1877.J 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



293 



for the completion of which no expense was 

 spared, but it arrived dead. It may, perhaps, be 

 in the collections of other enterprising American 

 tree lovers, but we have not heard of it. To 

 draw attention again to it, we give the following, 

 which has recently appeared in the Garden: 



We have received from Mr. John Luscombe, 

 of Combe Royal, South Devon, a very beautiful 

 specimen of a tree which is likely to prove a 

 very desirable addition to our gardens. This is 

 Idesia polycarpa, a Japanese tree, which was 

 not known to science until 1866, when it was 

 described by the Russian botanist Maximowicz, 

 who met with it in cultivation at Nipon and 

 Yedo, in Japan, and ascertained that it was a 

 native of the island Kiusiu, at the foot of a 

 mountain called Hikosan. Mr. Luscombe des- 

 cribes it as a handsome tree-like spreading 

 shrub, with fine foliage; but, according to Pro- 

 fessor Maximowicz, it attained in Japan the 

 dimensions of a large tree. The leaves in the 

 specimen before us are irregularly serrate, acu- 

 minate, very slightly cordate at the base, the 

 larger ones abovit 6 in. across, bright green 

 above, whitish or almost glaucous beneath, 

 with five prominent branching nerves, which 

 are reddish towards the base; the leaves are 

 borne on red petioles about their own length. 

 The flowers are dioecious; the males, which Mr. 

 Luscombe has sent us, have from four to six 

 yellowish-green spreading sepals, and an indefi- 

 nite number of pale green filaments with 

 orange anthers. Each blossom is about i in. 

 across; they form long, gracefully-drooping, 

 branched racemes, springing from the axils of 

 the vipper leaves. The female flowers are 

 similar in appearance, but are succeeded by 

 very numerous orange berries, which appear, 

 from dried specimens communicated by the 

 discoverer to the British Museum Herbarium, 

 to be about as large as a small Cherry. The 

 flowers are deliciously fragrant, their odor re- 

 sembling that of a Vanda; and although their 

 coloring is not brilliant, their effect, combined 

 with the red leaf-stalks, the varying green of the 

 leaves, and their elegant drooping habit is ex- 

 tremely pleasing. The tree belongs to the Order 

 Bixinefe (or Flacourtiacese), to which our gar- 

 dens have not hitherto been largely indebted. 

 It was named by M. Maximowicz in commem- 

 oration of a Dutch traveler named Ides, who 

 was sent to China by Peter the Great at the 

 beginning of the last century, and who subse- 

 quently published an account of his travels. 



PiXUS OmORIKA— A NEW CONIFER^. — The 



discovery of a new Conifer in Europe is as 

 interesting as unexpected. It inhabits the 

 mountains of those "unhappy" countries, Ser- 

 via, Bosnia, and Montenegro, and Dr. Paucie is 

 the botanist who, after much consideration and 

 research, and after taking the opinion of the 

 late A. Braun, K. Koch, and others, has descri- 

 bed it as a new species under the name of Pinus 

 Omorika. It belongs to the Abies section, and 

 is most nearly allied to P. orientalis. Omorika 

 is the Servian name of this tree, which Dr. 

 Paucie describes as being of gigantic stature, 

 equalling, if not exceeding, the loftiest of its 

 European congeners. It is of slender habit, 

 with relatively short branches forming a pyra- 

 midal crown ; bark of the trunk brown-red, 

 peeling off", the fragments often heaped up in 

 great quantity around the base of the trunk. 

 The lower branches pendent, with the extremi- 

 ties only directed upwards. Needles (leaves) 

 of a silver-gray hue, small and short (about 5 

 lines long), usually obtuse; cones oval-oblong, 2 

 inches long, at first erect, gradually assuming a 

 horizontal position, and finally pendent; when 

 young of a beautiful violet color, when mature 

 reddish-brown, with an intermixture of ash-gray. 

 Scales of a roundish shape, faintly striated, and 

 equally toothed in the upper part. The forego- 

 ing particulars are from a lengthy article by 

 Carl Bolle, in the Berlin Horticultural Society's 

 Journal. Dr. Reichenbach contributes some 

 notes on the same subject to the Botanische Zei- 

 iung, n. s., 1877, from which it appears this tree 

 — " whether species, variety, or climatic form " — 

 is known by the name Omorika from the Adri- 

 atic to the Danube; audit is supposed that it 

 was formerly more widely dispersed than ap- 

 pears to be the case at present. This is founded 

 on the assumption that, because the name is so 

 widely understood, the tree yields a valuable 

 timber. Grisebach regards it as a variety of P. 

 orientalis, but, whether distinct or not, it is none 

 the less interesting, and another illustration of 

 the distribution of Coniferses as exemplified by 

 the cedars, &c. — Gar. Chronicle. 



Ceanothus integerrimus. — The mountains 

 about the Yosemite,abound in this beautiful lilac- 

 looking shrub. Imagine, if possible, dear read- 

 er, that you are on a road cut in the mountain 

 side, with a thousand feet of the mountain 

 below, and quite as much above you, and all 

 this, as far as the eye can reach, almost literally 



