The Gardeners' Chronicle says: "The celebrated French cultivator of the Gladiolus, M. Souchet, late gardener at the Imperial gardens at Fontainebleau, began to hydridize or fertilize for raising new varieties of the Gladiolus in the year 1834, and with the varieties thus obtained Mr. Kelway, in the year 1851, began fertilizing the Gladiolus gan-davensis, a hybrid raised from an imported species from Natal, called psittacinus, or Natalensis, and the seedlings produced by this hybridization formed the ground-work of the extensive stock, now numbering upwards of 2000 varieties, grown at Langport!"