Sweet Peas E-Book

Roger Parsons

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 305

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Sweet peas were first documented in Sicily in the late seventeenth century and, with their delightful scent and diverse range of beautiful colours, have established themselves as annual favourites across the world. This essential guide looks at the genus in detail and explains how the novice gardener or the seasoned grower can get the very most from their sweet peas. This revised edition gives an introduction to the history and types of sweet pea; instruction on growing and caring; advice on producing flowers for exhibition and crop production; understanding and introducing new varieties and finally, growing sweet peas around the world. There is a final chapter introducing other Lathyrus species, closely related to the sweet pea.

Leseprobe

SWEET PEAS

An essential guide

SWEET PEAS

An essential guide

Roger Parsons

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2011 byThe Crowood Press LtdRamsbury, MarlboroughWiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2018

Revised paperback edition 2018

© Roger Parsons 2011 and 2018

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 534 3

Frontispiece: Sweet Pea ‘Ethel Grace’ (S. Cuttle).

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 The early history of the Sweet Pea

Chapter 2 Types of Sweet Pea

Chapter 3 Understanding how Sweet Peas grow

Chapter 4 Growing your own Sweet Peas

Chapter 5 Sweet Peas in the garden

Chapter 6 Cut flower crop production

Chapter 7 Producing the perfect Sweet Pea

Chapter 8 Keeping plants healthy

Chapter 9 Varieties of Sweet Pea

Chapter 10 Producing new varieties

Chapter 11 Sweet Peas around the world

Chapter 12 Other Lathyrus species

Acknowledgements

Glossary of Botanical Terms

Further Reading

CHAPTER 1

The early history of the Sweet Pea

Most readers will have picked up this book because they want to know how to grow better Sweet Peas. Some may think that the last thing they want is a ‘boring old history lesson’. But in order to understand the plants that we grow today, it is helpful to have an understanding of how they originated and how they have developed. For many people, this will help them to decide the varieties that they want to grow, and such understanding adds to the satisfaction of growing Sweet Peas by placing them in a context.

Nuper Detectarum from Carters’ 1936 Catalogue.

For such a popular and well-known flower, it is surprising what nonsense has been written about the origins and early history of the Sweet Pea. These arose in the past from authors who have either failed to research the matter or did not have the benefit of modern science. Once speculation is presented in print as if it were fact, it appears to have some authority and the errors are perpetuated by later writers. The record was put right by the National Sweet Pea Society (NSPS) in its Centenary Celebration booklet, published in 2000. This included a fully referenced article on the history of the Sweet Pea, which is focused purely on historical evidence and follows considerable research. The article concludes that ‘it is beyond doubt that the Sweet Pea originates in Sicily.’

ORIGINS OF THE SWEET PEA

The first reference to the Sweet Pea is by Franciscus Cupani in 1695 in his Sillabus Plantarum Sicillae. This was simply a list of names of plants newly discovered in Sicily. He first describes it in 1696 in his Hortus Catholicus. Plant names in those days were long descriptions in Latin and the name given by Cupani, to what in modern English we call the Sweet Pea, was Lathyrus distoplatyphylos, hirsutus, mollis, magno et peramoeno, flore odoro. Franciscus Cupani was born in 1657 and became a monk in 1681 at Palermo in Sicily. He had a broad interest in natural history and published several works before his death in 1711.

Sweet Pea ‘Hawlmark Pink’, introduced in 1920.

Sweet Pea illustration by Jan Mominckx in 1701.

The earliest illustration of a Sweet Pea is in Casper Commelin’s Horti-Medici Amstelodamensis, published in 1701 in the Netherlands, which he states was prepared from plants grown from seeds sent to him by Cupani in 1699. The artist is Jan Mominckx. It is believed that the Sweet Pea was introduced into England in 1699 when Cupani also sent seeds to Dr Robert Uvedale, a schoolmaster at Enfield, but there is no contemporary evidence for this. The original Sweet Pea was a ‘purple’ bicolour and is described by Leonard Plukenet in his Almagesti Botanici Mantissa of 1700. Dried specimens of Sweet Peas from Plukenet’s herbarium are stored at the Natural History Museum in London. Plukenet died in 1706, but in 1713 James Petiver describes the plants and says:

This elegant sweet-flowered plant I first observed with Dr Plukenet in Dr Uvedale’s most curious garden at Enfield, and since at Chelsea and elsewhere.

Those who placed the origin of the Sweet Pea elsewhere often cited as evidence the fact that the Sweet Pea cannot be found growing in Sicily. This is remarkable since the collection of wild Sweet Peas from parts of Sicily and Southern Italy has been well documented over a long period. The first historian of the NSPS, S.B. Dicks, described how in 1896 he asked G. Sprenger, who was living in Naples, to visit Sicily and try to find the wild Sweet Pea. Sprenger found it in many parts and also in Sardinia. E.R. Janes noted in 1953 wild Sweet Peas having been seen in many of the Mediterranean islands, including Sicily. I maintain a stock of wild Sweet Peas sent by Dr Keith Hammett that were first collected from Sicily in 1974.

Wild Sweet Pea collected from Sicily in 1974 (M. Thornhill).

OTHER SPECULATION ON ORIGINS

Sri Lanka versus Sicily

The place having most claim to rival Sicily as the original source of the Sweet Pea is Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon. This claim relied on a belief that the Sweet Pea was described from Ceylon earlier than Sicily, in part due to Johann Burmann’s Thesaurus Zeylanicus, published in Amsterdam in 1737. Zeylana was an alternative form of Ceylon in use at the time. Burmann cites Hartog’s herbarium as the source for Lathyrus zeylanicus, hirsutus, flore angoate, odorato. The word ‘angoate’, meaning variegated, was used in the eighteenth century to describe pink and white bicoloured flowers while today it is most commonly associated with bicoloured foliage. From the Latin, Burmann says:

Hartog or Hertog is a herbarium which I keep and which it is certain contains very many most elegant Zeylanian plants, and was sent once by him from Zeylana to Cornelius Voss the gardener at Leyden.

We do not have dates for Hartog’s specimens and little is known about him. According to Linnaeus:

John Hartog was born and trained for the service of Flora at the gardens of Leyden, at the time when the loss of Hermanus was being deplored by the whole world. William Sherard, who afterwards directed the Sceptre of Flora, was solicitous day and night regarding procuring the plants of Ceylon and publishing a brief description of them, and he frequently consulted a sincere friend, one celebrated by his learning, the well-known H. Boerhave…. Hartog was the only one willing to undertake a journey into Ceylon.

Plukenet’s pressed specimen, photographed around 1908.

Paul Hermann or Hermanus lived from 1646 to 1695. William Sherard lived 1659–1728 and Herman Boerhave 1668–1739. The latter would not have had time to become celebrated much before 1700. In his Index Plantarum of 1710, Boerhave includes Lathyrus siculus, flore odorato, ango but there is no mention of a pink and white sweet pea, nor one from Ceylon. A later edition of 1720 lists:

Lathyrus distoplatyphyllos, hirsutus, mollis, ango et peramoeno, flore odoro Cupani Hort. Cath. H.A.2:159

Lathyrus siculus, flore odorato, ango Ind. 159.

There is again no reference to a pink and white Sweet Pea, nor one from Ceylon. The comprehensive lists of references in both editions make no mention of Hartog’s collection.

Hartog did not return from Ceylon and, although he sent a herbarium, there is no evidence that he sent living seeds or plants from Ceylon. Burmann’s description of L. zeylanicus appears to be based on an assumption that all the specimens in Hartog’s herbarium, which he had received indirectly, came from Ceylon. An attempt in 1921 by S.B. Dicks to revisit the specimens in Hartog’s herbarium found them no longer in existence. The only specimen in the Leyden herbarium labelled as L. zeylanicus proved to be another Lathyrus species, not L. odoratus.

Turning to more modern authors, the validity of Burmann’s reference was challenged in the Gardener’s Chronicle in 1900 and by Alvin Beal of Cornell University in 1912. There are several references which all confirm that botanists have been unable to find any wild Sweet Pea in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Yet among later writers, E.R. Janes and Bernard Jones, the view that the Sweet Pea may have originated in Ceylon prevailed because of another reference suggesting the pink and white form pre-dates reference to the purple wild type.

ORIGIN OF THE NAMELATHYRUS ODORATUS

When Linnaeus wrote his Flora Zeylanica of 1747, which is based on Hermann’s herbarium, he made no reference to L. zeylanicus. However, in writing his comprehensive Species Plantarum of 1753, he could not ignore the existence in cultivation of the pink and white Sweet Pea. This work established the current binomial system of botanical names and for the first time gave the Sweet Pea the name we know today of Lathyrus odoratus. He describes two varieties of Sweet Pea: the purple form he named as Lathyrus siculus, which means from Sicily, and the pink and white bicolour he called Lathyrus zeylanicus, citing Burmann as the reference.

S.B. Dicks, who first researched the history of the Sweet Pea for the bicentenary celebration in 1900.

Both James Justice and the great Victorian seedsman, Henry Eckford, thought the pink and white form was the original Sweet Pea, and the purple form was a variety of it. In 1754, James Justice says Bauhin listed the pink and white Sweet Pea as Lathyrus angustifolius, flore ex albo et rubro variegate, odorato in his Historiae Plantarum of 1650–1, written long before Hartog thought of going to Ceylon. This reference by Justice has been cited by authors ever since. However, my own direct reference to Bauhin’s work, which contains extensive descriptions and references, shows no evidence of the name quoted by Justice. Bauhin describes a Lathyrus flore rubro et alius albo but nowhere is the key word odorato mentioned and there exist other Lathyrus species with pink and white bicoloured flowers e.g. L. clymenum var. articulatus (Arcangeli 1882); L. vernus var. variegatus (Bassler 1973). These observations are supported by Boerhave who listed Bauhin’s work as one of his references, yet the plant is not included in his Index Plantarum. Inclusion by Justice of the word angustifolius, meaning ‘narrow-leaved’, suggests he is not describing a Sweet Pea.

Before we leave Burmann, he also describes L. zeylanicus, rubro pulcher for which he cites Jacob Breyn’s Prodromus of 1680 as a reference. There has been speculation that this is the first reference to a red Sweet Pea but it is significant that this was not picked up by other botanists and it is not clear that the plant described is scented.

Malta versus Sicily

Charles Unwin believed that the Sweet Pea originated from Malta on the assumption that the flower could be found growing wild there during his lifetime whereas he thought it had not been found growing in the wild in Sicily. John Borg’s 1927 Flora of Malta describes eight Lathyrus species native to Malta but simply says of L. odoratus:

The Sweet Pea is very frequently cultivated in gardens, and is often met with as a garden escape, but always dies out.

In 1974, Leonard Messel described the difficulties he was having growing Sweet Peas on Malta because of ‘parasitic disease’ in the soil. Unwin placed too much importance on the garden escapes he had seen growing in Malta and appears unaware of ample evidence of the Sweet Pea growing wild in Sicily.

South America versus Sicily

There are few parts of the world where the Sweet Pea has not been introduced and cultivated for its cut flowers, subsequently escaping to the wild and reverting to wild type. Some forms of wild Sweet Peas are called ‘Quito’ and ‘Matucana’ simply because that is where they were collected. Both were collected by Prof. S.C. Harland around 1955 and ‘Quito’ was specifically described as having been collected from a garden. ‘Sicilian Pink’, also known as ‘Sicilian Fuchsia’, was found growing in the same spot in Peru as ‘Matucana’ and has no connection with Sicily. It was named by Harland in memory of Cupani. These are feral Sweet Peas which have become naturalized just as they have in many parts of the world to which Sweet Peas have been introduced.

Sweet Pea ‘Matucana’.

In 1965, J.F. Turral speculated that the Spanish took the wild Sweet Pea to South America while the Portuguese took the pink and white form to Ceylon. He contended:

it was the Moors in the Spanish peninsula, the best gardeners in mediaeval Europe, who developed it into a garden flower.

There is absolutely no evidence for involvement of the Moors and it is obvious from Turral’s writing that this is wistful speculation. But it led Peter Grayson in the 1990s to place the introduction by the Moors into cultivation at around 1450 and by the Portuguese into Ceylon in 1520. These dates are a fantasy based on acceptance of Turral’s speculation, although it is a nice idea to think that as invading armies marched across the mediaeval world, they made sure they took their prized Sweet Peas with them.

Sweet Pea ‘Cupani’.

THE COLOUR OF THE FIRST SWEET PEA

What colour was Cupani’s Sweet Pea? It is often described as ‘purple’, a description used by geneticists in the early part of the twentieth century to refer to what they quite clearly see as a bicolour. A 1939 paper states:

The purple wild Sweet Pea has the wings much paler and bluer than the standard.

There are many ‘wild type’ Sweet Peas available at present which have a maroon standard and violet wings: the descriptions vary but the colour does not vary significantly! It is inevitable that the original Sweet Pea contained the dominant genes for all factors and these frequently arise as throwbacks in seed batches. Grayson has suggested that Cupani selected and sent seeds of a more attractive form than the common wild type. The basis of this appears to be that the seeds sent in 1699 to Uvedale and Commelin were collected from plants grown by Cupani rather than plants growing in the wild. Varieties named ‘Matucana’ and ‘Cupani’ (or ‘Cupani’s Original’) are often sold as being the original Sweet Pea introduced in 1699, or even earlier when the Spanish invaded South America. The size and vigour of these varieties shows that they are twentieth-century throwbacks. In the National Collection, there are several accessions of ‘Matucana’ and ‘Cupani’ and there is more variation within each variety than there is difference between them. One form of ‘Matucana’ has a length of raceme and number of flowers typical of Spencer origin. ‘Cupani’ has all the qualities of an Eckford grandiflora rather than anything more primitive. The stock of L. odoratus originally collected in the wild in 1974 is much less vigorous and is smaller in all parts than ‘Matucana’ or ‘Cupani’, usually having just two flowers per raceme.

White flowers

Speculation that the original Sweet Pea was pink and white has already been discussed since this is the colour form thought to have originated in Sri Lanka. Rev. W.T. Hutchins in America and Bernard Jones in Britain were among those who have speculated that a white variety may have been the forerunner of the other two colours. This appears to have been based on early references to white blooms in both L. siculus and L. zeylanicus. For example, H.B. Rupp, writing in 1718, says of the Sweet Pea:

Sometimes it varies with a white flower.

Our understanding of the genetics and distribution of the genus are now such that this claim cannot be accepted. The situation is best summed up by the words of R.C. Punnett in 1925:

The wild Sweet Pea, as it occurs today in Sicily, is a purple bicolour with erect standard…. These experiments also shewed that we must regard the wild form as containing all the dominant characters hitherto recorded in the Sweet Pea, which is in accordance with the view that the cultivated forms have arisen by a series of losses of factors from type of the genetical constitution of the original wild species.

The genetic evidence supports the botanical and historical evidence of the Sweet Pea’s origins in Sicily and nowhere else. The colour of this type is variously described around the theme of a maroon and violet bicolour.

EARLY CULTIVATION IN ENGLAND

It would be easy to create a fantasy about the Sweet Pea being grown in England prior to 1699 that has as little substance as some of the above claims. Perhaps it was introduced by the Romans along with the many plants that we know they introduced? Perhaps it was brought home by returning crusaders but subsequently lost? It is conceivable that someone in England grew seeds and either failed to harvest fresh seed for its continuation or discarded it in contempt of its lack of medicinal or culinary properties, its dull colouring, small flowers and weak racemes needing support. There is no evidence to support such speculation: these are merely imagination and should be dismissed.

Sweet Pea ‘Painted Lady’ (C. Ball).

We believe that the Sweet Pea was introduced into England in 1699 and it appears to have been grown continually ever since, starting with Petiver’s account quoted earlier. In 1724, ‘sweet sented pease’ were offered for sale in his seed catalogue by Benjamin Townsend at the sign of the ‘Three Crowns and Naked Boy’, over against the new church in the Strand. (Pub names are just not as imaginative as they used to be.) In 1729, Henry Woodman of Chiswick, London sold 2oz. at 2 shillings.

Early mutations

The Sweet Pea’s high propensity to mutate must have been evident from an early date as new colours arose. Beal attributes the earliest reference to the first variety named ‘Painted Lady’ to the first edition of Miller’s work in 1731 but Dicks says it was the 1759 edition. The variety was simply another name for the pink and white form, L. zeylanicus, listed in 1737. We have also seen that the white form was known by 1718. Whatever records we have, in genetic terms, pink and white probably pre-dates white.

A catalogue of Robert Furber from the 1730s lists purple, white and ‘variegated or Painted Lady sweet-scented pea.’ In the eighteenth century, the flower was known to be variable from a very early time. Geneticists have shown that it only takes a single mutation in one factor to change the wild type flower colour into a pink and white bicolour. It takes just one more factor to be lost to change pink/white into pure white. Such changes have been observed in modern times. The white variety ‘Bramdean’ arose as a rogue in a previously fixed stock of a wild or feral variety collected at Anqua in Italy. There is no evidence of deliberate hybridization in the eighteenth century. Interesting mutations would have been selected and conserved and there may have been some accidental cross-pollination involved. By whatever means, slowly the number of varieties increased.

In 1775, Weston’s Flora Anglicana lists Lathyrus odoratus coccineus, the ‘Scarlet Sweet Pea.’ Thomas Barnes of Leeds sold seed of scarlet, white, ‘Painted Lady’ and purple to Edwin Lascelles Esq. of Harewood in 1782. This was not the bright scarlet colour that we know today, but was a deep rose or carmine colour.

W. Curtis (1788) said:

There is scarcely a plant more generally cultivated than the Sweet Pea…. Several varieties of this plant are enumerated by authors, but general cultivation extends to two only, the one with blossoms perfectly white, and the other white and rose-coloured, commonly called the Painted Lady Pea.

In 1793, a seedsman named John Mason of Fleet Street, London, catalogued and described five varieties: black, purple, scarlet, white and ‘Painted Lady’. A ‘black-purple’ is mentioned in 1800, presumably the same as Mason’s black. This is likely to be the drab form of wild type colour that can be seen for example in the variety ‘Purple Prince’ but may have been an early dark maroon. It would not be the dark maroon that is such a popular colour today. This did not exist a hundred years ago, when a common complaint about the dark maroon or black varieties was that they had too much ‘purple’ in them.

THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME ‘SWEET PEA’

The references to the Sweet Pea by Weston and Curtis are also notable because for most of the eighteenth century they were known as Sweet Scented Peas. The first use of the common name shortened to Sweet Pea is frequently and incorrectly attributed to Keats.

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings.

From ‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill’,

Keats 1816

Sweet Pea from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, 1788.

Sweet Pea ‘Princess of Wales’, introduced in 1885.

THE ADVANCE OF THE GRANDIFLORAS

Slowly the range of colours advanced. Martyn in 1807 describes the ‘New Painted Lady’ pea, with red standard and pink wings. A ‘striped’ Sweet Pea was first mentioned in 1817. The modern stripes first appeared in the 1920s. Prior to this, ‘striped’ flowers were what we now call ‘flaked’. It was not until 1837 that the first flaked Sweet Pea appeared in commerce and it was with these that James Carter of Holborn, London, started a business associated with the flower, continuing until well into the twentieth century. Carter also introduced the first ‘yellow’, as cream-coloured varieties have been called from time to time. Mrs Loudon’s Ladies’ Flower Garden of Ornamental Plants (1840) lists the purple wild type, ‘New Painted Lady’, ‘Old Painted Lady’, blue (‘which has the wings and keel a pale blue and the standard dark bluish purple’), and violet (‘which has the keel a pale violet, the wings a deep violet and the standard a dark reddish purple’).

In 1860, a wire-edged variety was introduced by Carter but raised by Major Trevor Clarke and named ‘Blue Edged’. It received a First Class Certificate (FCC) from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in 1883 under the name ‘Blue Hybrid’ and was claimed by Clarke to be a hybrid between a white variety and Lord Anson’s Pea, L. nervosus. It never bore any evidence of hybridity in vegetative parts and the claim must be regarded as spurious in the light of our current knowledge of the barriers to inter-specific hybridization in Lathyrus.

Although the colour range was increasing by the middle of the nineteenth century, there has been no indication that the habit and vigour of the plants was any different to the wild type, although it is reasonable to assume that some improvement may have taken place through unconscious or conscious selection. Mutation and accidental cross-pollination may have also played a role in this, providing improvements in vigour and capacity to photosynthesize which went unremarked. By small increments over many generations in the life cycle of an annual plant, some improvements can be expected. Between 1845 and 1849, Carter introduced ‘New Striped’ and ‘New Large Purple’ and this suggests that seedsmen had started to consciously improve the form and vigour of the plants.

Between 1860 and 1870, many new Sweet Peas were introduced, the result of increasing interest in the flower from commercial seedsmen in England and elsewhere in Europe. In 1867, ‘Scarlet Invincible’ became the first Sweet Pea to be recognized for award, receiving an FCC from the RHS. It was nearer carmine than a modern scarlet and remained popular for a long time. Varieties raised in Germany by Haage and Schmidt, such as ‘Crown Princess of Prussia’ and ‘Fairy Queen’, were introduced into Britain. But the range was still very limited and the old colour descriptions generally prevailed over variety names.

Sweet Pea mania arrives

After 1880, commercial interest in creating new Sweet Peas really went into overdrive from a wide variety of seedsmen, notably Henry Eckford and Thomas Laxton. From 1877, Thomas Laxton of Bedford began to improve Sweet Peas and in 1883, the same day Carter gained an FCC for ‘Invincible Striped’, Laxton secured a similar award for ‘Invincible Carmine’, said to be the result of crossing a red variety with a purple variety. ‘Invincible Carmine’ represents the earliest recorded result of cross-fertilization where the parents are known.

From 1883 onward, Laxton annually made many crosses. He produced many successful varieties. In addition, many of Laxton’s crosses resulted in varieties that for all practical purposes were duplicates of those being put on the market by Henry Eckford but, according to Eckford’s son:

Mr Laxton was too good a florist to create confusion by distributing similar varieties under different names and so his work was to a large extent discounted.

Henry Eckford was a tremendous self-publicist and is remembered as the father of the Sweet Pea. It is Henry Eckford whose name is most associated with the development of the Sweet Pea in the nineteenth century and who took it to its position as ‘Queen of the Annuals’. Eckford was a head gardener at Sandywell, Gloucestershire, when he first took interest in hybridizing Sweet Peas and later moved to Boreatton Park in Shropshire. His first cultivar was ‘Bronze Prince’, very popular and of good form and colour, for which he secured his first certificate on 8 August 1882. But he had not yet learned the ability to fully fix varieties and it broke up. This was a useful lesson, for Eckford never subsequently released a variety unless it was fully fixed. His early introductions were distributed by others but he left private service and set up his own business at Wem, Shropshire. Eckford considered his introductions were such an improvement on those which had gone before that he coined the term ‘grandiflora’ to describe them. This name has stuck for all old-fashioned or pre-Spencer Sweet Peas. Grandifloras are discussed further in the next chapter. Eckford produced very many varieties, especially during the 1890s and right up to his death in 1906, when his business was continued by his son John.

W. Atlee Burpee visits Henry Eckford at Wem, Shropshire.

THE BICENTENARY CELEBRATION OF 1900

There was by 1899 sufficient enthusiasm for Sweet Peas that the idea of celebrating the bicentenary of its introduction into England arose during an inspection of Sweet Peas at the trial grounds of Messrs Hurst and Sons in Kelvedon, Essex. The celebration consisted of an exhibition and conference held on 20–21 July 1900 at the Crystal Palace, London. Prior to this event, a meeting was arranged for 26 March 1900 by the bicentenary celebration organizing committee to create a London Sweet Pea Society. The meeting was invaded by Charles Curtis and Horace Wright who ‘put up a great bluff’ that a national society was in the process of being created and so those at the meeting formed the nucleus of the National Sweet Pea Society.

Charles Curtis and John Eckford presented a paper to the Bicentenary Celebration in which they state:

From being such a small flower of not over vigorous habit, the Sweet Pea has been developed to a point at which we wonder where the next decided improvement will come.

They did not have to wait long. The new society, which remains very active to this day, organized its first exhibition of Sweet Peas at the Royal Aquarium, now the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, on 25–26 July 1901. This was the occasion when Silas Cole, head gardener to Earl Spencer at Althorp, Northamptonshire, amazed everyone by displaying a bowl of pink Sweet Peas that were larger and frillier than anything that had previously been seen. They caused a sensation and were unanimously awarded a First Class Certificate. Cole named this new variety ‘Countess Spencer’ and large frilly Sweet Peas with an open keel have been known as Spencer type ever since.

The only known picture of Sweet Pea ‘Countess Spencer’, taken in 1904.

THE EDWARDIAN ERA

The revolutionary variety ‘Countess Spencer’ is no longer with us; in fact only one picture of it exists. The story goes that the seedsman Robert Sydenham bought the variety and sent it to California for bulking up but when the seed crop returned, the variety had broken up. Charles Curtis was present at the time and referred to ‘Countess Spencer’ as a sport of ‘Prima Donna’. Cole himself claimed to have created ‘Countess Spencer’ through hybridization but his account does not stand up to scrutiny by anyone with a simple understanding of the Mendelian inheritance that was then just becoming known to the world at large. Two other sports of ‘Prima Donna’ were reported at the same time, by Mr W.J. Unwin and by Henry Eckford.

On seeing ‘Countess Spencer’, W.J. Unwin exclaimed: ‘I have that variety at home’, but he did not release his form as ‘Gladys Unwin’ until 1904. It was ‘a brighter, lighter rose pink colour than ‘Countess Spencer’’. Although considered a little less wavy than ‘Countess Spencer’, ‘Gladys Unwin’ had the distinct advantage of being completely fixed and its reliability meant that it was at first far more popular than ‘Countess Spencer’.

The year following the introduction of Cole’s ‘Countess Spencer’, Mr Eckford put on the market a stock of ‘Countess Spencer’ raised at Wem which was practically fixed – over 90 per cent of it came true and remained true. This was reported to have been bought by Eckford from a Mr Viner of Frome, Somerset, who had initially named it ‘Nelly Viner’.

It seems extraordinary that such a startling new mutation could have arisen in three places at once. This has led some to pronounce divine intervention. There have been other instances of the apparently mysterious occurrence of significant new mutations in different places. Another example was the first dwarf variety ‘Cupid’ which was found in 1893 at Santa Clara, California, in a crop grown by C.C. Morse and Co. ‘Cupid’ had white flowers and arose as a sport in the white-flowered, tall-growing variety ‘Emily Henderson.’ Ernest Benary in Germany produced an identical variety at the same time and there were other reports of their existence. Does the Sweet Pea therefore have mystical qualities? It appears to me that in both these examples, mutation has occurred during the formation of a single seed pod and the seeds of that pod have been distributed widely to customers. Sadly we do not have enough information to confirm, for example, from where Cole, Unwin and Viner had obtained their seeds of ‘Prima Donna’; or where Morse and Benary obtained their seeds of ‘Emily Henderson’.

Cole introduced other Spencer varieties, sports of ‘Countess Spencer’. From these and the Unwin and Eckford introductions, much hybridization took place as Edwardian Britain was seized by a frenzy of interest in Sweet Peas. In 1911, the Daily Mail newspaper organized a competition for the best bunch of Sweet Peas to be received by post and they received 39,000 entries from people hoping to win the £1,000 first prize, an enormous sum in those days. During the ten years up to 1914, the Spencer type, Unwin type and grandiflora type all vied with each other for popularity but it was the Spencer type that would emerge after the Great War on account of its longer racemes and bigger, more wavy flowers. The modern era of Sweet Pea growing was about to begin.

Sweet Pea ‘White Cupid’.

CHAPTER 2

Types of Sweet Pea

The wonderful capacity for mutation displayed by the Sweet Pea has given modern gardeners a huge range of varieties from which to choose. My National Collection maintains around 1,000 varieties, each with their distinctive characteristics. In order to help us make sense of such diversity, humans like to categorize things. Frequently occurring forms of Sweet Pea have been grouped together as a ‘type’ to help us distinguish them from other forms. Any one named variety may in reality have characteristics from more than one of the types described below. Type names have also sometimes been used ambiguously in the past. The following remarks are therefore intended to help explain what is meant when these terms are encountered.

Sweet Pea ‘White Supreme’ (S. Cuttle).

SPENCER TYPE

The Sweet Peas most commonly encountered have a Spencer flower form. By this, we mean that they have large blooms, frilly (sometimes called ‘wavy’) petals, and an open keel. The ‘keel’ is explained in Chapter 3. This Spencer form is so common that it is frequently found in early-flowering, multiflora, non-tendril, dwarf and intermediate varieties. So a reference to ‘Spencer Sweet Peas’ usually has a narrower definition and refers to the tall, summer-flowering varieties that are so popular with British and Irish gardeners because of their long racemes with large wavy blooms in a very wide range of colours – and, of course, their delightful scent.

The Spencer type originated from ‘Countess Spencer’, a variety first seen in 1901, and from similar varieties, such as ‘Gladys Unwin’. When introduced, ‘Countess Spencer’ broke up into other colours and these became fixed, giving a small range of colours that could be crossed with each other to make new colour breaks. Further enlargement of the colour range was achieved in those early years by crossing with grandiflora varieties. Although Spencer flower characteristics are genetically recessive to the grandiflora type, a cross between a Spencer variety and a grandiflora variety should produce about 25 per cent of offspring with Spencer flower form.

Enhancement of the Spencer type

The Spencer type has been subject to intense hybridization during the twentieth century, which has led to varieties with significant hybrid vigour. On good soil, modern Spencer varieties can naturally grow to 2.1m (8ft) high and with excellent length of flower spikes. Much of this hybridization was driven by the demands of florists for cleaner, truer colours but it also caused a reduction in the range of colours available. Some colours found in early Spencer varieties were lost and, by the 1980s, most Spencer varieties available were self-coloured (i.e. all the petals were of uniform colour). Since then, considerable effort has gone into extending the range of colours. Pioneering work by the likes of Andrew Beane in Yorkshire and Keith Hammett in New Zealand, among others, means that the present-day gardener has a wonderful selection of varieties including those with striped, flaked and bicoloured flowers.

Modern Spencer varieties generally have four flowers per raceme (or flower spike) because this is the optimum number favoured by flower show exhibitors. Most of the hybridizing in recent decades to produce new varieties has been carried out by amateur growers with exhibiting in mind, but ordinary gardeners who grow for cut flowers generally prefer five flowers. The emphasis on breeding new varieties for exhibition has also placed a greater emphasis on size of blooms. Really attractive and reliable varieties, with perfect formation but medium sized blooms, can often be overlooked.

Sweet Pea ‘Charlie’s Angel’.

Size and vigour of Spencer type

It is generally considered that Spencer Sweet Peas are becoming altogether bigger as a result of intense hybridization. For example, in flower size, the best exhibition variety in a particular colour nowadays may have a standard that is 60mm across when fifty years ago the best exhibition variety in the same colour would have had a 55mm standard. In the 1920s, the equivalent variety would have had a 50mm standard. The opposite occurs in older varieties. A variety that was 55mm across when first introduced will lose hybrid vigour during decades of generations of seed production so that nowadays the same variety will be only 45–50mm across. It is not just flower size that is affected. Vigour of plant, length of flower spike and size of leaf are also affected. With this is a perception among older growers that modern varieties do not retain this exceptional vigour for as long. Leading varieties in their day, such as ‘Leamington’, would be at their best for a longer period. We now have a lot of Spencer varieties introduced each year that are identical in colour to an existing variety and only time spent growing them can tell whether or not they are an improvement.