Their
beauty and highly interesting anomalous character has been the cause of
their being described many times, and nearly always as a novelty; they
have been recently re-introduced into horticulture as such, though they
were already cultivated before the middle of the last century. About
that time very good descriptions with plates were published in the
journal "Flora" by Vrolik, but afterwards they seem to have been
forgotten. The peloric variety of the foxglove always comes true from
seed, though in the strict sense of the word which we have chosen for
our discussion, it does not seem to be a constant and pure variety.
It is very interesting to compare old botanical books, or even old
drawings and engravings containing figures of anomalous plants. The
celebrated Pinacothec of Munich contains an old picture by Holbein
(1495-1543) representing St. Sebastian in a flower-garden. Of the plants
many are clearly recognizable, and among others there is one of the
"one-leaved" variety of the strawberry, which may still be met with in
botanical gardens. In the year 1671 a Dutch botanist, Abraham Munting
published [165] a large volume on garden-plants, containing a great
number of very good engravings. Most of them of course show normal
plants, but intermixed with these are varieties, that are still in
cultivation and therefore must be at least two centuries old.
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