FASHION IN CARNATIONS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 218, 14 September 1908, Page 3

FASHION IN CARNATIONS.

-;■• ———-—-—■«>—: — • '• ■ PLANT SOLD IN LONDON FOR

£100,

"In all my experience I have known nothing like the vogue of the carnation in society," said a large grower to a London Daily Mail representative last month. "The better shops clamor for exclusive use for any color novelty, and we have sold a single plant for £100. , "The carnation has half-killed both the geranium, and the chrysanthemum, and it is the perpetual tree-carnation of the self-color that has done it." There was abundant illustration of his verdict at the admirable' show of the National Society at the Horticultural Hall, London.

One quite new color, well described as a silver mauve, has been produced by Charles Law, and in the exhibit of James Douglas were a number of novelties — Lawson-Enchantress perhaps, the best—of great value. Elsewhere a perpetual tree-carnation, the Wiiisor, was shown, which h&s flower-, ed without intermission for 12 months, and each plant bears on an average three and a half dozen blooms in the year. There was another of which the stock is valued at £600.

The "dressed" carnation is happily going out of fashion a little, but a certain number of exhibitors wore busy with camels-hair brushes and bone tongs flattening and pulling out petals till th*i flower-head exhibited the orthodox pattern in which all the petals are horizontal. The Society has made an effort to restore to popularity the Bizarres and Flakes—in which the petals must be streaked with two colors and one color respectively—and the picotees with a thin fringe of color, and some very dainty specimens were shown; but it is the self-color that society demands, and the self-colors were the mark of the show.

Few Malmaisons, whose season is nearly over, were shown; but it is the Malmaison, said one of the bigger sellers of the flower in the West End, that is the great London flower.. "It comes into London with society, and is over as soon as- society leaves. Quantities of blooms are sold at 2s 6d apiece when they first come in, and every other purchaser always sticks to the same color."

{ One unexpected, wonder of the carnation show was not a carnation at ' all, but a new hardy bush, Conaria Jai>onica- —given a special award. It has been imported from Japan, reaches about 2ft. in height, and growing from the centre stem in a continuous mass from top to bottom and bunches of berries, changing as they ripen from salmon pink to a velvety black. It is quite hardy, and was shown by M. Pritchard.