The
formation of a florist's flower affords so much direct information on the
biology of vegetable reproduction that any searching study of the subject is
likely to be well rewarded. The late Mr. Charles Darwin necessarily gave the
subject some attention, but, being far removed in his pursuits and tastes from
floriculture, he depended much more upon replies obtained to questions he
proposed to a few distinguished florists than to any observations of his own.
Even by this slender second-hand system he acquired a vast amount of knowledge,
which he employed to good purpose in those masterly generalizations that render his books of present value and
immortal fame. If he had applied his penetrating genius to the subject before
us, many points that are now obscure would doubtless have been made plain, and
the little that I can attempt would have been rendered superfluous. And it is but little, for I make no pretence
here to penetrate below the surface of any part of the interesting subject proposed to me.
The
exigencies of daily life leave me no margin for a serious enquiry into the full
meaning of the changes effected in any flower by the work of the florist;
but in a discourse of half an hour, with the help of a few drawings and with
examples of living flowers, I may at least be enabled to entertain my friends
with a slight attempt at a scientific treatment of the subject.
Wherein
consists the difference between the Dahlia as it is found growing wild in its
native land, and the Dahlia that embodies in it both the governing idea and the
results of the patient work of the florist ? An appropriate reply would be that
in the hands of the florist it has changed from an open star to a closely
packed rosette, while in size it has been enlarged and in colour greatly
diversified. A more comprehensive reply would consist in saying that the
florist began with a single flower and endeavoured to obtain a double flower.
In that he has succeeded, and the task now before him is to advance the double
flower to a certain ideal standard of form and proportion, and when he has
attained to a realisation of his ideal his work as a florist will have been completed.
In
considering the bearings of the primary question, the: subject naturally divides,
on the historical side in one direction and the biological in another. We must
begin somewhere and history only can teach us where and how. I therefore
invite your attention first to a hasty
review of the facts, as in various ways recorded, of the introduction and,
progress of the Dahlia as a garden flower in Europe, to the point where the
florists appear to have influenced it in view of their model of what it should
be to gratify their tastes and compensate them for its cultivation. A fuller history
than I shall now attempt formed the subject of a discourse at the opening of
the Dahlia Conference of the National Dahlia Society, and may be found in the
Gardener's Magazine of September 7th 1889. To that I refer the curious in the
matter of historical facts, while for present purposes I shall hope to leave
nothing unsaid that in an w bon the question that is immediately before me.
The
first description of the Dahlia occurs
in Franciso Hernandez treatise on 'The
Plants and Animals of New Spain,' Published
at Madrid in the year 1615. The several
editions of this important work are described in the infallible
Thesaurus of Pritzel. For 130 years we
hear no more of the Dahlia, when it turns up again in 1787 in connection with
an interesting event. Nicholas Joseph
Thierry de Menonville was sent to America by the French Government of Louis
XVI. to obtain the cochineal insect and the plant it subsisted on. His instructions were that he was to secure
it and the ethics of the case appear to have been of the ancient diplomatic
order.
The expedition was successful; the cochineal
was secured, Of the case appear to and in 1787 Menonville published an account
of it, adding many particulars of other things he had seen or heard of. Amongst
events of interest, he had seen, in a garden at Guaxaca, flowers that he
described as large as Asters, on stems as tall as a man, with leaves like those
of the Elder-tree. Clearly he had seen single Dahlias in Mexico, and the
florists of that place and time were content to grow single flowers, and
possibly doted on them.
It
may be said that the combined labours of Hernandez, Menonville, and others had
created amongst the botanists of Europe a craving for this great Mexican Aster;
and, if the cochineal could be secured, so might the less profitable-but no
less interesting-Aster-like flower. Spain, as by right, obtained the first
gratification of the new desire, for in 1789 a parcel of seeds of the coveted
plant was sent to Madrid by Vincentes
Cervantes, Director of the Botanical Gardens of Mexico, to be grown by
the Abbe Cavanilles, Director of the Botanical Garden at Madrid.
Then
it was that England secured a share of the prize, and the name of Lady Bute was
immortalised in connection with the introduction of the beautiful novelty to
English gardens. It is fortunate we have nothing to do with politics in this
history, for although they might come in, and a mixture of French Revolution,
Pitt, Burke, Bute, and even the Bastille might follow, we can avoid them all by
remembering that Lady Bute, to whom we are in this matter peculiarly indebted,
was an enthusiastic gardener, and obtained seeds of the new plant from Lord
Bute, who was then diplomatically employed at Madrid ; and thus the first
cultivator of the Dahlia in England as a lady, who, so far as I know, is as yet
uncommemorated, except in some poor way
as the mention of this circumstance. Lady Bute followed the horticultural rule
of her day, which was that all foreign plants required to be suffocated in a
closed plant house and accordingly, the Dahlia was lost to cultivation within
two years of its introduction. Kew
obtained it about the same time, and lost it in the same way. Being a foreigner
it was suffocated.
But the plant had traveled to Paris, for in the year 1802 the Abbe Cavanilles communicated seeds from Madrid to the, Jardin des Plantes at Paris, and to M. de Candolle at Montpellier, and thus the flower was somewhat diffused in Europe. From Paris seeds of Dahlia coccinea were obtained in 1802 by John Fraser, nurseryman, of Sloane Square, who flowered them in a greenhouse in 1804; and from those flowers the first figure published in England was prepared, this being No. 762 of venerable Botanical Magazine.
In 1791 was published at Madrid the “Icones et Descriptiones Plantarum” of the Abbe Cavanilles, and in it were figures and descriptions of Dahlias, for Cavanilles is the author of the genus which he dedicated to the memory of Andre' Dahl, a Swedish botanist and author of a work on the Linnaean system published in 1784. Humboldt has the credit of introducing the Dahlia from Mexico in 1789, but this is a falsification of facts because Humboldt did not set foot on the American continent until February 1800, soon after which he did see Dahlias in gardens in Mexico, and was greatly rejoiced thereat.
The
chronology sets before us two species of Mexican Acoctli figured by Hernandez
in 1615, and respectively named. By Cavanilles, in 1791, Dahlia pinnata and Dahlia coccinea. The first of these became
the Dahlia of the garden; it is now known by the appropriate name of D. variabilis, for it is beyond doubt one
of the most variable flowers in cultivation. In the production of the garden
flower, then, we begin with the achievement of Cavanilles, who kept his flowers
while other cultivators lost them, and in the year 1791 had the good fortune to
publish a figure of the first double flower of which we have certain record, he
having obtained this as the result of his successful cultivation. The now
universally recognised generic name Dahlia was for a time put aside, owing to a
misapprehension, by Professor Willdenow of Berlin, and the name Georgina was substituted in commemoration
of Professor Georgi of St. Petersburg.
So
late as the year 1832, 1 find this name in use in London's Gardener's Magazine,
which was that all foreign plants required to be suffocated in a close
plant-house; and, accordingly, the Dahlia was lost to cultivation in this
country within two years of its introduction. Kew obtained it about the same
time, and lost it in the same but after that date I find no record of it except
as a matter of history. For, indeed, the year 1832 was a year of reform, and
the original name Dahlia was finally established through the action of Mr. H.
Reynard, President of the Beverley Horticultural Society, who justified it on
the ground of priority, and since then it has not been disturbed.
The
flower having advanced in Madrid to the important stage of doubling, had made
no such progress elsewhere. In London, Paris, Brussels, and Berlin it was
valued for its beauty, :and the cultivators were of one mind in striving after
double flowers, but entirely without success until 1813, when M. Donkelaar, of
the Botanic Garden, Louvain (in whose honour a .celebrated Camellia has been
named), secured a near approach to the coveted prize, and a year or two
afterwards obtained flowers perfectly double and with the promise in them of
what we under-stand by the term " floral quality." The year 1814 was
one of .great events, and, as I may not touch politics, I will proclaim it a
great year in the garden, for it saw the realisation of the hopes .of the early
florists in respect to this flower, for in that year Donkelaar had many double
blossoms, and to him belongs the honor of laying the foundations of this branch
of the noble art of Floriculture. Of him we may speak as being the Father of
the Dahlia as a florist's flower, and in that capacity he is entitled to the
reverence of all true florists. Camellia
Donkelaari is therefore a kind of monumental flower.
Dahlia Paragon from Jardin des Plantes
The
incoming of the Dahlia coincides with the first French Revolution, and the
establishment of double flowers with the prelude to the battle of Waterloo. In
all the plant-growing centres of Europe it was now attracting attention, and
the British amateurs who followed the allied armies to Paris found there a
considerable variety which wore valued chiefly for their distinctive colours.
Through M. Lelieur, a noted French amateur of Sevres, French varieties were
imported into England, and in due time furnished subjects for figures in the
Botanical Magazine, which afford us a clear idea of the garden Dahlias of that
date, and the taste that prevailed in selecting them. The celebrated figures
published by Dr. John Sims in 1817 represent the flower then known under the
Linnaean name Dahlia superflua,
the fertile-rayed Dahlia, which at that time had for synonyms Georgina superflua and Georgina variabilis.
The
modest double purple flower there represented would contrast strangely with one
of our huge show flowers of the present day, but it displays in elementary form
all the properties that have been sought, and in some part attained, in the
progressive development of the Florist's flower. The magnificent single scarlet
flower of Dahlia superflua
figured in the Botanical Register of 1815 (plate 55 of the first volume of that
work) affords a pleasing illustration of its variability, and may with
advantage be compared with the Botanical Magazine figures of the same thing by
those who hold to the opinion that our garden Dahlias represent several species
fused into, a new individuality by what is colloquially termed “
hybridisation.”
The
progress of the Dahlia as a florist's flower from 1820 to 1850-a run of thirty
years-was marked by advance in every desirable quality; and with each decided
gain in fullness, smoothness, symmetry, and refinement of petal there was a
corresponding advance in popularity, so that the prices of new varieties not
un-seldom ranged from twenty to thirty shillings for a plant. The first volume of the “Dahlia Register,” published in
1836, contains advertisements of Dahlias, the prices of which range from 3s.
6d. to 21s., the principal trade cultivators of that time being Brown, of
Slough; Harris, of Upway; Heale, of Calne; Saunders, of Jersey; Wheeler, of
Warminster; and Glenny, of Isleworth. A fair collection of that time would run
to 3,000 varieties; at all events Mr. Glenny reported that he had made a
selection from that number.