Showing posts with label sweet peas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sweet peas. Show all posts

Monday, January 25, 2016

1914 - In Praise of the Unknown Mother of Early Sweet Peas





I wonder what is fact and what is fiction.  Was there really a talented gardener who improved the sweet pea for her own pleasure whose work was used by the professional seedsman to launch a "new" variety?  

This dedication from Sweet Peas for Profit: Cultivation-- under Glass and Outdoors includes only two sentences! (This was written before E. B. White and Mr. Strunk took the world in hand.)


                                       DEDICATION 
TO AN UNKNOWN WOMAN 


To the persevering working woman who, by 25 years patient and persistent selection and loving regard, was the means of extracting for the use of succeeding florists, the early flowering and bright and beautiful sweet pea, known as Blanche Ferry. 

Her name is not known; whether she yet lives is unknown: but she was the instrument quite as truly as others who have followed her whose names are emblazoned on the horticultural scroll of fame have been instrumental in perfecting the present day race of early flowering or winter sweet peas by providing to the hands of the hybridizers of more recent years the great American variety already mentioned, and made it possible to express from it the wonderful flowers whose colors and fragrance and elegance delight us at Christmas and please us when the lakes are frozen and the snow lies deep.



More information from Sweet peas for Profit:
Some 55 years ago she procured seeds of a bright flowered plant of Painted Lady, and for many years thereafter she sowed and selected, and as her garden overlay limestone, and was of very shallow soil, averaging not more than foot in depth, her strain of plants gradually became more compact. At the end of 25 years the type she had been selecting was of bushy form and was grown without support. W. W. Tracy, Sr., of the firm of D. M. Ferry & Co., Detroit, who is now superintendent of the Testing Gardens of the United States Dept. of Agriculture at Washington, D. C, saw the plants, and being immediately impressed with their distinctiveness and merits, obtained small stock, only about 100 seeds. 
This was the famous Blanche Ferry, and was introduced in 1889 by the firm above mentioned. It was honored by having colored plate in the firm's catalog that year.  Six years later Messrs. Ferry introduced the Extra Early Blanche Ferry, and described it in these words: "The Extra Early Blanche Ferry is more dwarf, very much earlier, and fully equal in all other respects to Blanche Ferry. How much earlier we hardly dare say, but the most competent observer who compared it with upward of 50 varieties, declares it is two or three weeks earlier than any of them. Our careful observation convinces us that it is so early and dwarf that in these respects it outclasses all other Sweet Peas, and while these qualities make it incomparably the best Sweet Pea for forcing, its dwarf habit and persistent blooming make it equally desirable for outdoor culture." 
The House of Burpee distributed Earliest of All in 1898, when it was described in the catalog of the firm as "Not only the earliest to bloom in theopen ground, but also the most desirable for forcing under glass for Winter cut flowers. The dwarf habit of the plant (only 2 ft.) renders it much more easily grown upon benches, admits closer planting, and from seeds sown in the latter part of August blooms may be cut for the holidays, while with the taller varieties no blooms can be cut before February or March."
Sixteen years earlier Will Tracy wrote an article with some details about her...the same details that were repeated in Sweet Peas for Profit.  Where he got the information hasn't turned up yet.


Gardening, Volume 6 - 1898 excerpt:     It has been said that our American sorts are not the result of horticultural skill, but chance sports, the outcome of the large areas planted in this country and the consequent immense number of individual plants produced. But no one who has had an opportunity to know the careful study and earnest work of some of our American growers will deny that their work is well done and worthy of praise.  
While it perhaps does not illustrate this point, the history of two American sorts may be of interest.  Some forty years ago a woman in Northern New York noticed and saved the seed of a particularly bright flowered plant of the old Painted Lady. She planted them in her garden and each succeeding year saved and planted seed of what she thought were the best plants. She did not raise many, some years not more than a dozen plants, and never more than could be grown in three square yards. She was the wife of a quarryman, and her garden was always over limestone ledges, where the soil, though fertile was very thin, often not over a foot in depth, and gradually her plants became more compact and sturdy, until after some ten or twelve years she ceased to "bush" them, simply letting them support themselves. 
After she had raised them in this way for some twenty-five years a seedsman noticed their beauty, obtained about 100 seeds and from them has come the Blanche Ferry. This poor woman was not a scientist, her little garden and cottage were not at all an ideal trial ground and seed laboratory— but no scientist has suggested a better plan for the development and fixing of the qualities which make the Blanche Ferry the most practically useful variety we have than that which her love for the beautiful and her conditions of life lead to her carrying out so faithfully and patiently.  
The Extra Early Blanche Ferry was not the result of the selections of the earliest flowers, but it was developed on the theory that the time (from the sowing of the seed) of a plant coming into flower was quite as largely affected by conditions of growth as by constitutional tendency, but that the period in the development of the plant when it first showed bloom was more a matter of constitutional tendency than of growth conditions. Accordingly in breeding for early flowering, plants which produced flowers from the lowest nodes, rather than those which first showed flower, were selected, and the results show the correctness of the theory. It seems to me that what Americans have done in the development of this flower suggests possibilities with others, and that we ought to look forward to the production of our own flower seeds of all kinds.   
Will W. Tracy.




Tuesday, March 25, 2014

1882 - The Painted Lady and the Scarlet Invincible - Sweet Peas



The names sound more like good old mystery titles; the ones with "guys and dames", if you know what I am talking about :-)

The article below is from Vick's Monthly Magazine, 1882. It gives a nice overview of the Sweet Pea in more practical terms than the previous post.  

The illustration is from the magazine.  It is used in the article to illustrate the different varieties. A very large image is at the end of the post.  I have added the detail cropped images next to their descriptions.











SWEET PEAS.

The Sweet Pea presents a charming individuality that wins and holds our admiration. Every curve in its peculiar form is graceful and its colors are bright, or soft, and contrasting. Besides, it is one of those flowers that "from the voluptuous June catch their perfumings." 

The petals of the Sweet Pea, which are five in number, and from their peculiar arrangement have received different names, are grouped into two pairs with the odd one standing somewhat erect back of them. The lower pair is called the keel, while the petals enclosing them are the wings, and the uppermost petal is called the banner. 


In the colored plate the center flower is known as Scarlet.

In this it may be noticed that the petals forming the keel are white, the wings rose-colored, and the banner scarlet. 


At the right of this center flower is one with white keel and very dark crimson wings and banner, this variety in the trade is called Black. >>



<<Directly underneath the last mentioned one is what is known as Blue Edged.
 

Above the center flower, Scarlet, is one with white keel and white wings and a rose colored banner, this is Painted Lady.>>




 <<
At the upper left-hand corner of the group is Scarlet Invincible, having a white keel and scarlet wings and banner.

Sow the seed as early as possible in the spring, about four inches deep, in good, rich, mellow soil. One way of sowing them, and a very good one, is to mark out a circle two feet in diameter, four inches deep, and sow the Peas around, about an inch apart. A stake about five feet high should stand at the center; just inside the circumference place a barrel hoop and peg it down to the ground, and attach strings to it about three inches apart all around, fastening them also at the top of the stake. On these strings the stems will climb by means of their tendrils, arranging themselves in a form, that of a cone, most advantageous to display their beautiful blooms. 




One of our engravings shows a portion of a hedge supported by sticks. We have made the hedge thin, so as to show how the sticks are placed, but naturally they are almost, or entirely, concealed. 


The other is a clump or group supported by a stake or two in the center.



Another course often pursued is to sow the seed in straight lines, supporting the stems either with strings or brush, thus forming a sort of hedge. 


Mulching the ground with some light litter when the season becomes advanced has the effect to keep the soil cool, which is a most favorable condition for this plant. Cutting the flowers, and thus preventing the seed to form, has a tendency to keep the plants long in a blooming state.


Sweet Peas as cut flowers, odorous and variously colored and tinted, are of the highest value for bouquets, vases, and many other purposes.

 







Monday, March 24, 2014

Sweet Pea Packets and a Buckbee Postcard








 






 

 







This is interesting.  A printer's proof sheet for seed packet art! Nice art work, too.




Sunday, March 23, 2014

Father Cupani's Sweet Pea; 300 Years Ago

This sweet pea variety is Cupani.  
Available today, as it was in 1699 (if you had connections!).

The earliest mention of the sweet pea is found in '' Sillabus Plantarum Sicilke-nuper detectarum a P. F. Franciscus Cupani" (Panormi, 1695). The sweet pea is spoken of as "Lathyrus distoplatyphyllos hirsutis mollis, magno et peramoeno flore odore." 

Here it is mentioned 1696 in Cupani's Hortus Catholicus. (a bit more than 1/2 way down) The web is a wonderful thing!



Father Cupani was very enthusiastic about this flower and in 1699 sent seed to Dr. Uvedale at Enfield, England, and to Caspar Commelin at Amsterdam, Holland. 

Commelin described and illustrated the plant in his "Hort.-Medici Amstelodamensis" (1697-1701). He also adopted Cupani's name for the plant.  

Dr. Uvedale showed the flowering sweet pea to Dr. Plukenet in 1701. 

Dr. Plukenet's  own herbarium  specimen is the oldest sweet pea specimen known.  By 1713 they were flowering in the Chelsea Botanic Garden. (This link is interesting.)  Finally, by 1724, the seed was commercially available as Cupani's Original or Matucana.


The artist who did the botanical illustration for Commelin,  Jan Moninckx, did the watercolor painting below in 1699.   I am only assuming  Commelin's book's engraved plate was taken from this.  I can't track down a copy of it in the time I have available today.  I might be all wrong.

You absolutely must go to this extraordinary site to explore this painting in great detail, and to enjoy a high quality botanical art collection mounted by the Collectie Botanie of the Netherlands.




Links:

Saturday, March 22, 2014

We're Sweet Peas...

As I labeled seed packet files the other day, the fact I seem to easily collect more sweet pea packets than any other flower made an impression on me.

I don't know much about them except a vague memory of hearing that their sweet perfume was being bred out in a trade for more flamboyant looks...but that some breeders were fighting back.



However, a dip into Google Books supplied an avalanche of books dedicated to the sweet pea published in the latter half of the 19th century!


Up through the 1850s sweet peas were valued as a garden flower as they are wonderful in bouquets. But they were simply referred to by the the common color names, purple, black, scarlet, white, pink, pink and white.





Liberty Hyde Bailey wrote in his 1896 book, Sweet Peas -


The sweet pea has had but one genius. He is Henry Eckford, who for twenty years has given his attention to this plant upon his garden-farm at Wem, in Shropshire, England. He has given us the greater number of our best improved varieties. '' When I first took up the sweet pea,'' he writes, '' there were six or eight distinct varieties in cultivation, and experts in the art, as far as I could learn, had come to the conclusion that it could not be further improved, and in the first two or three generations of the work it appeared a fair conclusion; but I should say that I had been for many years working on the improvement of various florist flowers, and which had proved so eminently successful that a first rebuff did not deter me from further attempts." 


In our own country, the work has now been taken up by Rev. W. T. Hutchins, of Indian Orchard, Massachusetts; and it has remained for him to make the first important attempt to write any account of the modern sweet pea. His booklet, " All About Sweet Peas," appeared in 1894; and he has been and is still the most devoted grower and champion of sweet peas upon this side of the Atlantic. This is not saying that he is the largest grower, for this honor is held by C. C. Morse & Co., of California, whose crop of sweet peas covered 250 acres in 1895, and this firm has also produced a number of excellent varieties.    But Mr. Hutchins is an amateur sweet pea critic, whilst Mr. Morse grows the seeds for market. W. Atlee Burpee & Co., of Philadelphia, were amongst the first retail seedsmen to take up the sweet pea. The first sweet pea show of any note in this country was held under the inspiration of Mr. Hutchins at Springfield, Mass., in 1893. 


Bailey could be clearer in his attribution - most all the improved selections of the late 1800s were Eckford's!  In the 1890s breeders in this country were enthusiastically involved, however.  

This all leads to some interesting stories of breeders and the also of the California seed companies.







Sweet pea links: