Had the Franco-Prussian War not turned France upside down after 1870, Boucharlat would have been awarded the Legion of Honor, but this did not happen. There is no question of his importance in the French horticultural community. They mourned his death very sincerely.
Laurent’s younger brother was Jean Marie Boucharlat (1818–1903). He too worked in Lyon.
Ernest Calvat (1858–1910), Grenoble
The Calvat family was prominent in Grenoble. M. Calvat’s father, also Ernest Calvat, served as mayor from 1871 to 1873. The future chrysanthéemiste was born in 1858 and christened Jean Marie Ernest but was always known solely as Ernest. Calvat was definitely an amateur. He owned a successful glove factory, which allowed him to live well and devote himself to his flowers. Chrysanthemums were his principal interest. At one time he was president of the Horticultural Society of the Dauphinée, indicating his position in the horticultural hierarchy of his time. Calvat introduced dozens of significant new cultivars. His accomplishments were recorded in an obituary in Revue horticole.
Alfred Chantrier, Bayonne
Chantrier was gardener to a Monsieur Bocher and was active between 1885 and 1896. He ultimately introduced forty-five new cultivars, of which ‘Duchesse d’Orléans’ and ‘Candeur des Pyrenées’ were notable.
Anatole Cordonnier (1842–1920), Bailleul
Cordonnier wrote a short book and several articles in Revue horticole. He was extremely enthusiastic about chrysanthemums with very large blossoms. From the record, he seems to have bred only ten new cultivars, but his fascination with these flowers suggests that he may have bred others of which no records have been retained.
Simon Délaux (1840–1902), Toulouse
Délaux lived and worked in St. Martin de la Touche, near Toulouse. He was a major figure in the early chrysanthemum world and used intentional cross-fertilization most effectively. He introduced more new cultivars than anyone else. The great English horticultural writer William Robinson wrote Délaux’s obituary for The Garden in the most glowing terms. Robinson lamented the fact that though they had a very valuable correspondence for many years, he had never met Délaux in person.
He noted that Délaux’s work was held in very high esteem among English gardeners, as Calvat’s was to do later. Délaux’s work on the Japanese imports was of especial interest. Among his best-known cultivars were ‘Mme Berthier Rendatler’, ‘M Astory’, and ‘Japonais’. Délaux also worked with the early flowering types, which found many enthusiastic growers in England. There are numerous references to his new cultivars in the gardening magazines of the 1890s, listing extraordinarily good flowers. The fluffy incurved ‘Comte F. Lurani’, which blooms in October, received particular attention. It stood the test of being grown for several years, performing just as well three years after its introduction.
Monsieur Hoste (1820 [1823?]–1894), Monplaisir
No first name has come down to us. Hoste was born in Gand (also known as Ghent), Belgium, and moved to France. He established his nursery in rue de Dahlia in Monplaisir, naming the street himself. Hoste was among the earliest to cultivate chrysanthemums in France, and his work served to introduce the flower to the greater public. He seems to have retired and handed over his business to André Charmet, a fellow Belgian. Some of his cultivars are ‘Ami Jules Chrétien’ (c. 1890) and ‘Catros Gerarde’ (c. 1895).
Etienne Lacroix
Etienne Lacroix was a professional nurseryman whose most popular cultivars were ‘Parasol’, ‘Mlle. Lacroix’, ‘Flocon de Neige’, ‘Jeanne d’Arc’, and ‘Fabias de Mediana’.
Dr. Louis Lacroix, rue Lancefoc, Toulouse
Louis Lacroix was an amateur, making his living from a fireworks business. One of his chrysanthemum cultivars was ‘Viviand Morel’. He was said to have nine hundred varieties of plants in his garden, but these could not all have been chrysanthemums.
Emile Lebois, Livry, near Paris
Lebois worked in Livry, near Paris. As mentioned earlier, he was married to Captain Bernet’s niece. After his death, his widow maintained his work. At her request, a small committee from the horticultural society of Haute-Garonne in Toulouse visited her in 1873 to appraise how well she was carrying on her late husband’s business. They were impressed by her work in developing seven new cultivars.
One of the committee members was a Monsieur Pertuzès, the son of the young Pertuzès who had worked for Captain Bernet. The committee recommended Madame Lebois for an honorable mention in the annals of the society, noting that she burnished the firm’s reputation in a most worthy manner. Reporting on other visits, Pertuzès and his colleague Monsieur Marrouch complained about the confusion in chrysanthemum nomenclature that existed and suggested methods to combat this.
Louis-Jules Lemaire (1859–1925), 26 rue Friant, Paris
Louis-Jules Lemaire was Philippe Pelé’s grandson (see below). The last professional nurseryman to grow his own plants in Paris, Lemaire was known to be a master hybridizer. His two sons Louis and Paul worked in Bagneux but later moved to Saint Jean-de-Braye, near Orléans, in 1949. His granddaughter Paulette Lemaire collected as much information about her family and its work as she could, and she developed the Conservatoire National du Chrysanthème in Saint Jean-de-Braye to commemorate them all.
Victor Lemoine, rue du Montet 134, Nancy
Surprisingly little has been written about this most amazing of all the heroic hybridizers of the nineteenth century. Without his work, it is likely that garden centers as we know them might never have developed or would have come much later. An enormous proportion of the standard annuals, perennials, and flowering shrubs in commerce came from his nursery. If there is one plant with which his name is forever associated it is lilac, Syringa. Lemoine did not pay a great deal of attention to the chrysanthemum, but nevertheless introduced a respectable number of very good new cultivars.
Auguste Miellez, Esquermes les Lilles
Miellez was important because he worked quietly with plant crossing in the early 1830s while it still was considered to be a suspect activity and somewhat impious. Lemoine knew about him as a very young man and spent several months in his nursery learning the techniques. Miellez is perhaps best known for his roses.
Auguste Nonin (1856–1956), route de Paris, Châtillon-sur-Bagneux
Auguste Nonin inherited his father’s nursery in Châtillon at the early age of fifteen. His father, Emile Nonin, was killed in his own garden by a sentry during the Franco-Prussian War. His mother then ran the business and continued to rear her five children alone. Once Auguste married in 1880, he took over from her and started on his remarkable career as a developer of new plants.
Nonin was very observant and understood the conditions in which he had to work, the markets, and the world of competitions. As a young man he traveled widely, particularly to England, where his work on chrysanthemums was greatly appreciated. He won a Certificate of Merit at the London exhibition in 1905 for ‘Perle Chatillonnaise’, a large creamy-white blossom tinged with pink. ‘Coquette de Chatillon’, ‘Chatillon’, ‘Sarah Bernhardt’, ‘Président Truffaut’, ‘Président Loubert’, ‘Raymond Poincaré’, and ‘William Turner’ were among his most successful introductions. He was also decorated by the French government and served on many juries at flower shows. This record of success led to him being elected a vice president