I’m a genealogist, not a
gardener. There is a strained joke to be made about roots, branches, family
trees, cross-pollination and bad apples; but the pages of the magazine of the
Variegated Plant Group of the Hardy Plant Society of Great Britain (where this
article first appeared) are probably a better place for it than here. Thanks to
Ian Warden,
editor of The Sport (the magazine in
question), I am however enormously proud to have found an ancestor who left his
mark in several spheres of horticultural endeavour, not least the study of
variegation.
Symphytum officinale, Common Comfrey
in (L-R) its normal and variegated forms
When I started looking into my
family tree nearly 20 years ago, one of the first things I came across in a box
of papers was a note from a long dead aunt Emily to my recently deceased Uncle
John: “Your namesake was head gardener at the Tuilerie Gardens (until the coup
d’état). He came to England
bringing his wife (a French lady, whom I well remember), & his 2 children,
Alfred & Annie (Mrs Holborn).”
To cut a long story short, dear
old Aunt Emily got it wrong on virtually every count. My uncle’s namesake John Salter, a cousin of my great great grandfather’s, was not head gardener at the
Tuileries but proprietor of a thriving English-style garden nursery at Versailles.
(And Jane his wife, far from French, was born in Reading,
Berkshire.) John’s father, a cheesemonger, left money in
his will for his children to be apprenticed in the trades of their choice.
John chose horticulture, but quite what took him in 1838 to practice his art in French soil remains a
mystery. Perhaps the global reputation of English gardens contributed to
his success there.
He regularly won medals at the Versailles
spring and autumn exhibitions, notably for his dahlias and chrysanthemums. Two
of his most successful varieties, Annie Salter (named after his daughter) and
Queen of England, both introduced at Versailles
in 1847, were still listed in the National Chrysanthemum Society Register over
110 years later. John Salter published his seminal work, The Chrysanthemum: Its
History And Culture, in 1865. Original copies complete with their fine colour
plates fetch hundreds of pounds now; but it is still available today in a black
and white facsimile edition, a measure of its continuing authority.
Achimenes picta
as pictured in 1845 by Van Houtte
Of more direct interest to
readers of The Sport is the excited headline from the Revue Horticole (Journal
des Jardiniers et Amateurs) in 1844. In translation:
FLOWERING OF ACHIMENES PICTA.
Achimenes picta, a
new species, will flower for the first time, before the end of September, at
the premises of Mister Salter of Versailles
(32, Picardie Avenue).
Achimenes picta (Benth. ex Hook)
has many modern synonyms – Giesleria picta, Tydaea picta, Diastema pictum, D.
vexans, Kohleria amablis var bogotensis. It’s a beautiful flower in trumpet
form, the upper half orange-red, the lower half yellow with bold vertical lines
of orange-red dots. The leaves, rising from dark red stems, are variegated:
deep green, with a silver-grey shading spreading from the midrib and the veins.
The earliest illustrations of it which I’ve been able to find are Paxton’s of
1846 and Van Houtte’s of 1845. So in 1844, John Salter’s successful blooms of
this Mexican native must have been among the very earliest seen in Europe.
Was A. picta Salter’s first brush with variegation? It certainly wasn’t his
last.
Perhaps the royalist tendencies
indicated by his choice of name for a new Chrysanthemum – Queen of England – were
the reason for his hasty departure from France
in 1848. When the French King Louis Phillipe was deposed in a coup d’état that
year, John was forced to return with his family to his native Hammersmith.
There, in William Street he
and his son Alfred established a new business, defiantly named the Versailles
Nursery. (Indeed, he subsequently created varieties of Pyrethrum and
Chrysanthemum both called Versailles Defiance.)
Chrysanthemums Versailles Defiance (purple)
and (L-R) La Sapojon, La Ruche and Golden Drop
by C.T. Rosenberg, 1852
The new nursery flourished as the
old one had. Over the next twenty years his annual display became “an
established floral tradition of the metropolis, for it is a show of no mean
order. Year by year it becomes more extensive, and at the same time more varied
in its details. No description we can give will do due justice to this
admirable winter-garden, when seen about the second week in November, just as
autumn is merging into winter; and when "The flush of the landscape is
o'er, The brown leaves are shed on the way".” (This description is from a
feature on the 1868 event in The Gardener
magazine.)
As a prolific breeder of new
varieties Salter was intensely interested in, and acutely sensitive to,
variations in leaf and bud. Given his wide reputation, it is unsurprising that
another enthusiast for the process of variation should have joined in a
correspondence with him. Who, you may ask, could possibly be interested in the
variations of species? Find out in Part 2!
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