A Talk About Pelargoniums.
"And so I hold the smallest flower
Some gracious thought may be;
Some message of the Father's love
Mayhap to you or me."
Here we step on disputed ground. Are Geraniums Pelargoniums? Who shall
decide when florists disagree? There are eminent names on both sides of
the question. Mr. Henry Cannell of Swanley, England, a florist who
stands in the front rank, and whose name has become so widely known in
connection with _New Life_ Geranium, of which he was the originator,
jumbles up together under the head of Pelargoniums everything we on this
side of the water class under the head of Geraniums. A veritable muddle
he makes of the matter--that is our private opinion--we whisper it to
you confidentially. Here is our yellow Zonal _Guinea_; our best scarlet
bedder, _Gen. Grant_, and _Wellington_, and _Mrs. Pollock_, and _Happy
Thought_, all called Pelargoniums, and yet are quite unlike in leaf and
flower what we Americans denominate a Pelargonium; and, to avoid
confusion, it is certainly advisable for us to adhere to our established
distinctiveness. We quote from the _Gardener's Chronicle_ of January 3d,
1880, a sensible talk on this subject, to which Mr. Cannell takes
exceptions: "Pelargoniums and Geraniums--I think it would be as well to
settle by authority the exact names of those flowers that seem to be
indiscriminately called Pelargoniums and Geraniums. Botany has been
described as the 'science of giving polysyllabic barbarian Greek names
to foreign weeds;' but while some plants, Abies Mariesii for instance,
are most carefully described, others, as Geraniums, seem to be called by
names that do not belong to them, but to quite a different flower. I
notice, both in your letter-press and advertisement, mention made of
Zonal Pelargoniums; now I should certainly decline to receive Geraniums
if I ordered Pelargoniums. I am old enough to remember that we had a
parti-colored green-house flower of a violet shape that was called a
Geranium, then came a lot of hardy-bedding-out stuff with a truss of red
flowers, all of one color, followed by _Tom Thumbs_ and _Horseshoes_
which grow nicely out of door. Then we were told that we must no longer
call those green-house plants _Geraniums_, that their right and proper
name was Pelargoniums, and that those bedding-out plants were, strictly
speaking, Geraniums. Now, however, the old name Geranium seems to be
dropped for both, and the new name Pelargonium given to both, surely
erroneously! Let us, however, have it fairly settled which is which, so
that we may clearly and distinctly know what we are talking about, and
not make mistakes either in writing or talking, in sending to shows, or
in ordering plants."--_James Richard Haig, Blair Hill, Sterling._
We will now give a part of a lecture delivered last spring before a
Pelargonium Society in London, by Shirley Hibberd, a delightful writer
on Horticulture, says Mr. Vick, from whose magazine we quote the
following:
"A Pelargonium is not a Geranium, although often so called. The true
Geraniums are for the most part herbaceous plants inhabiting the
northern hemisphere, and the Pelargoniums are for the most part shrubby
or sub-shrubby plants of the southern hemisphere. Let us for a moment
wander among the pleasant slopes of Darley dale in Derbyshire, or by the
banks of the Clyde or the Calder. We shall in either case be rewarded by
seeing vast sheets of the lovely meadow Crane's Bill, Geranium pratense,
a true Geranium, and one of the sweetest flowers in the world. In the
rocky recesses of Ashwood Dale, or on the banks of the 'bonny Doon,' we
may chance to see in high summer a profusion of the Herb Robert,
Geranium Robertianum, with pink flowers and purple leaves, a piece of
true vegetable jewelry. And, once more, I invite you to an imaginary
journey, and we will ride by rail from Furness to Whitehaven, in order
to behold on the railway bank, more especially near St. Bees, a
wonderful display of the crimson Crane's Bill, Geranium sanguineum,
which from July to September, forms solid sheets, often of a furlong in
length, of the most resplendent color. No garden coloring can even so
much as suggest the power of this plant as it appears at a few places on
the Cumberland coast; even the sheets of scarlet poppies we see on badly
cultivated corn lands are as nothing compared with these masses of one
of the most common and hardiest of our wild flowers.
"Now let us fly to the other side of the globe and alight in the
vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope, say on the vast desert of Karroo,
where there is much sand, much sunshine, and little rain. Here, in the
midst of desolation, the world is rich with flowers, for the healthy
shrub that occurs in patches, glowing with many bright hues, consists in
part of wild Pelargoniums, which often take the form of miniature
deciduous trees, although in the valleys, nearer the coast, where more
rain falls, they are evergreen bushes.
"Very different in their character are these two tribes of plants, and
they are not less different in their constitution and aspects. We may
regard the Geraniums as herbs of Europe, and the Pelargoniums as
miniature trees of Africa. When we examine the flowers, we find the fine
petals of a true Geranium of precisely the same shape and size; but the
fine petals of a Pelargonium are not so, for sometimes the topmost are
the largest, and stand apart from the rest with great dignity, like
mother and father looking down on their dutiful daughters, and in other
cases they are the smallest, suggesting that the daughters have grown
too fast and become unmanageable. The florists are doing their utmost to
obliterate the irregularity of the petals of the Pelargonium, and in
this respect to convert Pelargoniums into Geraniums, but the conversion
will not be complete until much more wonderful things are accomplished.
A Geranium has ten stamens, and a Pelargonium has only seven (perfect
ones). These numbers are not constant, but the exceptions are of no
consequence in a general statement of the case.
"When all is said that can be said about the differences and
resemblances of the several genera of Geraniaceæ, there remains only one
constant and unfailing test of a true Pelargonium, and that is the
nectariferous tube immediately below the flower, and running down one
side of the flower-stalk. If you hold the pedicel up to the light, it
may be discerned as giving an indication of a double flower-stalk, but
when dissected with a pin or the point of a knife, it is found to
proceed from the base of the largest of the green sepals, and it often
appears to form a sort of digit or point in the line of the pedicel.
When you have mastered this part of the story, you may cherish the idea
that you know something about Pelargoniums.
"The large flowered show varieties and the large-flowered single Zonals
take the lead, and they are pleasantly followed by a crowd of
ivy-leaved, double-flowered and variegated sorts that are useful and
beautiful. The Pelargonium Society has set up a severe standard of
judging, and a variety must be distinct and good to pass through the
sieve. Moreover the raising of varieties has been to a great extent
reduced to scientific principles, and we obtain as a result new
characters suggestive of the great extent of the field that still lies
open to the adventurous spirit in cross-breeding. No one in recent years
has contributed more directly toward the scientific treatment of the
subject than our own painstaking Treasurer, Dr. DENNY, of whose labors I
propose to present a hasty sketch.
"Dr. DENNY commenced the raising of Pelargoniums in the year 1866,
having in view to ascertain the influence of parentage, and thus to
establish a rule for the selection of varieties for seed-bearing
purposes. In raising varieties with variegated leaves, as also with
distinct and handsome flowers, he found the pollen parent exercised the
greatest influence on the offspring. The foundation of his strain of
circular-flowered Zonals was obtained by fertilizing the large starry
flowers of Leonidas with pollen taken from the finely formed flowers of
Lord Derby. From 1871 to the present time Dr. DENNY has sent out sixty
varieties, and he has in the same period raised and flowered, and
destroyed about 30,000. These figures show that when the selection is
severe, and nothing is allowed to pass that is not of the highest
quality, there must be 500 seedlings grown for the chance of obtaining
one worth naming."
We have devoted a good deal of space to this citation because of its
interest and value on the question at issue. Mr. Hibberd has, we think,
made the matter very clear, and conclusive it must be to the most of
minds. Pelargoniums are divided into classes, though we rarely see any
classifications of them in the catalogues.