This section is from the book "The Gardener's Monthly And Horticulturist V28", by Thomas Meehan. See also: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long.
Is a flower any more beautiful for being double? Of course tastes differ, but I think not. True beauty in anything is dependent mainly on form; form being aided often by color. The common Chinese Wistaria with its pendent racemes of papilionaceous flowers, is indeed beautiful, and there is little to choose between the blue and the white. But when it comes to doubling the flowers - whatever it may be as a curiosity - as an object of beauty it is a step in the wrong direction.
The prime object of a flower is reproduction. Nothing is more interesting and beautiful than the various means employed to insure perfect fertilization. The hydrangea with part of the flowers large and showy to attract the insects to the insignificant perfect ones, the orchids with their many ways to lure the insects and prevent self-fertilization, the kalmias with their spring stamens that snap and throw the pollen when the corolla is sufficiently expanded, or oftener when a bee or bug disengages them, while in search of honey or pollen; these are beautiful adaptations of nature that her children may be fruitful.
In double flowers, all these are lost in the blind aim at multiplicity and complexity which are rarely ever beautiful. In the case of bedding plants and flowers intended to be made up, double flowers are sometimes excusable, for in that case the form of a group, as a whole, is the main object, and each flower loses much of its individuality in order to give unity to the group.
Now, dear reader, look at a double petunia, geranium, violet, or any of these monstrosities, and ask yourself if their beauty is enhanced in any way by being double. Little Silver, N. J.
 
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