The Pansy
Viola tricolor.
FLORISTS who make a speciality of pansies will not, owing to their colour, approve of the specimens set before us in the plate. It is by no accident that we disappoint the florist of the model flowers he would like to see portrayed, but of set purpose and serious intention. It would be poor policy in such a work as this to set forth floral models, for our business is to figure and describe familiar flowers. These pansies have been selected from a garden border as samples of the general average; such flowers as the great world loves, and, while loving them, entertains no disrespect for the more technically perfect flowers of the florist, but recognises the broad truth that in what may be termed nature's imperfections there are beauties that the products of human skill do not reveal. The florist's double rose is a glorious thing, but the "canker of the hedge" has charms that the exhibition roses give no hint of; indeed, when a "show-rose" shows an "eye" it is condemned, and it is the eye or yellow centre of the gauzy-textured "sweet wild-rose" that, as compared with garden roses, gives it a peculiarly distinct and delightful character. A rose with an eye is an awful thing, and a pansy with rough petals and blotches put on the "wrong way" is not less awful; but, for all that, it is one of the familiar flowers which the world will not willingly let die. Pansies may be described as hardy plants that will grow anywhere and in any kind of soil. The humblest cottager can grow pansies, and not a few cottagers are pansy fanciers. Still, it cannot be said with any approach to truth that the pansy can be grown anywhere under a great variety of conditions. As a matter of fact, it is a somewhat fastidious flower, but as easy to manage as any when the conditions are suitable. It requires a deep moist sandy soil. In a dry starving land it will scarcely live, but a real sandy loam suits it to a nicety. It is comparatively useless as a town flower, and is certainly one of the very worst of London flowers. Country air it likes, but that is not all. In the east of England it does not thrive as it does in the west, and in the south it is quite poor as compared with its free growth and exceeding beauty in the north. The reader possibly perceives the secret of success in the cultivation of the pansy. It likes pure air and humidity. From a horticultural journal we learn that the annual rainfall in London averages twenty-four inches, in Bath twenty-nine inches, in Ayr, which is near Paisley, forty-four inches. If other comparisons are made between what may be called pansy and non-pansy districts, it will be found that relative humidity goes far to explain the difference. Some people find delight in making soft showers by means of the water-engine in the flower garden. Some plants are benefited thereby and some are not. The roses and the pansies may all the summer long be gratified with a morning and evening shower, to their advantage; the geraniums, petunias, mesembryanthemums, and portulacas will do very well without it.
The routine cultivation of the pansy is quite simple, although in matters of detail there is much to be thought of in connection with the higher culture of the flower. In any and every case it is of the first importance to be for ever producing young plants. The easiest way to do it is to sow seed in pans filled with light rich soil, and keep the pans in a cold frame until the seed has started. Pansy seed may be sown at any time except in the depth of winter, and the very best time is immediately on its becoming fully ripe. The named varieties are grown from cuttings, and those may be easily struck in spring and summer in a cold frame, but there is one golden rule to be observed to insure success. The cuttings must be made from young shoots; the old shoots will strike, but they never make fine plants. To obtain a stock very easily for filling a bed, it is sufficient to divide the old plants into as many pieces as possible, taking care that each piece has a few roots. But this is a slovenly way; it is better to sow seeds or strike proper cuttings. However, the dividing process in careful hands answers fairly well, and if carried out during moist, kindly weather gives but little trouble, and every scrap will soon make a plant.
As remarked above, a sandy loam is the proper soil for the pansy. This may be enriched with leaf-mould and rotten hotbed manure for the production of fine flowers, but a soil rank with fresh manure is not fit for pansies; they require a deep moist roothold, but will never thrive in contact with powerful stimulants. The necessity for humidity is all-important; but mere damp is as injurious to pansies as to other flowers, and therefore good drainage is essential both for plants in beds and plants in pots. The show kinds and the best of the fancy pansies make beautiful pot-plants when carefully cultivated, and there is no flower more likely to gratify a painstaking amateur who has no ambition to become a competing florist than the fancy pansy grown in pots as a frame plant. The frame secures for the fancy pansy, under suitable management, the moist and comparatively pure air it so much loves.