In 1891, a statistically minded staff writer at Revue horticole had the happy idea of counting how many cultivars each of the English and French chrysanthemum breeders had introduced by that time. Simon Délaux of Toulouse led with 431 cultivars, then came Auguste de Reydellet, 229, and Louis Lacroix, 202. Fourth place was taken by the Englishman Smith, with 136. The author concluded by saying that in the aggregate the top three men had introduced more cultivars than all the Englishmen combined, so there!
James Morton wondered why there was no chrysanthemum society in France at the end of the nineteenth century. He asked Victor Lemoine about it and received the following reply, dated July 9, 1890:
We have no chrysanthemum society in France, but the numerous horticultural societies in our country are much interested in chrysanthemums, and nearly every one has a chrysanthemum show at the proper season. Pot-grown plants are generally exhibited; cut flowers in small quantities only. Here we do not grow the specimens for exhibition, as the practice is in England and America.
We do not care for the enormous flowers that English florists obtain, or huge plants with only a few blooms upon them. Here the plants are treated to give the largest number of blooms, and in the most natural way. New varieties of chrysanthemums are not very largely produced in France, except in the southern portions. Here in Nancy we have a severe climate, and it is nearly impossible to get seeds of the double varieties. Personally, we have sent out some good novelties, but the seed that yielded them was not our own. There is no country where there is so large a quantity of novelties raised annually as in France. For instance, this year, Simon Delaux, of Toulouse, offers 24 new varieties of his own production; M. de Reydellet, of Valence, 18 novelties; M. Louis Lacroix, [of Paris,] 25 varieties; M. Rozain Boucharlat, of Lyons, 14 novelties; M. Host, of Lyons, 7 novelties; M. Santel, of Salon, near Marseilles, 12 novelties; besides a number raised by Etienne Lacroix, M. Bernard, Pertuzes and Audriguier, of Toulouse, and others. Over two hundred novelties are annually produced in the south of France, principally of the Japanese and Chinese forms.
Charles Baltet (d. 1907), Troyes
Charles Baltet’s father had founded a very successful nursery in Troyes. A nurseryman and horticulturist, Charles fils wrote The Art of Grafting. He and his father introduced new cultivars of many flowers widely in circulation, among them chrysanthemums. His obituary appeared in Revue horticole in 1908 (p. 567).
Captain Marc Bernet (1775–1855), Toulouse
Captain Marc Bernet occupies a special place in this part of the story. He had been born in Toulouse and retired there after a career in the French Army. Bernet was the first European to collect chrysanthemum seed successfully. This gave him the idea of creating new varieties. In 1827, he introduced the handsome violet-colored ‘Grand Napoleon’.
Bernet handed over many of the daily tasks to his seventeen-year-old gardener, Dominique Pertuzès, and continued to introduce new varieties for many years. Eventually Pertuzès went into business for himself. Alas, he and his son François both later competed with Captain Bernet, as did many others in Toulouse.
At first, Bernet only had about thirty seeds, but in the later 1830s and the 1840s he could plant as many as three hundred seeds. He was ruthless in selecting strong and reliable seedlings from his crosses. The names of some of his early cultivars were recorded: ‘Rose Croix’, ‘Duc d’Albuféra’, ‘Annibal’, ‘Maréchal Maison’, ‘Reine Blanche’, ‘George Sand’ (a little daring for a provincial captain), ‘Baronne de Staël’, ‘Princesse Pauline’, and about twenty others.
Captain Marc Bernet.
Reproduced by permission of Chronica Horticulturae
Bernet became rather puffed up over his success but can be forgiven, as it was a triumphant achievement. He also had every reason to be annoyed by other people passing off his flowers as their own and selling them to make money. At first he had been very generous and shared his results with many horticulturists, but because there was no law of copyright at the time and no one even thought about patenting living things, there was no official way to safeguard his plants. He had to protect his ideas and work himself. One person he trusted was his niece’s husband, Emile Lebois, and only Emile was allowed to grow his new cultivars. Bernet sometimes wrote under the pseudonym “Dr. Clos.” He was also known as the Chevalier Bernet, for the decoration he received.
Emile Lebois later left Toulouse, moved to Paris, and started a new chrysanthemum business. He shared the bounty with three other upright men: Auguste Miellez in Lille, John Salter in Versailles, and Philippe Pelé in Paris. In 1854, Pelé introduced the first successful line of dwarf pompon chrysanthemums.
Captain Pierre-Louis Blancard.
Reproduced by permission of Chronica Horticulturae
Pierre-Louis Blancard (1741–1826), Marseilles
Captain Blancard came from an old Marseilles family. He was born and died in the city. Blancard went to sea very young with his father and despite a rather attenuated education became interested in commerce and geography. In 1813, he wrote a brief treatise, Manual on the Commerce of the Indies and China, which was published for the first time by the Geographical Society of Marseilles in 1910, almost a century later. After retirement he joined the Agricultural Council in Marseilles.
Once he obtained his captain’s certificate, the merchant family of Audibert employed him in their shipping line. His first trading voyage for the Audiberts was in 1770 to the Île-de-France (now Mauritius). The ship left from the port of Brest and returned there two years later. No one was surprised by 22 sailors dying of scurvy while they were at sea, although English sailors were already being protected by the use of lime juice.
On the fifth voyage, leaving Marseilles in 1787 and lasting almost three years, he sailed to the Île Bourbon in the Indian Ocean (now Réunion), Bombay (now Mumbai), the Maldives, Sumatra, and Singapore. His next move was to go to China. He found a pilot on the island of Wampoa who took the ship to Canton. Almost the first thing he did there was to buy half a dozen chrysanthemum plants.
The return journey took fifteen months, and only three of the plants survived. He acclimatized the survivors in his garden in Aubagne, Marseilles. One of them, which was tall and purple, became known afterward as ‘Old Purple’.
Blancard made a similar trip two years later, in 1791. The French Revolution had broken out while he was away on the fifth voyage, and perhaps he felt happier being at sea a little longer. For all its hazards, the sea was a bit more secure than the unpredictable events of the revolution.
Blancard’s voyages were documented in considerable detail, and the records are in the archives in Marseilles. Many years later, his granddaughters, who lived in England, were found to be in extreme penury. Charitable members of the National Chrysanthemum Society of England took up a collection to help alleviate their distress. The city of Marseilles named one of its main streets Promenade Blancard, and a small alleyway is also named for him in the city; his house has had a plaque on it since 1938.
François Bonamy et Frères, Toulouse
The Bonamy brothers were landscapers and nurserymen in the Place Dupuy, Toulouse. In about 1850 they developed the miniature anemone class of chrysanthemum: ‘Eucharis’, ‘Medee’, and ‘Thisbe’ are examples.
A. Bonnefous, Moissac
Monsieur Bonnefous was a gardener at the Jardin de Landerose in Moissac. About fifty cultivars of chrysanthemum