42 
House & Garden 
THE forebears of some garden flowers 
JJ ild J arieties from Which Certain of Our Prominent Cultivated Sorts 
Have Been Developed —7 he Irises and Columbines 
R. W. SHUFELDT 
A comparison of this German iris 
with the slender iris at the left 
suggests the great differences and 
resemblances which sometimes 
exist between wild and cultivated 
flower forms 
originally came over from Japan. 
However much we may come to 
cross and interfertilize them, some 
plants are so distinctive wdth re¬ 
spect to their florescence that there 
is no mistaking their species un¬ 
der any circumstances. This is 
true of such a genus of plants as 
we find in Dicentra —a small 
group created to contain the typi¬ 
cal Dutchman’s Breeches and its 
two near relatives, the Squirrel 
Corn ( D. canadensis) and the rare 
Dicentra eximia. 
Early in the spring I have 
found the true Dutchman’s 
Breeches (D. cucullaria) growing 
in masses and most luxuriantly 
along the northern banks of the 
Potomac River, a few miles west 
of Washington. It springs from 
curious little seed-like tubers, 
which sometimes may be seen 
above-ground, so superficial is 
their lodgment in it. Dicentra’s 
pure white flowers are tipped with 
a delicate shade of cream-color— 
and altogether the plant is a very 
interesting one. I know of no 
species that has been derived from 
this for our gardens, in which the 
elegant Dicentra spectabilis from 
northern China, generally known 
as Bleeding Heart, is so fre¬ 
quently seen, its flowers being of 
a deep pink. A dozen or more 
( Center ) Iris prismatica is found 
from Nova Scotia to Georgia. 
It is a plant of the coastal 
marshes, an untamed member of 
the iris tribe that is especially 
effective in masses 
O NE of the most interesting 
fields of research in the sci¬ 
ence of horticulture has for 
its object the tracing of the origin 
of our cultivated flowers. With 
respect to some varieties, the deri¬ 
vation is traced without much dif¬ 
ficulty, while in others, for va¬ 
rious reasons, it is not so easy a 
matter. For example, in the case 
of some flowers, the original wild 
species have their habitats in va¬ 
rious parts of the world—in very 
remote parts with respect to not a 
few varieties. 
A wild species may have been a 
very modest little flower in the 
flora of Japan, whence living 
specimens of it, or seeds, were 
taken.to France; here cultivators 
of the garden flowers have experi¬ 
mented with it until some very re¬ 
markable form has resulted. Next, 
examples of this may come across 
the Atlantic to America, and in a 
few years begin to appear in our 
gardens. As time goes on, the 
differences of soil, climate and 
other factors commence to have 
their effects, and in due course the 
species changes entirely again in 
form, color, size and leafage; so 
that, unless some very exact rec¬ 
ord has been kept, it would not be 
an easy matter to trace the plant 
back to the stock wild flower that 
(Right) The resemblance be¬ 
tween the Dutchman’s Breeches 
of our early spring woods and 
that cultivated member of the 
same family, the Bleeding Heart, 
is clearly apparent 
Bleeding Heart comes originally 
from northern China. Over a 
dozen species of the dicentra fam¬ 
ily are known, all of them be¬ 
longing to< the flora of Asia and 
North America 
