MIGNONETTE or MIGNONNETTE (i.e., "little darl ing"), the name given to a popular garden flower, Reseda odorata (family Resedaceae), highly esteemed for its delicate but delicious perfume. The mignonette is generally regarded as an annual and is a plant of diffuse decumbent twiggy habit, scarcely reaching a foot in height, clothed with bluntish lanceolate entire or three lobed leaves, and bearing longish spikes—technically racemes— of rather insignificant flowers at the ends of the numerous branches and branchlets. The plant thus naturally assumes the form of a low dense mass of soft green foliage studded over freely with the racemes of flowers, the latter unobtrusive and likely to be over looked until their diffused fragrance compels attention. It is probably a native of north Africa and was sent to England from Paris in 1742; and i o years later it appears to have been sent from Leiden to Philip Miller at Chelsea. The small six-petalled flowers are somewhat curious in structure: the two upper petals are larger, concave, and furnished at the back with a tuft of club shaped filaments, which gives them the appearance of being deeply incised, while the two lowest petals are much smaller and undivided; the most conspicuous part consists of the anthers, which are numerous and of a brownish red, giving the tone of colour to the inflorescence. In the varieties named Golden Queen and Golden Machet the anthers have a decided tint of orange-yellow, which imparts a brighter golden hue to the plants when in blossom. A handsome proliferous or double-flowered va
riety has also been obtained, which is a very useful decorative plant, though only to be propagated by cuttings; the double white flowers grow in large massive panicles (proliferous racemes), and are equally fragrant with those of the ordinary forms.
Though practically an annual in Great Britain, as already noted, since it flowers abundantly the first season, and is destroyed by the autumnal frosts, and though recorded as being annual in its native habitat by Desfontaines in the Flora Atlantica, the mignon ette, like many other plants treated in England as annuals, will continue to grow on if kept in a suitable temperature. Moreover, the life of this and certain other plants of this semi-annual char acter may be prolonged into a second season if their flowering and seeding are prevented. The young plants are grown under glass, and their flowering prevented by nipping off the blooming tips of the shoots, so that they continue their vegetative growth into the second season.
In classifying the odours given off by plants Rimmel ranks the mignonette in the class of which he makes the violet the type; and Fee adopts the same view, referring it to his class of "iosmoids." The genus Reseda contains about 55 species, natives of Europe and west Asia. R. luteola, commonly called dyer's-weed or weld, yields a valuable yellow dye. R. alba is a fine biennial about 2 ft. high, with erect spikes of whitish flowers.