October 30, 1886. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
137 
OLD GARDENS AND NEW 
FLOWERS. 
A well-known writer in the current number of 
Tlic Leisure Hour says:—“I should be sorry to dis¬ 
praise the flowers of our ancestors—the Kose and 
Violet and “ pale Primrose,” the Crocus and Hyacinth, 
“ Daffodils which come before the Swallow dares,” and 
all other flowers mentioned by the older poets, the 
“ floures yellow, white and rede” of Chaucer, Pansies 
and Periwinkles, and the white Lily, which in mediaeval 
ages were all placed in turn upon the shrines of the 
Virgin, to whom all flowers were dedicated. “The 
fairest flowers of the season are our Carnations, ” says 
Shakespeare, and no doubt this species is worthy to be 
called Dianthus (flower of the gods); but even the 
Dianthus of a century ago would not content us now. 
A gardener by profession, aged eighty-three, whose 
fiftieth year of service, fourteen years ago, was recog¬ 
nised by two hundred horti¬ 
cultural friends throughout 
the country by a handsome 
testimonial, showed me 
lately some interesting old 
flowers growing in the 
famous garden at Dropmore, 
which he manages with un¬ 
abated energy, such as only 
those who live much in 
gardens and the open air 
can hope to retain at his 
patriarchal age. Pointing 
to Fuchsia coccinea, he re¬ 
marked that he remembered 
it in 1822, the only species 
in England. As a plant of 
the Pacific seaboard ranging 
from the Falkland Islands 
to the rainy parts of Mexico, 
the Fuchsia has species 
suited to a great variety of 
climates — outdoor sorts, 
such as F. gracilis and F. 
spectabilis, F. coccinea, and 
the handsome F. Riccartoni; 
and others for the conser¬ 
vatory, which are sometimes 
placed out of doors in 
summer, as the magnificent 
F. coryinbiflora is at Drop- 
more ; or F. fulgens, another 
noble exotic, having long- 
tubed flowers like the last- 
named. The history of the 
Fuchsia is characteristic of 
the progress of gardening 
and the improvement of 
flowers. It had been dis¬ 
covered and described by a 
botanist and traveller of the 
seventeenth century, and 
was duly named by him 
after Leonard Fuchs (or 
Fox), a German herbalist 
and physician. But it 
blushed unseen by European 
gardeners, a shrub of 16 ft. 
in height, in favourable situ¬ 
ations, till about a hundred 
years ago a sailor brought it home from Chili, a present 
for his wife. 
But the new plant proved too valuable to be long 
retained by a poor woman, who accordingly soon sold 
it to a Nurseryman at Hammersmith, who introduced 
it to the public after having raised several hundred 
cuttings, which he offered a few at a time, and soon 
disposed of them at a guinea a plant. 
1 he Fuchsia, like all flowers which attain a wide¬ 
spread popularity, lends itself very readily to such 
moulding and modification as florists may desire. The 
hybridising of the various species, long-flowered and 
trumpet-shaped or globose, commenced, according to 
the records, in 1837, and it has been continued up to 
the present moment, and with such success that the 
seed of choice sorts is not held too dear at £50 per 
ounce. But the amateur who beholds Pillar of Fire 
and other successful hybrids, with their golden leaves 
and glorious blossoms, need not be discouraged. There 
are still “other worlds to conquer,” and he may 
readily produce new forms of this beautiful flower, 
since hybrid Fuchsias, like hybrid Calceolarias, are 
as fertile as the original species from which they 
sprang. 
The operation of hybridising is easily effected, and 
although the necessary limits of this paper will prevent 
much enlargement on matters of detail, I may say here 
that the act consists in removing the anthers of a 
flower as soon as the bud opens, and then introducing 
to the stigma some pollen from a flower of the species, 
■which thus becomes the male parent of the hybrid. 
This delicate operation is usually performed with a 
camel-hair pencil, and the Fuchsia is the best plant 
for the experiment of unpractised hands, because the 
prominence of the stigma and the abundance of the 
pollen grains furnished by the anthers render the 
operation exceptionally easy. The seed-bearing plant 
must be carefully isolated, or the wind or other agency, 
such as bees and insects, may render the parentage 
uncertain. 
Vase painted by Mrs. Harry Turner, Slougu. 
The crossing of Fuchsias is so readily effected that 
an amateur having access to a greenhouse or frame 
containing good varieties may readily obtain seed with¬ 
out resorting to artificial fertilisation. When ripe, the 
“plums” of the Fuchsia, which are harmless in tarts 
and tasteless without adventitious flavouring, should be 
cut open, rubbed between- the folds of a fine linen cloth 
till the seed is dry, when it may be sown in pans of 
light good mould with bottom heat, and the young 
plants potted separately when large enough. A good 
homely rule in growing Fuchsias is that of Mr. Cannell, 
of Swanley, one of their most successful cultivators. 
They should be grown, he says, just as Radishes ought 
to be, quickly, in a warm, rich, moist bed, with plenty 
of light and air, as soon as the seedlings or cuttings 
are well rooted. Seeds sown in autumn will produce 
plants to blossom the following summer, that is with 
the aid of artificial heat in winter, and -without such 
aid the seeds should be sown in spring. I have 
ventured on these details because the Fuchsia is a 
typical new flower. I may mention that it has been 
so generally hybridised in recent times that the original 
species are rarely met with, except in a few old-fashioned 
country and cottage gardens, especially in the secluded 
parts of Surrey and Sussex, in Devon, and on the 
western sea-board. In fact the Fuchsia, as a shrub, 
flourishes in all the warmer parts of Britain, especially 
in moist districts near the sea, or in inland situations 
near a water-butt. But the Fuchsias of our geometric 
gardens must of necessity be compact and small. Most 
of the points of excellence in florist’s flowers are merely 
arbitrary, but the neatness of form of all bedding plants 
is indispensable, and accordingly most of the flowers of 
old gardens have been modified in that direction. 
The only fault of the Fuchsia is the drooping of its 
flower, which, as in a lovely face hung down, or in the 
case of the pendent-flowered Gloxinia, partly conceals 
its beauty. But a flower that cannot be modified loses 
the main source of its attractiveness ; and breeders and 
selecters, rejoicing in their work, have already produced 
erect-flowered Gloxinias as 
well as a Fuchsia erecta 
superba ! Not flowers only, 
but fruits and vegetables, 
and even the plants of the 
farm, have yielded to the 
same persuasive skill of their 
cultivators, which seems to 
have been exerted in some 
degree, at least in the case of 
food plants, from the earliest 
ages. 
A wonderful story has 
been told by Mr. Darwin of 
the “struggle for existence ” 
among plants. We shall 
not venture to repeat any 
portion of it, but I may 
remind the reader that the 
power of variation which 
has modified wild plants to 
their profit, endowing them 
with organs advantageous to 
them in the battle of life, 
has enabled cultivators to 
produce such changes as were 
profitable, not to the plant 
but to himself. 
“In the Stone age,” says 
Mr. Darwin, “wild crabs 
sloes, bullaces, hips of Roses, 
and other wild berries and 
fruit, were largely collected 
for food.” So long- as the 
population could be main¬ 
tained on the produce of 
uncultivated land, and by 
fishing and hunting, the 
wild plants remained pro¬ 
bably unaltered. The next 
step was to attempt their 
improvement, and this was, 
perhajis, effected by the same 
method as in the wild parts 
of Africa, where Livingstone 
as well as Du Chaillu ob¬ 
served that the savage tribes 
sometimes enclosed Palms 
and other wild fruit trees in 
their gardens. 
By the improvement of the soil' the plant may be 
improved ; but its power of modification depends on 
the natural laws that no two individuals in the animal 
or vegetable kingdom exactly resemble each other. The 
diversity of life is due to those miuute differences be¬ 
tween individuals, in the absence of -which a blank 
uniformity must have spread over the whole earth, 
and the infinite variety of nature could have had no 
existence. The Palms by the hovel having received a 
certain amount of attention and manure, their tendency 
to produce varieties would then be enhanced, and 
assuredly some wise old savage would soon possess him¬ 
self of the best of these and would sow their seed. The 
improvement of plants is a game in which all may win 
and none can lose, and we learn by research that the 
game has been played as far back as historic records 
extend. 
Cultivation inevitably occasions change. Strong 
evidence has come to light of a general improvement of 
cereals, inasmuch as the ears and grains of Wheat and 
Barley discovered in the lake dwellings of the Stone 
period in Switzerland proved inferior in size to their 
