May 28, 1892. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
611 
a red edge. All the petals are closely imbricated, 
and the outer ones revolute at their margins. The 
flowers are fragrant. 
Rose Spenser. —This is also a hybrid perpetual 
and has very large, pale pink flowers of a darker 
tint in the centre. The outer petals are revolute at 
the margin, while the inner ones are more erect and 
somewhat wavy at the edges. 
Rose Clio.— Only small plants of this hybrid 
perpetual were shown. The foliage is ample and of 
a rich green. The flowers are also of large size, 
pink, and almost white on the outer petals, which are 
revolute at the margins. All three were exhibited 
by Messrs. Wm. Paul & Son, and received l'lori- 
cultural Certificates. 
_ T ♦ r 
CALIFORNIAN FLOWERS. 
The flowers of California are the pride of her popu¬ 
lation and the marvel of travellers visiting her 
boundaries. Shortly after the first rains the valleys, 
mesas, and downs, are adrift with blooms, while 
every hill stands knee-deep in a sea of colour. Many 
of these flowers are wonderfully soft or brilliant in 
hue, and of strange form and perfume. The glorious 
carnival is kept up until the hot midsummer sun 
fades the gorgeous mosaic into sober shades of 
purple, gold, and brown. 
Before the era of the horticulturist, the great 
valleys of the State were magnificent flower fields of 
inconceivable luxuriance and diversity, surpassing 
every portrayal of brush or pen. In the sublime 
isolation of these uncultivated wilds, Nature ex¬ 
pressed an abandonment of colour, odour, andryhth- 
mic sound. Not a few of the more fragile species of 
flowers have almost, if not altogether, vanished from 
the soil. Only the searching eye of the botanist may 
possibly discover a forlorn specimen taking refuge in 
the outspread arms of a canon remote from the 
plain. 
However carelessly California guards her floral 
treasures, the flowers themselves bear no ill-will. 
At each recurring season they crowd every inch of 
mould the plough has left unturned. The slopes and 
laps of the hills hold multitudes of pretty nodding 
heads, to which one blithely nods in answer. Nay, 
even the sharp chins of bald boulders nourish a 
stubble glistening with the bloom of a kind of wild 
Dewplant, or grow a sweeping beard of mountain 
mimulus hung thick with golden trumpets. 
In the cooler temperature of bosky canons, stream- 
nurtured flowers linger far into the summer, long 
after their sisters in the valley have perished from 
drought and heat. A semi-tropic sun will nip in the 
bud just as effectually as Jack Frost performs this un¬ 
gracious act in colder climes. For this reason the 
rich green livery of a coast landscape retains its 
splendid ornaments of blossom and bud many fragrant 
days after the interior valleys have donned autumnal 
tints. 
The Native Wild Flowers. 
I f California’s public parks and home grounds dis¬ 
play few of her native plants, the same thing cannot 
be said against European gardens. For years past 
English and German gardeners have successfully 
grown some of the finest of our wild flowers. Of 
these the favourites are the Eschscholtzia, Calochor- 
tus, and that wonderful shrub Poppy, the Romneya 
Coulteri. An English writer says of the latter : " I 
have just seen this glorious flower in Kew Gardens. 
With us it is one of the rarest and choicest of border 
plants.” 
lhe Romneya is a hardy perennial, which thrives 
amidst the unflinching rocks of sun-heated canons 
from Santa Barbara far southward into Lower Cali¬ 
fornia. It attains a height of five to ten feet, its 
glaucous, deeply divided leaves making an effective 
showing against the neutral grey of granite walls. 
In May the full hirsute buds expand their snowy, 
crinkled petals disclosing large central tufts of yellow 
stamens. The flowers often measure six or eight 
inches across, and usually remain in bloom several 
days. 
This queen of the Poppy family is not easily 
managed in cultivation. The seeds take a year to 
germinate, and the young plants will not bear trans¬ 
planting. A San Francisco florist, who had made a 
speciality of introducing species from the California 
flora into Europe, finds the surest method of propa- 
gatin ’ the Romneya is from root cuttings. He has, 
however, more demand for the seed, which is 
gathered in the vicinity of San Diego, and brings ten 
dollars per pound at wholesale. 
The 11 California Poppy.” 
Of all the flower procession on the coast, the 
Eschscholtzia is by far the most widely known and 
admired. Its precedence was duly established by a 
recent act of the State Floral Society, which voted it 
the floral emblem of the State. No dissenting voic 
was raised but that of the botanist, whose habitual 
reliance on exact differentia made him mildly dis¬ 
putant : “The popular name of 1 California Poppy ' 
and the emblematic exultation given this flower, are 
both misleading to the public mind. The Esch¬ 
scholtzia is not a true Poppy, though it is classed 
with the Papaveraceae. The Romneya Coulteri and 
the Dendromecon Califo’rnica come nearer being 
Poppies than the Eschscholtzia, and are limited to 
the boundaries of this State and the upper portion of 
Lower California ; whereas the ' California Poppy 1 
extends into Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, 
and Washington.” 
Notwithstanding these technical objections, nearly 
every lover of the California flora unhesitatingly 
declares in favour of these flame-painted, satiny 
cups, which give a noonday glare to a landscape 
otherwise cool and reposeful. In June the orange 
Poppy plains are the glory of outdoor picturings, a 
joyful blaze of colour, which seems a condensation 
of all the veined gold in the earth underneath, and the 
focal point of all the sun rays overhead. 
Nowhere is this Poppy so large in size and 
sumptuous in colour as upon the Island of Santa 
Catalina. It is the opinion of Professor Edward L. 
Greene that the several distinctively California 
species of the Eschscholtzia and Dendromecon have 
been brought over from the Channel Islands to the 
mainland. In fact, these Islands, according to the 
same authority, furnish the botanist singular 
instances of the individuality of insular floras. 
Professor Greene says: “ That a small ridge of 
mountains rising out of the sea at only twenty-five 
miles distance from the mainland should present 
forty eight species of phanerogamic plants not to be 
found on the continent itself, is, to my understanding 
of the case, a fact entirely unique in phytogeography. 
Though several varieties of the Eschscholtzia are 
easily cultivated in the Eastern States and in Europe, 
the flowers obtained in these countries are of inferior 
size and hue. The deterioration is also evident in 
the seeds taken from these aliens, even when planted 
in native soil. This degeneracy is more to be 
regretted when one learns, upon investigation, that 
many California florists have a trick of sending to 
Europe for their stock of Eschscholtzia seed. After 
the introduction there of certain of our wild flowers, 
florists in this State, especially those doing business 
in San Francisco, generally depend upon foreign 
importation for home supplies of the seeds of these 
plants. Owing to the cheapness of labour in the old 
country, a pound of seed can be sold there for a 
dime, and is afterwards retailed in the United States 
for ten cents an ounce. Thousands of packages of 
Eschscholtzia seed which are gathered in Europe 
are annually sold on this coast. In extenuation of 
this circumstance, a metropolitan florist will plead 
his inability to get a living price for home-grown 
seeds, which are presumably no better than the 
cheaper foreign seed. 
In Germany and England, as is well known, seeds 
are picked and dried largely by women and children, 
who are content to receive a few pence for a day's 
labour ; or, which is yet a matter of greater profit to 
the florist, the 'prentice hand, who costs him nothing, 
is yearly set to work among the pods, pericarps, and 
thistle-downs, of the seed harvest. It is only by 
devoting himself to such specialties as cannot be 
produced elsewhere that a California seed grower 
experiences financial s recess. 
Marifosa Lilies. 
The wide-spread appreciation of the Calochortus, 
familiarly termed the Mariposa Lily, or Butterfly 
Tulip, is shown by the immense number of these 
bulbs exported from California every year. A Ukiah 
man has gained the soubriquet of the “ Calochortus 
Crank.” He digs a hundred thousand bulbs each 
successive season, which he sells at a low figure to 
city florists, who in turn supply the general market. 
There are eight to ten species of the Calochortus 
commonly recognised, though a San Diego dealer in 
native seeds and bulbs has twenty-four varieties set 
down in his catalogue. 
In Southern California, on vast projecting moun¬ 
tain fronts, difficult of ascent to the hardiest climber, 
there can be seen in later spring whole colonies of 
stately, straight-necked Lilies, lifting skyward their 
large, creamy chalices in the unspeakable solitude 
that exists upon all remote summits. These imperial 
flowers are the Calochortus Nuttallii.a noble variety 
of the genus, and true Parsees in their worship 
of the sun. 
But assuredly the loveliest of all this Lilaceous 
group is the Celestial Tulip, which is the delight of 
children going a-Maying in coast canons They call 
them hairy Bells, and so they look, with their tiny, 
tuneless clappers concealed within the pearl-white, 
globular flowers, pendulous from tall slender stems. 
Be the day ever so breathlesj, these ethereal, hair- 
fringed bells cease not to vibrate as if stirred by in¬ 
visible fingers. 
In addition to the superb flowers already men- 
ioned, there are various other native shrubs and 
plants of California whose commercial value is well 
established. A glance at the catalogue of European 
florists shows in the list ascribed to this State, the 
Scarlet Larkspur, elegant varieties of Dodecatheon, 
Brodiaea, Mimulus, Lobelia Cardinalis, Ceanothus, 
Phacelia, Azalia, Rhododendron, Clematis, Cercis, 
our pretty "cream cups,” and ” baby-blue-eyes, ” 
and a late acquision, the Lathyrus splendens, a vine, 
which heaps up vivid masses of deep rose and bright 
green in far desert precincts. Among the bulbs, one 
is pleased to note our beautiful Lilium Parryii, 
named after the distinguished Dr. C. C. Parry, on 
whom rests the honour of its introduction into 
Europe. This Lily grows abundantly back of the San 
Bernardino Mountains, w'here acres of swampy 
lands are lighted by its profusion of lemon-yellow, 
and the warm winds bear a surpassing fragrance 
from each bell. 
Native Shrubs. 
Among the native shrubs that ought to receive 
universal attention with nurserymen is the Lyon, 
othamnus asplenifolius Dr Asa Grey called this 
genus after its discoverer, William S. Lyon, of Los 
Angeles. It is found upon Santa Catalina, Santa 
Cruz, and Santa Rosa Islands. It is very desirable 
for ornamental planting on account of its showy 
flowers and fern-like foliage. 
In the past few years there has been an astonishing 
diversity of ornamental cacti collected by a scientific 
gentleman of San Diego. A majority of these 
" vegetable devil fish,” as some one aptly terms thi 3 
curious family, have found eastern and foreign 
markets, and yet others have gone to make up such 
noteworthy attractions in the State as the “ Arizona 
Gardens,” at Monterey, and in the Golden Gate Park 
of San Francisco, and the gorgeous parade of Cactus 
blossoms at Coronado. Take it all in all, California 
appears to have given the horticulturist a greater 
variety of plants than any other State in the Union, 
Florida excepted. 
Through the agency of botanists and enterprising 
nurserymen on the Pacific Coast, there is, in the last 
ten years, a gratifying increase in the list of native 
plants offered to purchasers, but much of her flora is 
yet imperfectly classified, and there still remains a 
vast field for both the scientific and the commercial 
collector of floral beauties. 
The F'irst Florist in San Francisco 
In 1852, the first florist's establishment was opened 
in San Francisco, and soon did a flourishing business. 
Common varieties of Roses were auctioneered off at 
twenty and twenty-five cents each. Camellias with¬ 
out stems brought all the way from one to two 
dollars, and Cape Jasmine sold at wholesale for three 
dollars a dozen. In those days, wax imitations of 
Camellias cost the florist five dollars per dozen 
Now, the plenitude of the genuine blooms has 
entirely done away with what was once a paying 
industry to a few tireless women The pioneer 
nurserymen in California found that the conditions 
of climate and soil necessitated the reconstruction of 
many of his previous methods of gardening Past 
experience and florists' books were of little help ‘in 
his new environments. The plants he had been 
accustomed to relegate to the hothouse, bloomed 
freely in the open air, and he was forced to fill his 
conservatories with unfamiliar exotics brought here 
at great expense and labour. Nevertheless, those 
were halcyon days for the San Francisco florist, and 
if he has continued in the business up to the present 
time, he is sure to be at odds with his destiny, the 
close competition of the Chinese, Japanese and Ita¬ 
lians having changed the face of all this . — From the 
Overland Monthly. 
