THE PERPETUAL-FLOWERING CARNATION.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 19, 9 November 1910, Page 40

THE PERPETUAL-FLOWERING CARNATION.

At a meeting of the Scottish Horticultural Society in Edinburgh in September, Mr J. S. Brunton, chairman of the Perpetual Flowering Carnation Society, read a paper on “The Perpetual Flowering Carnation: its Past, Present, and Future.” He first glanced at the historical aspect of the subject, beginning with the Kith century, when the wild Dianthus Caryophyllus first found a place in gardens. By the end of the same century, the plant had developed into a “border” Carnation, of which the presentd’ay border Carnations are the direct des-

cendants. The tree or winter-flowering type, which they called (Remontants, was introduced by the French, and was generally ascribed to Dahnais, who was prominently identified with their cultivation about 1844; but recent investigations have shown that Remontant Carnations were grown in the South of France nearly a century earlier under the name of Alayonnai.se Carnations. These Remontants were introduced into America by Chas. Marc, of New York, after 1852. and other French growers in America having taken up their improvements, varieties were raised which surpassed all previous ones. The French Remont-

ants were entirely superseded, and, on the introduction of Peter Fisher’s “Mrs T. W. Lawson,” it was sold for the record price of 300,000 dollars. Dealing with the present, Mr Brunton took the period from 1900 to 1910, and he asked what were the French, who in the early stages of the plant’s develop-

ment had scored all along the line, doing for the Carnation? In brilliancy of colouring their flowers surpassed all others, but they had one unpardonable defect—they were “bursters.” He, however, was inclined to think that possibly we were sacrificing too much to obtain perfection of calyx, and though he was not prepared to advocate any falling away from the standard set up by British and American growers, he thought we should get some French blood into our present stocks. Dealing with the uses of the perpetual-flowering Carnation as a cut flower, a pot plant, and a bedding plant, he said that as a bedder it had found a place in a number of gardens. The growing of the plant for market purposes was one of the most important branches of commercial horticulture, and there were large areas of glass devoted to this industry in the neighbourhood of London and at Tver. Saffron Walden. Cheltenham. Dunstable, Balcombe, and other towns. In Guernsey hundreds of thousands of plants were grown for the export of flowers for the British market. On the continent of Europe, as well as in South Africa and Australia, the cultivation of Carnations was rapidly increasing, and the American trade in them was enormous. Speaking of the future, Air Brunton said that one of the chief aims in the past had been to obtain large-sized blooms. That would always be an object for consideration, but hybridists would have to restore the Clove-like fragrance which had been sacrificed in the quest for size, form, and colour.—“Gardener’s Chronicle.”