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De Candolle pointed out that the old common names of plants, such as roses and clover, poplars and oaks, nearly all refer to genera. The type of the clovers is rich in color, and the shape of the flower-heads and the single flowers escape ordinary observation; but notwithstanding this, clovers are easily recognized, even if new types come to hand.
Union of the neighboring fruits and flowers on flower-heads, of the rays of the umbellifers or of the successive flowers of the racemes of cabbages and allied genera, seem to be rare. The same holds good for the adhesion of foliar to axial organs, of branches to stems and other cases of union.
For the Japanese do not brutally chop off flower-heads to work them up into meaningless masses of colour, as we barbarians do: they love nature too well for that; they know how much the natural charm of the flower depends upon its setting and mounting, its relation to leaf and stem, and they select a single graceful branch or spray just as nature made it.
They should be dried under cover and hermetically closed up in sacks or other vessels to prevent untimely pulverization. The finer the flower-heads are pulverized the more effectually the powder acts and the more economical in its use. Proper pulverization in large quantities is best done by those who make a business of it and have special mill facilities.
But the green heads retain the form of the ordinary flower-heads, and as they have no real florets that may fade away, they remain unchanged on the plants, and increase in number through the whole summer.
The identical individual, which formerly bore small rosettes of basal leaves, with short and unbranched flower-stalks, became richly leaved and often produced quite a profusion of flower-heads on branched stems. If then they were transplanted to arid sand, though remaining in the same garden and also under the same climatic conditions they resumed their alpine characters.
It has a cultivated variety, called grandiflorum, which is esteemed for its brilliancy and long succession of golden bloom. This variety has larger flower-heads, surrounded with a fuller border of ray-florets. The species belongs to a genus many species of which have produced double varieties. One of them is the Japanese marigold, others are the carinatum and the imbricatum species.
On a visit to a nursery at Erfurt I once inspected an experiment with a new double variety of the common blue-bottle or blue corn-flower. The plants were dependent on the weather to a high degree. Bad weather increased the number of poorly filled flower-heads, while warm and sunny days were productive of beautiful double flowers.
H. PANICULATA. Japan, 1874. This is one of the most distinct species, in which the flower-heads are elongated, not flat, as in most other species, and from which the finest form in cultivation has been obtained. This is H. paniculata grandiflora, in which the flowers are sterile and pure white, forming large panicles often a foot in length.
It shows the new attribute in its full development. It has flower-heads nearly as completely filled as the best double varieties of allied cultivated composites. In the second generation it reached heads with 200 rays each, and much larger numbers will seldom be seen in older species on heads of equal size.
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