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Eleven years later a seedling appeared in the famous Van Houtte Nurseries, Ghent, Belgium, thought to be a hybrid between psittacinus and G. cardinalis, the latter a tall scarlet flowered species or variety of uncertain origin, known to have been cultivated as early as 1785.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that one variety was cultivated as far back as 1596, and another from 1629. Between 1750 and 1825 many new ones were added to those previously known. There are several general classes now before the public, of which the oldest is the Gandavensis. It is said that this was originated by Van Houtte, and was introduced in 1841.
Viscocephala. Double-flowered Rhododendrons: Bijou de Gendbrugge. Graf Von Meran. Heroine. Narcissiflora. Louis Aimée Van Houtte. Mina Van Houtte. Ophirié. Van Houttei. Ground Cistus. Alps of Austria and Bavaria, 1786. A very handsome shrub, of small growth, and widely distributed in Bavaria, Switzerland, and elsewhere.
Van Houtte shows us two in his admirable Flore des Serres; C. l. candida, from Syon House, pure white excepting the ochrous throat which is invariable and C. l. picta, deep red, from the collection of J.J. Blandy, Esq., Reading. The third was C. l. Pescatorei, white, with a deep red blotch upon the lip, formerly owned by Messrs. Rouget-Chauvier, of Paris, now by the Duc de Massa.
The Van Houtte seedling, named Gandavensis in honor of the city of its origin, was so superior to psittacinus as to cause the latter to at once go out of cultivation. Gandavensis made a great sensation in its time and is still the best representative of the old-time gaudy red-and-yellow garden gladiolus, or corn flag.
Down there in the rose beds, among the hundreds of buds there is only one full-blown rose as yet, a Marie van Houtte, one of the loveliest of the tea roses, perfect in shape and scent and colour, and in my garden always the first rose to flower; and the first flowers it bears are the loveliest of its own lovely flowers, as though it felt that the first of its children to see the sky and the sun and the familiar garden after the winter sleep ought to put on the very daintiest clothes they can muster for such a festal occasion.
Then I have had two long beds made in the grass on either side of the semicircle, each sown with mignonette, and one filled with Marie van Houtte, and the other with Jules Finger and the Bride; and in a warm corner under the drawing-room windows is a bed of Madame Lambard, Madame de Watteville, and Comtesse Riza du Parc; while farther down the garden, sheltered on the north and west by a group of beeches and lilacs, is another large bed, containing Rubens, Madame Joseph Schwartz, and the Hen.
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