126 
The Garden Magazine, April, 1923 
Yellows. — Lucie (Gravereau) is a soft canary yellow which yields 
its blooms in 69 days. Vaughan’s Owosso is a flower of fine substance, 
though its translucent color, a pale sulphur yellow with flesh tints on 
the outside, naturally leads one to believe otherwise; only 68 days are 
required to bring this pretty thing to perfection. Mrs. Mary Stearns 
Burk (Diener) yields pretty canary yellow blooms in 76 days. These 
are tinted with apricot and with a little crimson coloring in the throat. 
Primulinus Hybrids. —From 58 to 69 days is required by Linton 
(Kunderd) for flowers to open. It is a blend of salmon orange and 
salmon yellow with good sized open flowers. Another from Kunderd, 
Rodano by name, produces bloom in 72 days, in color a soft canary 
yellow. Still another from the same source, different from any other, 
is Seneca, with flowers of a creamy translucent pink blended with 
lavender-rose; 72 days. Vaughan has sent out a fine Primulinus in 
Sunbeam, a soft, clear, nearly pure canary yellow, which, though not 
large, is extremely prolific in bloom which appears in from 58 
to 66 days. Kunderd’s Tupelo is a deep sulphur yellow; 76 days. 
Concolor from Lemoine, a clear lemon yellow flowers in from 67 to 
71 days. 
“LITTLE LADIES OF THE OLD SCHOOL” 
ALICE RATHBONE 
In Praise of Primulinus Hybrids, the Daintiest of Gladiolus Newly Come to Grace Our Gardens 
JHESSHE very special pleasure of growing something new each 
year was mine, in high degree, when the choice fell 
Ifc upon the comparatively new Primulinus Hybrid Gladi- 
ir|r (p** olus; the result of this happy experience being a lasting 
appreciation of its charm, particularly as a flower for cutting. 
For, smaller and less stiff in habit than the Gladiolus of the 
type with which we are more familiar, these Primulinus Hybrids 
are admirably adapted for use in flower-holders; and while the 
intrinsic beauty of the flowers brings content even when there is 
but a plain everyday glass vase to offer them, rare Venetian 
glass or vases of old silver would really 
be none too fine for their loveliness. 
During the evolution of these Hybrids, 
grace of stem has appeared; the curve 
of beauty being now and then almost 
fantastically in evidence. But though 
slender, the stalks are strong enough 
to well uphold the deeply hooded, 
orchid-like flowers of high-bred ele¬ 
gance with petals sometimes daintily 
ruffled around the edges. 
And as to color—in the few varieties 
I have seen—it has been quite unusual 
in its range of exquisite apricot tints, 
and softly luminious reddish pinks; so 
beautiful, in fact, that perhaps it were 
as well to stop short with touching 
thus briefly upon its wonder and let 
all of the many waiting superlatives 
go. But in praising Primulinus Hy¬ 
brids, besides their beauty of color 
and form, there is a charming sugges¬ 
tion of reserve and modesty about 
them—something delicately aristo¬ 
cratic, that brings the term ladylike 
to mind, as a summing up of their fine 
qualities. And one of the plant’s habits 
falls in well with this characterization; 
for, like those erect ladies of the old 
school, who scorned to touch the back 
of a chair, these little ladies of the 
Gladiolus family are, for the most 
part, quite independent of garden- 
stake support. It is, perhaps, this 
distinctly ladylike appearance of the 
Primulinus Hybrids, that places them 
best apart from the main garden 
space where important displays are 
looked for; their effect, when massed—as they grow in my 
garden at any rate—being rather overthin to make a striking 
feature. 
Therefore, while their delicate charm is well suited to enhance 
the beauty of some retired garden nook, they must yield to the 
superior showiness of their stronger relatives for bold and bril¬ 
liant groupings. So great, however, seems its value for house 
decoration, and so satisfying the pleasure of filling the flower- 
holders with this graceful Gladiolus, that wildly extravagant 
desires for it in quite immense quantities sometimes seize one. 
In such moments of enthusiasm one 
feels that given an acre or so of land 
—and entire lack of conscientious 
scruples against putting it all to 
flowers—one would like to use the 
generous plot solely for growing these 
very desirable hybrids for the abun¬ 
dance of cut flowers such space would 
yield. 
There might then be enough, not 
only for one’s own house and the 
neighbors, but also for the community 
house; the churches; the public li¬ 
brary and school rooms—all the sea¬ 
son through, thus making them, as far 
as possible, everybody’s flowers. 
Touching upon the work of hy¬ 
bridists with the Gladiolus, the editor 
of the Gardeners’ Chronicle has this to 
say of “the loveliest of all”: “Gla¬ 
diolus primulinus first flowered in cul¬ 
tivation at Kew nearly thirty years 
ago . . and the impression it 
left on my memory was that of a very 
beautiful but rather fragile looking 
flower. Its home is in Tropical Africa, 
where it is described as growing in one 
of the wettest spots near the Victoria 
Falls in a perpetual deluge; from 
which, presumably, it gets the name 
Maid-of-the-Mist. To those men who 
saw its possibilities as a parent and 
have given us such choice and pleas¬ 
ing varieties we should be duly grate¬ 
ful.” These patient hybridists have in¬ 
deed sent forth, through this bewitch¬ 
ing new type of Gladiolus, a message 
of beauty to our gardens and homes! 
The long slenderness of these Gladiolus 
(Primulinus Hybrids) makes them par¬ 
ticularly effective for indoor decoration 
