AN ODOURLESS MARIGOLD

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 291, 9 December 1936, Page 16

AN ODOURLESS MARIGOLD

When the spicy-leaved marigold loses its scent—that’s news. Several hundred garden enthusiasts in London are planning to raise a new. flower next year, since listening to a talk by the seed specialist, Mr. David Burpee, at the Gardens of the Nations, Rockefeller Centre, where he introduced the “collarette” marigold, named “Crown of Gold.”

This marigold has entirely odourless foliage. The blossom, however, has u sweet fragrance and grows in chrysan-themum-like profusion, with long incurved petals at the top and, around that, a series of broad petals which form a collar of gold. It took five years of world-wide research and 642 experimental plantings of marigolds and a Chinese missionary to produce the odourless variety, Mr Burpee related. He told how his systematic efforts to discover this type of flower finally brought a* letter from Mr C. D. Holton in Kansu, China, who informed Mr Burpee that he had found a native marigold which the Chinese called “the big golden aster, or Tibetan marigold.” It was wild, its foliage was odourless. Would Mr Burpee pay £5 for some seeds?

“Well, would I pay £5 for a few seeds of odourless marigold?” Mr Bur-

pee continued, “I sent on an interna* tional money order for this amount very quickly.” Further experiments with the seeds, including hundreds of crosses, out-dodrs and iu greenhouses, with African and French varieties, were made. These led to a pure specimen now within reacn. of all garden growers, Mr Burpee said. Winter production of this flower is being carried on at the Burpee Farms in California, where more than 500 pounds of seed have been produced. “Then, the new odourless variety is a cross between tho wild Chinese and some other marigold?” he was asked. “Not a cross—a mutation,” he re< plied. A “mutation,” it was added, is what occurs when tho “chromosomes shift.” To be less technical, it seems that mu* cations are the really new, or fundamental, changes occurring in plants, the changes in characteristics transmitting from a parent to an offspring.” As samples of marigold foliage, both old-fashioned and modern were passed among the visitors, tho inevitable reaction to tho introduction of the new was heard. “What? An odourless marigold? But I liked that snappy, pungent fragrance of the old,” one visitor said. . r