CARNATION Caryo pliyllus, family Caryophyl laceae), a garden flower, a native of southern Europe, but occa sionally found in an apparently wild state in England. It is held in high estimation for the beauty and the delightful fragrance of its blossoms. The varieties are numerous, and are ranged under three groups, called bizarres, flakes and picotees.
The true carnations, as distin guished from picotees, are those which have the colours arranged in longitudinal stripes or bars of variable width on each petal, the ground colour being white. The bizarres are those in which stripes of two distinct colours occur on the white ground, and it is on the purity of the white ground and the clearness and evenness of the striping that the technical merit of each variety rests. The flakes have stripes of only one colour on the white ground. The selfs, those showing one colour only, as white, yellow, crimson, purple, etc., are commonly called cloves.
The picotee has the petals laced instead of striped with a distinct colour. The "winter flowering" or "perpetual" race is remarkable for the charming delicacy and colouring of the blossoms and for the length of the flower-stalks. This enables them to be used dur ing the dullest months of the year for floral decorations. These varieties are propagated by layers or cuttings or "pipings." "Marguerite" carnations are remarkable for their beautifully fringed blossoms. They are easily raised from seeds. "Jacks" are seedling carnations with single flowers of no great value or beauty.
Carnations are usually propagated by "layering" the non-flower ing shoots about the second or third week in July, in the open air. The soil for carnations and picotees should be a good turfy loam, as fibrous as it can be obtained; to four parts of this add one part of rotten manure and one of leaf-mould, with sufficient sharp sand to keep it loose.