Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1883-09-01
s,no,e and Double Flowers.


light upon some interesting princi-
pies in vegetable physiology.
Those who have been interested
for any length of time in floral
culture must have observed the
success with which double flowers
with innumerable petals have been
obtained from the comparatively
simple varieties produced by nature.
There are two families of flowers in
which this can be effected with the
greatest success, viz: those allied TO
the rose and a family called by the
botanists composite, of which the
sunflower, aster, daisy, dahlia, &c,
are examples. To understand how
doubling takes place in these, we
must give some attention to their
structure, and first we will consider
that of the roses and their relatives.
To understand the typical struct-
ure of the rose we must pass over
the splendid specimens Of the flor
lists and examine those which grow
wild, such as the Dog rose, the
Chickasaw and Cherokee roses of
this country and the sweet-briar of
Europe. In all of those we find
five petals, either white or pink,
surrounding a yellow disc which is
formed of large number of stamens
and the pistil which are the organs
concerned in the elaboration of the
seed. Now, even in the wild state
there is observed an occasional ten
dency to doubling by means of the
of additional petals for
stamens, supernumerary petals in
short are formed at the expense of
the stamens. 1t is by taking adj
vantage of this tendency that for
lists have produced the double roses
so highly priced by their customers.
They selected at first specimens in
which a tendency to doubling was
manifested by the spontaneous ap-
pearance of supernumerary petals
by the disappearance
of stamens planting the seed from
these they would generally find in
the next generation specimens in
which this tendency had gone fur
Their, flowers with still more petals
and still fewer stamens; selecting
these for seed the next season and
the process generation
after generation, they have at last
at perfectly doubled roses,
flowers, that is, having an immense
number of petals and no stamens
at all. Here the process necessarily
stops, for such flowers produce no
seed, the influence of the stamens
and the pollen secreted by them
being essential to the elaboration of
seed; as soon therefore as all SIAM
ems have been replaced by petals,
the production of seed is impossible
and such flowers can only be prOpa-
gated by cuttings, layers, suckers,
&c. 1t is hence easy to
why perfectly double
lowers are not produced in nature,
for it has been seen that the more
petals tire fewer stamens and conse-
Iuently less seed and in nature
the stronger and more prolific plants
will always OutgrOw and take the
place of the weaker and more ster-
lie, just as the thistleS are now ex-
some of our valuable
native grasses. When modification
takes place under the influence of
man it produces qualities useful or
agreeable to him, but where it oc-
ours in nature it produces only
those which are advantageous to
the propagation and preservation of
the plant.
In the composite the process of
is i'm principle the same
except so far as it is modified by
the structure of the plant; Sun
flower or Dahlia is not, like the
rose, a simple flower, but, an aggre-
cation of many fiOWrets arranged in
circles around centre, the outside
aowrets being strikingly different
in form from those which constitute
the central disk. The former are
called the ray flOwret5 and the lat
ter the disk ffoWrets. Taking Il
single dahlia as an example, [the
double dahlia being no natural or
typical forIn of the plant itappears
10 consist of eight oval petals sur
rounding yellow disk of what
appear at first sight numerous
3tamens; but both the apparent
petals and the apparent stamens are
each OF them an Independent flow
ret. If one of the petals be care
July separated from the rest, tearing
open the calyx first, it will be found
to be the single petal Of an individ
Ial flower something similar in
form to a Gala lily, its base being
twisted round into tube containing
a rudimentary pistil. On the
other hand if the yellow disk be
separated into irs constituent parts
1t will be found to consist OF inGu-
merable yellow tiowrets, each hav-
ing eight petals united into tube,
pistil and several
stamens which will be seen to be
powdered over with a
yellow powder, which is the pollen
or seed-producing secretion OF the
5tamens. The ray fiOwrets are
sterile, the disk fiowrets alone being
fertile or seed-prOducing. In the
process of doubling, supernumerary
ray hOwrets are produced at the
expense of the disk fiowret5 and in
the perfectly double dahIia all the
disk fiOwrets have been replaced by
ray fiowrets and the plant is sterile
as in the case of the rose.
So that in the eye of the botanist
the double flowers are monstrosities
and, however beautiful, diseased
products of artificial interference,