But even here there are monstrosities in the true sense. The asparagus or sweet potato stem occasionally broadens out into a ribbon, and it passes as an abnormity. The same thing takes place in the flower cluster of cockscomb (Celosia cristata), and if it failed to produce a strange fan-shaped and highly colored and crested top the owner would complain that her seed had given her only an inferior pigweed, and therefore not come true to name. The attractiveness of the cockscomb resides in the strange habit the plant has of broadening the upper end of the flower stalk out into a form that is truly monstrous. And this brings me to speak of a form that attracted my attention during the present season, samples of which are shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.—Monstrous Blossoms of Foxglove.
The striking feature of the specimens of foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) under consideration is the production of an enormous somewhat bell-shaped flower at the extremity of the long racemose inflorescence, and at a time when only a few of the lowermost blossoms upon the stem have opened. The normal digitalis flower has a large pendant purple corolla much spotted upon the middle lobe of the larger and lower lip. On the other hand, the truly monstrous flowers, two to three inches across, are borne terminally and are quite uniformly bell-shaped, with the lobes from twelve to fourteen and spotted evenly over all the surface. The four stamens of the normal flower have increased to twelve in three examined and to thirteen in another. These stamens are normal in size and situated upon the corolla tube, except that there is no indication of their being in long and short pairs.
The single pistil is many times enlarged in the monstrous blossom—in one instance two thirds of an inch in diameter for the ovary. Within the outer ovarian wall there was a circle of five petaloid pistils, some showing the placentæ and ovules intermixed with the pink and purplish petaloid expansions.
Within the circle above mentioned there was a second pistil, tipped like the original with petal-like lobes instead of a stigma. The column was found so closely built up that the parts would not separate, and a cross-section was made through it, which showed that the pistil had a greenish central stalk around which the ovarian cavities were scattered quite irregularly, all bearing numerous ovules. In the flowers with twelve stamens there were four tips to the stigma, and the eight cavities were to be distinguished in the ovary, although they were not arranged in any regular order and not uniform in size. In short, the transections of these resembled the seed cavities seen in a slice of a large tomato of the "trophy" or "ponderosa" type.
The florists' catalogues advertise in a few instances this "Digitalis monstrosa," and it is presumed that the specimens from which the engraving was made were from a packet of this "strain" of seed. As but a small percentage of the plants in the bed examined were monstrous, letters were addressed to some German growers of the seed, with questions as to this commercial monstrosity. One reply contained the statement that the form known as "monstrosa" had been in the market about ten years, and that about fifty per cent of the plants produce the strange terminal flowers. Another correspondent recalls the form in question as having been catalogued for more than forty years, and that it is described in a work upon gardening published in 1859, in which it states that the seed of this variety must only be gathered from the capsules of the monstrous flowers in order to preserve the abnormity. Concerning this last my correspondent said that it is all the same whether the seed is taken from the capsules of monstrous flowers or from the whole spike. Seed taken in this way will give from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent of the monstrous flowers, but the ratio varies from year to year.
There are some advantages to the floriculturist in the monstrous form as the first bloom in it is uppermost and very conspicuous, while in the normal form the blooms appear from below upward, and the drooping tip of the spike is the last to produce flowers. The case in hand is a remarkable deviation from the type in many ways, but most interesting of all is the fact that floriculturists have by selection developed a variety that, in a packet of a hundred seeds, is quite certain to give some plants of the type "monstrosa," which it bears as its trade name.