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To Gardeners’ Chronicle   [after 28 February 1857]1

As you have noticed hybrid Dianths,2 you may like to hear that the summer before last I fertilised a poor single pale red Carnation with the pollen of a crimson Spanish Pink; and likewise a Spanish Pink with the pollen of the same Carnation.3 I got seed from both crosses in fair number; namely, 77 seed from two pods of the Spanish Pink, and raised plenty of seedlings. In the eyes of a florist they would be, I presume, quite worthless from their straggling habit; but they were showy, and like most hybrids produced during a long time an extraordinary abundance of flowers. They varied somewhat in colour, but in no other respect; and one variety was of a really beautiful pale crimson. Taken in a mass there was no difference between the reciprocal crosses. Not one plant of either lot set a single seed. One plant came up identical with the Spanish Pink; no doubt owing to a few grains of the pollen of the Spanish Pink not having been removed; for Gærtner has shown that this is sometimes the result when a flower is fertilised with mixed pollen.4 I may add that Gærtner raised many hybrids between various species of Dianthus. C. Darwin, Down, Bromley, Kent.

1
Dated on the basis that the letter was written in response to an item published in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, 28 February 1857, p. 132 (see n. 2, below).
2
Gardeners’ Chronicle, 28 February 1857, p. 132, described two hybrid Dianthus plants with quite different flowers that were believed to have grown from seeds from the same seed-capsule.
3
CD also carried out hybridising experiments on wild Dianthus caryophyllus in the summer of 1855 (see Correspondence vol. 5, letter to J. S. Henslow, 11 July [1855]).
4
Gärtner 1849.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2061,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2061