Curious experiments have been made with hyacinths.
Two different bulbs are to be chosen, blue and white, for instance. Cut them perpendicularly down nearly through the middle, but being careful to avoid cutting into their central shoots (i.e. the future flower-stalk), then join together the two larger halves containing the flower-shoot, thus making one bulb of them, so that the two flowers should appear as arising from one bulb. Then, with a little moss wound round the closed joins, the made-up bulb may be put into the earth like any other. This usually results in producing two stems stuck together back to back, with one skin around them both apparently; and on one side comes out white flowers, on the other red or blue. Sometimes the colours get mixed, the colour of one flower shaded with that of the other, very rarely do the stems grow separate.
None of these experiments seem to explain how it is that a single hyacinth can produce a double (by seed raising), though perhaps in ten thousand seeds only two or three will come up double flowered; nor how it is that the double can be redoubled (through seed), and that once redoubled, the bulb is constant in giving off young bulbs with double flowers, which never again degenerate into single; nor will a single, in its offshoots, ever become a double hyacinth.
Chapter VI.—General
In the cultivation of hyacinths it is impossible to keep to any fixed rule. Not only must every country and climate make its own, but every hyacinth has its own ways and customs, its own special qualities and characteristics. The most distinguished of their species exact a great deal of attention, care, and management.
“François Ist” finds great difficulty in producing offshoots, and great care has to be taken of the young bulb, but when once arrived at full growth it is not as subject to disease of various kinds as are other bulbs, and it does not die easily. It is the only bulb that still continued to command a high price twenty-five years after its first appearance; 100 florins were paid for a single bulb.
“Rien ne me Surpasse” is one of the most perfect blue, but it has such wretched, weak, faded, even crumpled leaves, one would think the poor thing was ill, but notwithstanding it produces a handsome, healthy-looking flower.
“Passe non plus ultra” also looks very deplorable as to its leaves, they seem hardly able to hold up, and remain lying flat upon the ground, though quite green and well.
On the other hand, “Og Roi de Basan” shoots up its leaves so straight and tall, and so large, that they seem quite out of proportion to others, and the flower is an extraordinary height, overtopping all the rest. The “Theatre-Italien” is a good red, but it grows very short, and comes out before its leaves, so that its head may be nipped by the frost.
“Marquise de Bonnac” is a very delicate colour, but it gives way in the stem before the flower is fully out. The stems seems to fade and dry up, and the flower falls on its face, and this is a very tiresome habit. But it does not seem to damage the bulb, which flowers regularly every year, notwithstanding these little accidents. A famous florist told me it was because it had a bad circulation, and the sap hung on the sides of the bulb, instead of running up the stalk. “Alcibiades” and “Beau-regard” are also subject to such accidents; but they can be prevented by planting the bulbs in November, that is, a month later than other sorts. These kinds give off a number of young bulbs. The bulbs which multiply very little and slowly have generally better constitutions, and do not perish so easily. White, with red, purple, or violet hearts are very subject to decay. “Gloria Florum Suprema” perishes easily, and its offshoots perish with it, and this is peculiar to this hyacinth, for most of those that perish easily also multiply quickly. The kind that multiply fast are generally furnished with more roots than the others.