The Dianthus Family
Dianthuses belong to the Family Caryophyllaceae
and the Order Caryophyllales, which makes them botanically
related not only to the cottage garden stalwarts
baby's-breath, thrift and Maltese cross, but more
distantly to good old amaranth! The genus was named
Dianthus ("divine flower") by Carolus
Linnaeus, the great 18th century Swedish botanist,
who knew a good thing when he saw it. North America
has no native dianthuses except the Alaskan Dianthus
repens, a tiny tundra-grower. But carnations, pinks
and sweet Williams came to the Colonies with the
earliest English, French and Dutch settlers.
There are six general classes of dianthus suitable
for the home garden:
1) Carnations (Dianthus Caryophyllus Group) include
hardy perennial border carnations and frost-tender
perpetual-flowering carnations. The plants can range
in height, depending on the cultivar, from six inches
to several feet. They bear multi-petaled (occasionally
single) flowers, usually large-2" and more
across-with jagged edges, several to a stem. Many
types are clove-scented; most boast curly lance-leaved
blue-green foliage. Border carnations bloom in mid-summer
and occasionally into the fall. Perpetual-flowering
carnations thrive in breezy, frost-free climates
and greenhouses, blooming most of the year 'round
if fertilized and dead-headed.
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Dianthus Caryophyllus
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The oldest carnations bore fragrant dainty five-petaled
reddish, pinkish or white flowers. Traveling from
the East along caravan routes, by the 12th century
they had reached Tunis in North Africa; Crusaders
brought them thence into France and England. The
medieval French called them gelofres, a corruption
of caryophyllus; medieval poet Chaucer called them
"sops in wine," because they were used
to spice drinks and wine sauces. By the late 1500s,
gelofres had passed into English as "gilloflowers"
(spelled variously but always pronounced with an
initial J sound). Gilloflowers were among the most
popular plants for containers, and by 1675, there
were 370 cultivars growing in England. "Carnation"
originally referred to a specific kind of gilloflower;
now it has come to refer to the whole D. Caryophyllus
group.
2) Hardy perennial cottage pinks are derived mostly
from D. plumarius, the "feathery pink."
The old-fashioned types usually possess daintily
toothed petals, grassy leaves, and clove scent.
They bloom in May or June and occasionally into
fall if grown cool and dead-headed. The hybrid Allwood
perpetual-flowering pinks are a cross between pinks
and carnations and can bloom off and on all summer.
"Pink" is probably derived from the German
word Pinksten, Pentecost, the period in the Christian
calendar around which the flowers were said to bloom.
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Dianthus plumarius Wild Pink |
Our color word "pink" is named for the
plant, not the other way around. Other 16th century
names for them were "lesser gilloflowers"
and "small honesties," my favorite. England
had a number of native pinks, and D. plumarius arrived
in Britain from Europe before the 16th century.
Pinks were always less fashionable than carnations,
but like carnations they were the subject of intense
breeding efforts in the 18th and 19th centuries.
3) Hardy perennial rockery pinks tend to be very
compact and low-growing, forming prickly cushions
and small serrated flowers beginning in spring.
Most evolved under high mountain conditions. Chief
among them are the alpine pink (D. alpinus), the
Cheddar pink (D. gratiannopolitanus) and their hybrids.
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Dianthus alpinus
'Joans Blood' |
4) Modern garden clusterheads include sweet Williams
(D. barbatus), which can be annual, perennial or
biennial. In summer they bear single or double white,
pink, salmon, red, or deep scarlet flowers in flat
clustered heads. Often the flowers possess distinct
zones of contrasting color.
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Dianthus barbatus Sweet
William
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Sweet Williams may have come to England from Germany.
They were favorites of England's King Henry VIII,
who took time off from his wiving to order bundles
of sweet William roots for his new gardens at Hampton
Court. The earliest cultivars seem to have been
dwarf, like the modern cultivar 'Wee Willie,' with
little scent. They were worn by partygoers in garlands
and were the Tudor equivalent of corsages.
5) "Annual" pinks include the China pinks,
D. chinensis, those chubby, soft-leaved, scentless
cuties ubiquitous in nurseries and bedding schemes.
They are seldom fragrant, but they are very colorful
and bloom all summer.
6) There are also many fragrant miscellaneous species
worthy of note, most of which bloom in the spring.
My favorites are D. arenarius (the Finnish sand
pink), D. gallicus (the wild French pink), D. monspessulanus
(the Montpelier pink), D. petraeus 'Noeanus,' (Noe's
pink), and D. superbus (the superb pink). D. superbus
was crossed with sweet Wivelsfield, a hybrid sweet
William, to create Dianthus 'Rainbow Loveliness'
(aka 'Loveliness Strain'), a jasmine-scented pink
with luxurious deeply-cut petals.
Growing Dianthuses
Start your dianthus seeds indoors in early February,
scattering them thinly on the surface of a sterile,
barely moist commercial potting medium, tamped down
so that it lies level in the flat or cell-pack.
Barely cover the seeds with planting medium. Cover
the flat with a sheet of glass or plastic to hold
in the moisture and place it in a bright spot until
the seeds germinate, which takes place in about
two weeks. Bottom heat hastens germination markedly.
Once your seeds have sprouted, take them off bottom
heat and move them to your coolest, sunniest room
(I grow mine two inches under ordinary fluorescents
fitted with sophisticated aluminum foil light-amplifying
reflectors.) Keep just moist and watch for damping
off. When your seedlings are three inches tall,
transplant them into individual pots one size larger
than the space they've been growing in. Dianthuses
don't mind crowding.
Fertilize weekly with a very low nitrogen organic,
such as 1 tablespoon liquid seaweed per gallon of
water. If your seedlings get very leggy, with long
spaces between the leaf nodes, cut back on the nitrogen
and give them better light. Keep your insecticidal
soap handy for the inevitable spider mites and aphids.
When your daytime temperatures rise consistently
above freezing, take your dianthuses outside to
begin hardening off. I stick 'em in my coldframe
during the day and bring 'em in at night for a week,
then just leave 'em in the frame till planting time
(they tend to be very cold tolerant). In my mountain
clime, where the sun gets strong early, in the afternoon
I often have to shade young coldframed seedlings
to keep them from wilting.
In three to four months from sowing, your dianthuses
will be ready for transplanting into the garden
or their season containers. Choose a sunny well-drained
site. If your backyard is dense clay, like mine,
a month to two weeks before your dianthuses are
due to go in the ground, dig a foot-wide trench
where the plants are to grow. Remove the clay to
a depth of one foot. Loosen the clay at the bottom
of the trench, then sprinkle in the trench a light
application of dried kelp meal (for micronutrients)
and nitrogen-rich acidifying cottonseed meal. (If
your garden is acid, substitute bone meal for the
cottonseed meal and dust the trench with agricultural
lime.)
Mix 1/3 of the clay removed from the trench with
an equal volume of sieved compost (I like mushroom
compost) and an equal volume of sand, gravel or
perlite for drainage. Backfill the trench, rake
the bed smooth, and let it all rest until your plants
are ready for the outside world.
When your plants are hardened off, set them no
more deeply in the ground than they were in their
original containers (this is crucial; bury the crown
of a dianthus and you ensure its death). Water in
the seedlings with a solution of liquid seaweed
and fish emulsion, watching carefully to make sure
the liquid sinks quickly into the soil (indicating
good drainage) instead of puddling on the surface
(indicating bad drainage and the need for lots more
sand or gravel). Fertilize monthly for the duration
of the growing season. If it rains where you live
(here in Santa Fe we only get 15" a year),
you can mulch your plants with small stones, coarse
gravel, or sand to keep their stems and leaves off
the moist earth (if you use a soaker hose like I
do, remember to lay it before you mulch).
But do not mulch dianthuses with compost, especially
in winter. Crown rot, the chief killer of pinks
in these United States, loves moist mulch. Other
than crown rot, my plants are essentially disease
free, and other than grasshoppers or the occasional
slug or aphid, my plants are essentially pest-free,
too.
Copyright 2002, Rand B. Lee
(For a full list of dianthus seed and plant
sources, wholesale or retail, send a self-addressed
stamped envelope to Dianthus List, c/o Rand Lee,
PO Box 22232, Santa Fe, NM, 87502-2232.)
Rand B. Lee is the President of the North American
Cottage Garden Society/North American Dianthus Society.
He is also a contributor to major gardening magazines
in the US, and is the author of "Pleasures
of the Cottage Garden."
To join the NACGS/NADS:
Ms. Denis Garrett
Membership Secretary
NACGS/NADS, Inc.
PO Box 188
Pegram TN 37143-0188
Dues: 1 yr $18 (US), $20 (Canada/Mexico), $24 (elsewhere)
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