The Clematis as a Garden Flower

Abstract

A NOTICE of a book of this kind may at first sight seem out of place in a scientific periodical. Those stray threads, however, of biological investigation which have at various times attracted curiosity rather than study, and have, at any rate, been for the first time methodised in Darwin's “Animals and Plants under Domestication,” will depend upon works of this kind for their further development. It is hardly generally understood that the production of what are called in popular language, “Florists' flowers” rests on two perfectly different principles and methods of procedure. The one is obvious enough; it may be called an accelerated natural selection, consisting as it does of merely growing on a very large scale the plant which it is desired to improve, and taen selecting repeatedly from the sports which are sure to occur those which conform most nearly to some preconceived standard. But the other and far less thoroughly understood method consists in destroying the fixity of ancestral type by persistent and involved hybridising. At first the hybrids are, as might be expected, intermediate between their parents; after a time, however, the seedlings from crosses exhibit variations of habit and characters which could not possibly be expected, and which, consequently, make the business of raising new horticultural varieties almost as speculative as a lottery. Florists' flowers are, consequently, the expression of the action of laws of which we at present know next to nothing, but the investigation of which is of the highest interest. The only possible way of pursuing it is obviously the careful comparison of a hybrid offspring with its various progenitors, somewhere amongst which the latent characters must lurk concealed which reveal themselves often so unexpectedly. A book of this kind is naturally, therefore, turned to in the expectation of its supplying facts of the kind required. A difficulty, however, diminishes, as in other cases, its value in this respect. Horticulturists, as a body, are far from unsympathetic towards scientific inquiry; but business operations cannot always be carried on in a scientific spirit. When crosses are made for the purpose of producing new forms, it is generally done on a large scale, and quite promiscuously, merely avoiding what practical tact points out as undesirable strains. No record is kept, and the seeds are often sown in a single batch; consequently, if a striking variety makes its appearance, it is often all but impossible, as for trade purposes it is not necessary, to assign to it its proper ancestry. Take, for example, a garden Clematis, named after its producer, C. Jackmanni (botanically, by the way, a hardly legitimate appellation). All that can be certainly said of it is that, amongst others, C. Viticella and C. lanuginosa hold a prominent place in its ancestry. The first is a European species producing an abundance of moderate-sized, rather dark-coloured flowers. The latter is a native of Japan, producing large pale-coloured flowers rather sparingly; it is the parent, more or less remote, of most of the garden hybrids raised within the past ten years. It is from these sources, therefore, with probability, that C. Jackmanni derives its good qualities. In another hybrid, where, it having been raised by an amateur horticulturist, the history is known, the relation of the qualities of parents and offspring is all but inexplicable. Mr. Anderson Henry crossed C. lanuginosa already alluded to, which bears pale lilac flowers as much as eight inches across, with C. Fortunei, also of Japanese origin, with white flowers rather smaller and of a different character. He obtained, amongst other forms, C. Law-soniaua, which possesses flowers as much as nine and a half inches across, and of a rosy purple; yet it could not possibly owe either its size or colour to its immediate parents. That questions of this kind should be dealt with in what is after all a purely horticultural work, is a striking proof of how little reason there really is to despair about the general interest excited by scientific work. The whole of horticulture is, in a sense, a vast field of biological research with results all ready to hand. It is due entirely to Mr. Darwin that the attempt has been made to gather them in. Perhaps the authors will hardly care, at least at present, to have their book stigmatised as too scientific. It contains all that can be desiderated of the pure gardening of its subject, and is capitally illustrated with plain and coloured illustrations. The Clematis as a Garden Flower. By Thomas Moore George Jackman (London: Murray.)