Impressions of Hollyhocks

American Impressionists liked hollyhocks.  Hollyhocks lend themselves nicely to dabs and daubs.

Childe Hassam did them proud.

Celia Thaxter, the pensive lady to the left, lived on Appledore and hosted artists, writers and painters.

Nice links:

- very nice; About Celia Thaxter's Island Garden
They recommend another blog that is their garden intern, Erica Anderson, as she blogs from Appledore this summer! Island Gardener 2014

If you have the chance to visit the Isle of Shoals, off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, you hopefully will experience this amazing light that Hassam has captured in the following painting.  While you will not get to Appledore Island, you can do a day visit to an island within sight!  It is wonderful.

If you are interested in the Portsmouth and the  Isle of Shoals
 you will like the Yankee Magazine blog about it.

1857 - Hollyhocks in Prince's Select Catalogue

These hollyhock names are charming in their plainness or pretension.


"30 Splendid New Varieties"

Hollyhocks and the Gentleman of Prado

The following article is from The Magazine of Horticulture, Botany, and All Useful Discoveries and Improvements in Rural Affairs, Volume 16; 1850

I wouldn't have featured it except the list of named varieties from the talented hands of the gentleman from Prado is so much fun to say and savor!!

_________

If I were not afraid of advancing a horticultural heresy, I should say that many amateurs prefer Hollyhocks to Dahlias. 

The Hollyhocks of Belgium and Germany had a great celebrity long before they appeared among us. The collections of the Prince of Salm Dyck, and of M. Van Houtte, of Ghent, have been much admired. In other places varieties have been obtained with leaves more or less lobed, more or less entire, more or less palmate, all with flowers large, full, or colored differently from those of other plants, being sometimes of a more or less dark mahogany color, at others of a delicate tint, and varying from the purest white to the darkest glossy black.

 Some progress has also been made in the cultivation of those plants by ourselves. Since 1830 M. Pelissier, Jun., a gentleman of Prado, has cultivated Hollyhocks, and from the seeds of a pink variety has succeeded in obtaining plants with flowers of a delicate rose color, and which, in consequence of the extreme delicacy of their tints, and regularity of form, may serve both to encourage perseverance and as a good type for seed. In the following year, from the seeds of pink flowers, he obtained a beautiful, brilliant, clean, sulphur-colored specimen, perfect in every respect. It is from the seeds of those two plants that he has obtained all the other beautiful and remarkable varieties which he now possesses, after a lapse of ten years from his first attempts. 

As a general rule, M. Pelissier prefers flowers with six exterior petals, with entire edges, well open, well set out, of a middling size, of a pure, clean, brilliant color, and forming a perfect Anemone. Seeds sown in the spring and in unwatered ground, never flower till the second year. 
Experience has shown that if the seeds are sown in September, and in earth which is kept fresh, flowers may be obtained in June or July following, which are in no way inferior to those of spring-sown seeds. 

M. Pelissier follows the following plan of procedure. The seeds, which are taken as soon as they are ripe, from good specimens, are sown in September, in a border a foot and a half deep, and composed of good coarsely sifted garden earth, mixed with well worked soil. The seeds, if they are covered lightly with leaf-mould, and the soil is kept fresh, begin to swell at the end of a week; they require little care till spring, as they are not hurt by frost.  In the spring the ground must be repricked, occasionally hoed and frequently watered. As the flowers expand, M. Pelissier removes whatever is not conformable to the type he has chosen, or is not of a marked color, and like a perfect Anemone. 

It is by doing this every year that he has obtained 20 remarkable varieties, the names and characteristics of which have been kindly furnished by him, and are given below.

 1. Souvenir de Malmaison, delicate rose, flower very full; perfection. 

2. Geant de Batailles, red, flower very full. 

3. Vestale, fine pure white, flower very full. 

4. Anais, rose, flower very full; perfection. 

5. Chromatella, dark yellow, flower very full. 

6. Jeune Euphemie, clear red, flower beautiful, full; perfection. 

7. Heine Victoria, cinnamon colored, shaded, flower very full. 

8. Grand Peking, nankeen-colored, flower very full . 

9. Amarante, dark red, flower very full . 

10. Isabelle, dark red, flower very full . 

11. Grand Colbert, dork rose, streaked, flower full, very perfect 

12. Marie Gabrielle, fleshy white, flower full; beautiful. 

13. Matilde, clear cherry, flower very full. 

14. Solfaterre, very clear yellow, flower very full. 

15. Boule de Neige, beautiful white, flower well rounded, full . 

16. Ophirie, yellow with a tint of pink, flower very full. 

17. Arlequin, clear, approaching to dark violet, spotted with white. 

18. Desprez, white, middle yellow. 

19. Proserpine, very dark red, flower very ful1 . 

20. Pluton, black, flower very full.

The Magazine of Horticulture, Botany, and All Useful Discoveries 

and Improvements in Rural Affairs, Volume 16; 1850

Hollyhock Fun Tangent

It was harder to find what I wanted in the seed catalog archives so I am buying some hollyhock time with these bits of hollyhock ephemera!

Stereo views are so much fun.  To think about people sitting around and looking at them for their evening entertainment with friends, talking about them, is an exercise in time travel.

Goodness!!

Hollyhock Ambition

Arents Cigarette Card 1895-1900"Floral beauties and language of flowers"NYPL Digital Gallery

I've always wanted huge hollyhocks so I removed the colon from the cigarette card title for this post's title.

However, I live in a shady, humid area where any althea worthy of that family name would immediately succumb to rust.  A long time ago I grew them in a sunny elsewhere. I so enjoyed having them grow taller than myself!  And then having those fat  seed pods develop...joy unbounded!

I dislike the double hollyhocks.  They look like used tissues to me...balled up wads.  I think I once saw one that had style to the extra petals but most are a puffy mess.

I'll be posting hollyhock catalog images next time.

SINGLE HOLLYHOCKS 

  Single-flowered Hollyhocks constitute a very beautiful race of hardy garden plants, and are even more decorative than are the doubles. A double Hollyhock is of course the florist's correct form, and the fuller and doubler the petals the more is it liked. I find these singles growing almost everywhere in small gardens, especially in suburban districts. Recently when taken all over the Carshalton and Beddington district I found them cropping up in little gardens everywhere, exhibiting such varied and beautiful colours that I was charmed with them. We see in strains of these three or four times the variation in colours found in the doubles. The direction in which crossing in able hands should be directed is in enlarging the flowers, still further varying the colours, and in obtaining if possible distinctly fringed edges. One variety which I thought very beautiful had flowers of a glossy claret hue edged with white. It served to show what variations and markings in these singles are possible. 

I am glad to see that seed can be purchased cheaply.  That fact probably explains why these flowers are so largely found in small gardens, although it is possible that neighbors seeing them standing up so prominently in a local garden beg seed, and thus the seeds are widely spread.  That form of selection however does not likely lead to high-class selection.

It is a good time to sow seed outdoors now, or, indeed, it may be sown outdoors any time through the end of August, the plants standing in the garden  all the winter transplanting early in the spring to fill borders, where they will flower. No plants should remain to bloom longer than a second season, as it is when standing too long in the same ground that the soil gets dry and impoverished, and the Hollyhock fungus preys upon the stems and leafage. The more branching the plants are the better, as numerous spikes of moderate height are better than are fewer very tall ones. I hope it will not be suggested that spikes of these Hollyhocks would look well at flower shows. I hope someone will take these single Hollyhocks in hand and improve them largely. There is no telling what may be ultimately evolved. Selection may do much, and intercrossing perhaps more.  (1897  The Garden: An Illustrated Weekly Journal of Gardening)

This looks to be an interesting book! 

The Social History of Flatbush

Tall Tale Crops and Photomontage Postcards

The first five photo postcards are from Wm. H. Martin.  Can't find a thing about him.

 These later two are from A. S. Johnson, Jr.

 Some people are better at crafting a montage than others!!

I noticed the sign on the wall up above...the company was in Ottawa, Kansas.

Philadelphia Engravers for Seed Catalogs

Why chickens, you ask?




The Burpee seed catalog offered poultry equipment and birds!

These engravings were done by Erdmann who seems to be a chicken and duck specialist.  They seem a bit "folky", stiff and simplified....but nice!

Thiebault and R.A. Williams did the rest.  I haven't turned up any info on them yet.

I often see the "bespoke" engravings with no engraver's signature, but this one has been signed.