CHAPTER VIII.
THE PELARGONIUM OR GERANIUM.
In making choice of a name for any of our friends that we have been accustomed to speak of as geraniums take care to look about you. If there are any botanists within hearing, say “pelargonium,” and take all the consequences. But if none of those exacting and fastidious gentry are in the field, speak of the plants as “geraniums,” and you will have the good fortune to be understood by the entire audience without a single exception. Botanists apply the term pelargonium to that section of the great family of cranes’-bills which have irregular or unsymmetrical corollas; those that have regular corollas being by them called geraniums. Thus, all our exhibition and bedding plants that are commonly known as geraniums, are classed by botanists as Pelargoniums because the top petals are larger than the others, and the flowers are, therefore, irregular or unsymmetrical.
The pelargoniums may be divided into two great sections. The first of these have leaves wrinkled and notched, and large flowers which are sometimes brilliantly self-coloured and in other cases are blotched or striped, or delicately edged with colour. These used to be called “pelargoniums” by the florist, and the term was a convenient one to distinguish them from those of the second section. These have leaves less wrinkled than those of the first section, and a considerable number have leaves that are nearly smooth and more or less round and flat, and a very large proportion have the leaves marked with a black or brown or red “zone.” These are the “horseshoe geraniums” of days gone by, the “zonals” of modern garden phraseology, and the “geraniums” of all mankind save and except the botanists. Each of these sections may be again subdivided. In the first we shall find “show,” “fancy,” “spotted,” and “forcing” pelargoniums. In the second we shall find “scarlet,” “nosegay,” “tricolor,” and “variegated” geraniums. It is fortunate for the writer that the reader will
