NEMESIA
Family SCROPHULARIACEAE
Nemesia species
Annual
Colourful half-hardy annuals from South Africa.
Nemesia strumosa is the most noteworthy species, reaching
a height of one foot or more with three-inch lance-shaped
leaves and two-lipped flowers, of white, yellow
or purple with a bearded throat of yellow heavily
spotted.
Of the other species, Nemesia chamaedrifolia, twelve
inches, has pale pink flowers with spurs;
Nemesia floribunda, about the same height, bears spurred
pink in colour, on many-flowered racemes;
Nemesia versicolor, about nine inches high, has spurred
flowers usually two-coloured.
There are also dwarf and compact forms that are
invaluable for massed effect.
Seed is sown in gentle heat in March, and the
seedlings pricked off into boxes to be ready for
planting out in May.
Seed may also be sown out-of-doors in May to flower
in August and September.
Nemesias also are attractive pot plants if raised
from seed sown in August and potted into four-inch
pots at Michaelmas to flower in winter.
Propagate from seed.
The flowering season is from late June to Michaelmas.
Nemesia
Hardy Annual
Six to eighteen inches.
Flowers of various colours, July to October.
Nemesia floribunda was known to British gardens
many years ago, but the form Strumosa Suttonii
was only introduced from South Africa in 1888.
It is a valuable summer bedder, not difficult
to grow; is distinct in habit, and has a charming
range of colour, white, cream, pink, mauve, yellow,
orange, deep crimson, with many others mixed shades.
The flower is something like a small Mimulus,
with a broad lower lip, and a four-cleft crest
above it; the stems are stiff and branched, and
the leaves narrow and toothed.
Besides the ordinary
strain, which grows from a foot to eighteen inches
high, there is a dwarf or compact kind, not much
exceeding six inches.
This is free flowering,
but like most other dwarfs is apt to look squat
and dumpy.
The seed of Nemesia is a little capricious
in germinating; the best way to raise plants for
a summer display is to sow in boxes of light,
sandy soil in a moderate hot-bed about the middle
of March.
Keep the soil rather moist, prick out
the seedlings when large enough, harden judiciously,
and plant out in May.
A second sowing may be made
in boxes in the open in April, keeping in a shady
place and fairly moist; and in light, warm soils
the seed may be trusted to the open ground about
the first of May.
Plants from this sowing must
be thinned, but not transplanted, and will flower
in September until the autumn frosts.
In their
flowering quarters the taller kind should stand
ten inches apart; the dwarfs about six.
If well
grown in an open situation, they should require
no supports and little care beyond weeding and
occasional stirring of the soil.
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