Recently I’ve been looking at some plants from long ago and seeing if they’re still around or have been re-invented in recent years. I did some posts about this on my Plant Talk blog for Mr. Fothergill’s: one on striped snapdragons and another on frilly pansies and another on 'Ostrich Plume’ asters.

Then recently I came across the colored engraving (above left) of green-edged petunias and I thought: Pretty Much Picasso! Nothing new under the sun… The engraving is from a German book, Gartenflora, published in 1855, and Pretty Much Picasso (‘BHTUN31501’) was introduced, what six or seven years ago.

The engraving is captioned “garden variety of Petunia violacea” (P. violacea is now P. integrifolia) and looks to be a group of similar, but far from identical, green-edged seedlings. More variation among seedlings was accepted in Victorian times but, at the same time, plants like petunias were also propagated from cuttings which ensured that all the resulting plants were identical.

A hundred and fifty years ago petunias were often grown in conservatories or orangeries because the flowers were so easily damaged by rain; today’s varieties are far more resilient.

Later, growing petunias from cuttings went out of fashion for many many years until the Surfinia trailing types arrived from Japan twenty plus years ago. Now, petunias from both seed and cuttings are of course widely grown – and one such is Pretty Much Picasso, selected in California back in 2007.

But there are still some old petunias that have not yet re-appeared. The dark-veined form with a chocolate and white star pattern (above left) is captioned simply Petunia violacea in the Belgian book from 1867 in which this engraving appeared. But although some chocolate veined varieties, such as Designer Latte (‘Kerlatte’) and Designer Cappuccino (‘Kercappuccino’) from British breeder David Kerley, are now available the combination of dark veins plus a chocolate and white star seems not to have yet been re-invented.

It’s a different story with the frilly and rufffled petunias that were so popular in Victorian times and were available both from seed (below left) and from cuttings. But then, again, these too went out of fashion but were re-invented a few years ago by the British plant breeders Floranova as the seed-raised Frillytunia Series (‘Frillytunia Pink’, below right) in three colors. When these were first introduced they were often greeted as an innovation rather than a re-invention.

Casting an eye over the catalogs and books of the nineteenth century reveals more different petunia types that will, probably sooner rather than later, be re-invented and re-introduced – but with today’s weather resistance and consistency added in.