Victor Lemoine: The Greatest Horticulturists of All Time

Plant Hybridist, Victor Lemoine

(Published in The Garden Magazine, May 1917)

MEASURED not alone by the number of novelties but also by their intrinsic value to the gardens of the world, Victor Lemoine, the great French nurseryman, deserves credit as the greatest plant breeder, “creator” if you will, that the world has ever seen. Not a person who grows plants in a garden but what at one time or another, if not always indeed, has handled something that was the product of this master craftsman.

His modest, retiring nature found a large share of its reward in the mere achievement of the results, yet for many years horticulturists looked forward eagerly to the announcements of novelties in the annual catalogue of this redoubtable nurseryman.

Very often other hybridist plant breeders, who have made for themselves reputations along special lines, devoted their time and energies to the development of one particular group of plants; but Victor Lemoine accomplished in fully a score of different lines, results that in each would have sufficed to build the reputation of any one man.

How many people to-day even have a ghost of an idea of the debt of reverence due to the memory of this transcendent genius? Elsewhere in this number of THE GARDEN MAGAZINE reference is casually made to the man’s achievements in Lilacs, and Deutzias, and Astilbes, and these are but typical instances of what he did in his little nursery at Nancy. 

Victor Lemoine came from a long line of descent of practical horticulturists. For generations, his ancestors have been gardeners and nurserymen. He was born at Belme, Lorrain, October 21, 1823. He died December 11, 1911, being then in his 89th year.

Victor Lemoine

After completing his studies at college and before establishing himself in the place which his name has largely helped to make famous, he devoted several years to traveling and working in the leading horticultural establishments of his time, according to the custom of the profession in the old world. At that time, Mr. Louis Van Houtte had a famous establishment in Ghent, Belgium, and part of the time Lemoine spent there.

It was in 1850 that he established himself in a very small way as a florist and gardener at Nancy where he earned the admiration and veneration of the craft the world over. And in his later years he was much honored by horticultural and scientific organizations of France and Europe, and he was the first foreigner to receive the Victorian Medal of Horticulture of the Royal Horticultural Society, and only a few weeks before his death the Massachusetts Horticultural Society honored itself by granting Lemoine the George R. White Medal of Honor.

In a short note such as this, it is quite impossible to even catalog the multitude of valuable productions and introductions of Victor Lemoine. It would require a space of several pages in small type! Has any other plant breeder, living or dead, produced a tithe of the permanent worth of this master craftsman?

Casual reference has already been made to one or two lines of his activity, and we should remember that he was concerned very largely in the modern Gladiolus, and to show still further diversity, reference need only be made to the Begonia Gloire de Loraine which alone is such a popular plant in its particular class that its absence would now be greatly missed. Sixty years of continuous plant production is in itself a wonderful record, and the work is still continued in the succeeding generation under his son, Emile.

It was in 1852 that the first mention of Lemoine’s work was found in the Revue Horticole—a double flowered Portulaca. Two years later, under the name of Gloire de Nancy, came the first double Potentilla, and at the same time the first Streptocarpus hybrids which later on were developed by another establishment into some of the most pleasing of greenhouse plants. It was about the same period that Lemoine turned his hand to Fuchsias and introduced many varieties, including the double flowered hybrid Solferino.

Work thus begun was continued without cessation, but the creation of hybrids and crossings was occasionally varied by the introduction into commerce of new species or varieties for which he was always on the lookout. Thus a white form of Spiraea callosa came in 1862; in 1866, Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora, and in the same year he produced and sent out the first genuine double-flowered Zonal Geranium, Gloire de Nancy.

In 1868 he began the introduction of his hybrid Weigelas, which have not been superceded to this day. It was in 1874 that the horticultural world was surprised by the first double tuberous Begonia, and this great genus in all its other branches has from time to time been greatly benefited by this one man’s work. Indeed without Lemoine the Begonia would probably never have ” arrived.” He introduced new perennial Phlox and the hybrid large-flowered Clematis in great number, including, more recently, the reddish-flowered Andre Leroy and others.

Space forbids anything like even a partial catalogue of achievements of which, however, a fairly complete list will be found in “Horticulture” December 23, 1911. Our purpose has been to show in a broad way how much we owe to Victor Lemoine. No mention has been made of the greenhouse plants and of the improvements of previous crosses which continued to pour out in such profusion from his nurseries.

During the last fifteen years of his life he devoted his energies to the improvement on Deutzias, Peonies, Hydrangeas, Weigelas, Gladiolus, Astilbes, Lilacs, Delphiniums, Pyre-thrums, Heucheras and Pentstemons; but in passing, mention must in justice be made to the fact that he worked also with Montbretias, Dahlias, Saxifrages, Chrysanthemums, Bush Honeysuckles, Spiraeas and Phloxes the results of which we all enjoy the year round.

Truly as we look back we are positively appalled at the immense volume of results, and again we ask: Has any other plant creator given us as much? L. B.

Clara Totah

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