or that most beautiful British red Convolvulus for which 
I recently sent out a missive in these pages, and a fine 
lot of roots of it came up safely by post from a very 
kind clergyman far down in the country. The ticket 
with the names of the plants and donor ended with— 
“N.B. It is a dreadful weed, but very beautiful.” That 
is just the way with them all—single and*double. The 
common white is free enough in the bottom of the Crystal 
Palace grounds. The red one will soon be more so. The 
lavender single pubescens of my make, with the “ pale 
very delicate pink” double one of Dr. Lindley, will be 
seen in these three public gardens as “ dreadful weeds 
but very beautiful.” The two forms of pubescens, single 
and double, and the rich red Convolvulus of free and 
happy England, ought to be allowed a place among Kho- 
dodendrons and other Americans. I have known the 
white Convolvulus and the common Nasturtiums com¬ 
pletely cover a whole bed of Rhododendrons and Ber- 
beris aquifolia the second year after planting. The Bind¬ 
weed got in with the fresh peat and the seeds of the 
Nasturtiums by mistake, in leaf mould and compost from 
the potting-shed, and some thought the bed was ruined, 
but I assure you they did an immensity of good. The 
shading they gave to the plants was far more in their 
favour than all the harm the roots did to the soil in the 
beds ; for such plants, and more particularly these Bind¬ 
weeds, exhaust the soil very little indeed. 
It has often occurred to me to put a question to the 
best practice of the age, founded on the double Chinese 
Bindweed. A Convolvulus is the best shaped flower by 
Nature of all the flowers in the world. Florists will not 
be able to push one point beyond Nature of improve¬ 
ment in the shape of this single pubescens ; but the 
double form of it is the very worst shaped we ever had in 
cultivation. Now, seeing the plant yields to the prying 
influences of the grower, that it is by Nature one of the 
best shaped of all plants, and that the prying influences 
have made it one of the worst forms of double flowers, 
my question is this, Is it not yet possible to have a double 
Calystegia of as good a form, at least, as a double Petunia ? 
The look of the two flowers in the single state is much 
the same; the part which makes them double, the organs 
of reproduction, are much the same also ; and may it not 
have happened that the Chinaman had pushed his art to 
an extreme limit in spoiling the face of tins flower, accord¬ 
ing to our views of doubleness ? and might we not, by a 
less powerful stretch of our influence over the make of 
such flowers, produce one much less misformed, or why 
not aim at making the double flower a model of symmetry ? 
One thing is certain, and no less certain than strange, 
this Bindweed has yielded its own natural force to the 
influences of cultivation in a manner quite different 
from all other flowers that have been changed to a double 
form. The plant never seeds that we know of: therefore 
it was not by the application of a cunning craft on the 
parents of a seedling which made a double flower in this 
instance, but some such severe hardship as the Chinese 
resort to in their dwarfing system on plants, and the 
cramping torture on the feet of their women, and of 
which we know very little indeed. I am not quite clear 
to this day whether it was from a powerful stimulus given 
to the strength of the double-flowering plant or from the 
contrary cause that the natural state—the single flower, 
was produced; but this I do know, that if we did but 
fathom the law of that change or under which that 
change occurred, we should hold a powerful lever in it, 
to turn up and cast over many and many a flower of 
which we have never yet thought of altering or improving 
at all. Also, if we lose sight of that law, or mystery, 
while it is yet fresh before our eyes, we may never see 
another instance of the like to refresh our memories or 
sharpen our inventive powers for a practical interpreta¬ 
tion thereof. Here, then, is something new beyond the 
reach of science, but as true as the sun to the dial, and 
yet it is a perfect mystery, and all our councillors and 
active agents avoid its consideration, being more engaged 
on the ephemeral shades of seedlings and showy plants 
than on the laws which govern them, or those by w'hich 
we might mould them to our will. 
If I once more point out the circumstances under 
which the single Calystegia was produced, and leave the 
inference to my readers, some one may, perhaps, take 
up the subject and push it another stage, although it may 
take another generation of time before any great practical 
use can be deduced from it. It was neither science, nor 
practice founded on science, nor cleverness, nor ingenuity 
which produced that single flower, as some have supposed, 
but the merest chance. A deep barrel, perhaps four feet 
deep, was sunk at the bottom of a large tree to plant a Jas- 
minum nudiflorum in, so that the roots of the Jasmine 
rather than the roots of that large tree should enjoy all 
the fresh soil or compost. The drainage for the bottom 
of the barrel was half a barrowful of the rakings of a bed 
