Double flower

“ Such is their naturalness and air of vivacity that one never tires of them. You enjoy them to-day, and to-morrow they greet you with such a look of welcome, and hold up their pretty faces to you with such a winning grace that you linger longer than yesterday. You cannot tell which to admire the most, the modest bashfulness of that double white which peeps out to you from under the leaves, or the challenging boldness of that single pink, whose laughing eye meets your gaze so roguishly. Double or single, white, pink, magenta or carnation, they have each their beauty, both of flower and leaf. ”

“ There are several forms of this species having double flowers, which may be termed florists' or garden varieties; all are handsome and effective flowering plants, and last a long time in good form. A very short description will suffice for these, the flowers of which in many respects resemble pinks; they are, however, borne on stout stems in long heads, the petals being full, divided, and bent, each flower an inch across. The rose-coloured varieties are bright and attractive ”

“ In a water-lily, too, the petals gradually become stamens, so, perhaps, the leaf came first, ages and ages ago, and little by little it has changed, first to sepals, then petals, then to stamens and pistils, so that it could make seeds and scatter them to the wind. Gardeners make double flowers out of single ones by a process of turning stamens and even pistils into petals. The double flower is sometimes very beautiful, but it is not the most perfect flower. The wild rose is more perfect than the finest double American Beauty. ”

“ Symmetrical flowers having numerous stamens and petals are the most liable to become double, as perhaps follows from all multiple organs being the most subject to variability. But flowers furnished with only a few stamens, and others which are asymmetrical in structure, sometimes become double, as we see with the double gorse or Ulex, Petunia, and Antirrhinum. The Compositæ bear what are called double flowers by the abnormal development of the corolla of their central florets. Doubleness is sometimes connected with prolification, [414] or the continued growth of the axis of the flower. ”

“ These pollen threads are very ready to drop their yellow dust and broaden into petals. And they are just as ready to turn back again. If the seeds of the finest, double garden roses are planted, they sometimes forget all their long training, and go back to the single-petaled blossom and straggling canes of the wild rose. They have to be grown from cuttings to keep them tamed.
Left alone, nature might never have made one of our double roses of the garden. She doesn't seem to care to make the flower better. All she thinks about is the seed. ”

“ The seed of that special flower is carefully collected, and if those seeds produce plants, or a single plant, exhibiting a still greater disposition to become double, final success in producing the desired extent of deformity and monstrosity is secure, and the profusely double flower is deemed already in prospective possession of the expectant florist. ”

“ The pistils were leafy and also the stamens, and sometimes a branch grew right out of the middle of a rose as it does out of a leaf bud. Of course it was a very ugly-looking thing, neither flower nor leaf, but it was very instructive.
What do you suppose double flowers are?
Very often they are only flowers whose stamens have changed into petals.
A double rose has fewer stamens than a single rose, and sometimes all the stamens are changed, and the rose has not a grain of pollen to help itself with. What becomes of its seeds? It does not have any, as a rule. ”

“ The multiplied petals of the double flower itself are forms of monstrosity which affords a still more direct illustration of the principle that flowers are but developed leaves, as leaves are rudimental flowers, as may be easily shown; and in this case the manner of the transformation is not merely conjectured, as in the preceding case, but can be proved to demonstration. Under ordinary circumstances, and in the greater number of plants, the flowering process occurs when the growth of a branch is stopped by the partial exhaustion of the supply of sap. ”

“ This variety is a beautiful specimen of a single flower affording a developement of the organ of fructification; the petals are delicately penciled, and the anthers very bold, colour pink, and the flower very large; grows freely, and, in our opinion, is surpassed by none of the single sorts, for raising fine new varieties, if impregnated with the pollen from double flowers. ”

“ Doubtless the aster's remote ancestors were simple green leaves around the vital organs, and depended upon the wind, as the grasses do--a most extravagant method--to transfer their pollen. Then some rudimentary flower changed its outer row of stamens into petals, which gradually took on color to attract insects and insure a more economical method of transfer. Gardeners to-day take advantage of a blossom's natural tendency to change stamens into petals when they wish to produce double flowers. ”

“ Not the least singular circumstance connected with deformed flowers is that their fertile and seemingly healthy and perfect seeds, in most instances produce plants subject to a similar aberration to that of the parent, which looks something like a confirmation of the Darwinian theory—the accidentally produced double rose producing, as a rule, double roses. A certain number, however, of the plants produced from these seeds display a tendency to return to the original and perfect form of the single flower, having only a very small number of their stamens converted into petals. ”

“ That there is not any art whereby any flower may be made to grow double, that was naturally single, nor of any other sent or colour than it first had by nature; nor that the sowing or planting of herbes one deeper than other, will cause them to be in flower one after another, euery moneth in the yeare. The wonderfull desire that many haue to see faire, double, and sweete flowers, hath transported them beyond both reason and nature, feigning and boasting often of what they would haue, as if they had it. ”

“ The plants grow freely, and produce their flowers three or four inches of diameter, from the young wood; the leaves are ovate, accuminate, smooth, entire at the base and coarsely toothed at the end. All the varieties are of the same character, and highly deserving of a situation in every collection. There is said to be a double white variety, which we doubt; it is not in artificial cultivation. H. mutàbilis flòre plèno is a splendid plant of strong growth, and will, when well established, flower abundantly, if the wood of last year is cut to within a few eyes of the wood of the previous year ”

“ But the greatest wonder of beauty is in variety of double flowers, that arise from among the other single ones, some hauing two or three rowes of leaues in the flowers, and some so thicke of leaues as a double Marigold, or double Crowfoote, and of the same seuerall colours that are in the single flowers, that it is almost impossible to expresse them seuerally, and (as is said before) some falling out to bee double in one yeare, which will proue single or lesse double in an [207] other, yet very many abiding constant double as at the first ”

“ Double Flowering White.—Flowers white, double.
Double Flowering Purple.—A double variety, with purple blossoms. These varieties are propagated by a division of the roots. Double-flowering plants are rarely produced from seeds. ”

“ They delight to have a shaded situation during summer, to protect them from the sun, which, as it were, scorches the roots. There are many double varieties in the gardens, which flower early. The one called Crown, or Carnation Daisy, is twice the size of the common varieties, and has white and red petals alternately, and very double. Loamy soil, inclined to moisture, is best adapted to their growth. ”

“ C. alba-plèna, common double white, is admired by the most casual observer, and is generally considered a very superior flower, from the purity of its whiteness, and the abundance of its large flowers, which are thickly and regularly set with round petals. The foliage is large, and the plant grows freely; we have seen one shoot grow two feet in one summer. It was imported into Europe from China, amongst the first of the varieties, about eighty years ago. ”

“ By repeated radial and tangential branching a vast number of stamens are ultimately produced, and when these stamens assume a petaloid aspect we have as a consequence the double flowers which are so much admired. The carpels are much less subject to this petaloid change, and, as it generally happens in the most double of roses that some few at least of the anthers are formed with pollen, the production of seed and the possibility of cross-breeding become intelligible. ”

“ We will here mention that single flowers are preferable for this work—sunflowers, poppies, wild roses, convolvuli, garden anemones, and single dahlias are most successful. Double flowers are difficult to manipulate, and are not artistic. In painting stems and leaves, apply the color as before described, avoiding too vivid greens ”

“ Many of the commonest wild flowers, which no one would think of cultivating, have double flowers in cultivation, which were no doubt originally found wild; for instance, various species of ranunculus. The author had himself placed en record the discovery, wild on the Wissahickon, of a double Saxifraga Virginica, and Dr. James Darrach had found in the same location a double-trailing arbutus. There are in plants two methods by which double flowers are produced. ”

“ Where flowers become very double, the vitality goes to make petals instead of essential organs, as stamens and pistils are called, and such flowers often set no seeds.
206Then how do they continue the life of the race?
Sometimes simply because somebody takes care of them. Almost always double flowers are cultivated ones. People take them and tend them, give them rich soil to grow in, water them, and, if necessary, keep them warm. Such plants seem to grow lazy and helpless, as rich people who pamper themselves a great deal always do. ”

“ On the other hand, extremely poor soil sometimes, though rarely, appears to cause doubleness: I formerly described [419] some completely double, bud-like, flowers produced in large numbers by stunted wild plants of Gentiana amarella growing on a poor chalky bank. I have also noticed a distinct tendency to doubleness in the flowers of a Ranunculus, Horse-chesnut, and Bladder-nut (Ranunculus repens, Æsculus pavia, and Staphylea) , growing under very unfavourable conditions. Professor Lehman [420] found several wild plants growing near a hot spring with double flowers. ”

“ I answer, that assuredly all such flowers did first grow wilde, and were so found double, as they doe now grow in Gardens, but for how long before they were found they became double, no man can tell; we onely haue them as nature hath produced them, and so they remaine. Againe, if any shall say, that it is likely that these double flowers were forced so to be, by the often planting and transplanting of them, because it is obserued in most of them, that if they stand long in any one place, and not be often remoued, they will grow still lesse double, and in the end turne single. ”

“ As we have seen, there are very many natural species. Indeed, the species almost outnumber the varieties, and these latter are rarely very different from the parent species. As regards double-flowered varieties, we have seen that only four lilies bear them, whereas nine-tenths of the cultivated varieties of roses and chrysanthemums are double. ”

“ But the experience of the most skilled growers has not enabled them to save seed which will result entirely in double-flowering plants; and this is scarcely to be regretted, for the perpetuation of the race is dependent on single flowers. ”

“ Naturally true double flowers are almost unknown in wild plants, and the habit seems to have been brought about by too easy a time of it, too little struggle, too much food, or by any other of those things that produce effete but beautiful things, charming in their way, but of no significance in the sturdy struggle for existence that all wild plants must meet or perish. ”

“ Although there are no double wild roses known at the present day, either in Europe or in this country, yet, as other flowers have been found double in a wild state, it is not impossible that some of the ancient varieties bore double flowers in their native condition in the fields. Such may have been the Centifolias, mentioned by Pliny and Theophrastus, as growing upon Mount Panga, and those which, at a still earlier period, according to Herodotus, grew wild in Macedonia, near the ancient gardens of Midas. ”

“ R. bracteàta plenò, double Macartney, is a very fine large double white variety, with strongly marked red edged petals; blooming from May to July. It is very scarce, and grows best in sandy soil.
The best time for pruning those roses which only bloom once in the season, and are of a climbing habit, is immediately after flowering, cutting out all the old wood that has produced flowers, thereby invigorating the young wood that is to bear the flowers the ensuing year; and the stronger the wood of this year can be made to grow, the finer and more profuse will be the flowers. The plants of Nos. ”

“ It is rather an approach of that third section towards what is equivalent to becoming double in other tribes. Accordingly, the Chamomile, Anthemis nobilis, t.; Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum, t.; and some others, occasionally have their whole disk changed to ligulate white florets, destitute of stamens, and consequently abortive. Such are actually called double flowers in this Class, and very properly. Many exotic species so circumstanced are met with in gardens. ”