354 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



{December, 



bored. The keen-edged gai'deners give the cut- 

 ting reply, "anytime when your knife isslmrji," 

 but the more good naturcd say : " It depends on 

 what you want to cut for." The street cutter 

 "wants to keep the tree head low," and i'u(s 

 down to make them branch lower; cutting in 

 Winter does not have this otVect, so that unless 

 one has some other object to combine with it, 

 such as to clean the tree of bark scales or tlie 

 larva of other insects, or the giving of employ- 

 ment to some half-starved tree carpenter, the 

 work might as well be left undone. If you want 

 a branch to push strongly at the point where you 

 cut a part away, prune in Winter. If your tree 

 has branches crossing each other, or has half 

 dead branches, or anything tending to spoil the 

 form or symmetry of your tree, prune in Winter; 

 but as a rule the less pruning is done the 

 healthier will be your trees, for it may be ac- 

 cepted as a rule in gardening, that all pruning, 

 whether in Winter or Summer, is a blow struck 

 at the vitality of the plant. 



Many kinds of trees that do not seem to thrive 

 well, will be greatly improved next year by 

 having a surface dressing of manure or rich soil 

 thrown about them. Evergreens are no excep- 

 tion. A singular notion used to prevail, that 

 manure of any kind was injurious to evergreens, 

 probably through noticing that they were usually 

 found in poor, barren soil. Our best American 

 coniferje growers, however, have long practiced 

 manuring them and with the best results. Guano 

 has been found particularly beneficial to the 

 Spruce family, and will probably be found as 

 good for the whole family of evergreens. 



It would be well, at this season of leasure, to 

 examine and decide on the course of improve- 

 ments for the ensuing year. 



It does not, in very many cases, require much 

 time or money so to alter the appearace of a place 

 as to make it bear a very different look to what it 

 did in the past year. A new clump of cheap 

 shrubbery may be planted, or an old one taken 

 away to admit a new view that may have grown 

 up since the original planting. A strip of grass 

 may be laid down on what was once bare gravel. 

 Here a small rockery may be put together ; there 

 a nest of roots thrown up, and ferns and trailing 

 plants freely interspersed between them. In 

 this corner you may place a stump, and entice 

 Ivy or some climbing vines to grow over it — a 

 rustic arbor may be formed in some inviting 

 nook, and in another shade-enticing spot, a I'us- 

 tic chair or bench be tixed. Even the outlines 



of the flower-beds may be changed, or of the 

 walks themselves, or even the contour of the 

 surface in some instances, and all, in many cases, 

 at the expen.se of a very small expenditure of 

 time and monev. 



COMMUNICA TIONS. 



BY 



SELACINELLA JAPONICA. 



W. FALCONKIl, ( AMlUtlDGE 150TANIC 

 GAUDKN, MASS. 



The plant figured and described in the Septem- 

 ber Monthly, page 2()2, under the name of S. 

 Japonica, is S. involvens. And the kind usually 

 grown and distributed under the name of S. in- 

 volvens, is S. caulescens, variety Japonica. This 

 transposition of names, is not, as many may sup- 

 pose, the result of a recent re-naming of the genus ; 

 botanically there has been no change in the 

 nomenclature of these two kinds. Apart from 

 the several botanical works and herbariums that 

 testify to this effect, I may mention " the cul- 

 tivated Selaginellas," by J. G. liaker, of Kew, in 

 the Gardener\'i Chronicle of 18G7, page 1241. As 

 regards its hardihood as an out-door plant foi- 

 Northern gardens, I may say, that in May 1877, 

 Mr Harris, gardener to H. H. Hunnewell, Esq., 

 at Wellesley, Mass., showed me some specimens 

 of it that were growing in a shady place in the 

 rockery there, and where they had survived the 

 previous Winter. But they did not look well, 

 and Mr. H. candidly admitted that it would be 

 far better to Winter them in-doors or in frames. 

 I never could see the utility in striving with un- 

 reliably hardy plants, to keep them alive out of 

 doors. The amount of trouble in covering and un- 

 covering might be reasonably submitted to, but 

 when the plant arises in Spring a miserable 

 ghost instead of a healthy specimen, and which 

 will take all the succeeding Summer to attain to 

 even its last year's strength, the time and trou- 

 ble expended in caring for it are lost, and we 

 find mortification in place of pleasure. If plants 

 be unreliably hardy, and of convenient size, I 

 recommend that they be lifted in the Fall, win- 

 tered in cold pits or frames, and again trans- 

 planted out of doors in Spring ; in which case we 

 have but little trouble or anxiety, and absolute 

 certainty. Of course, in the case of Roses, and 

 other plants requiring Winter mulching or cov- 

 ering, and which will submit to the same with 

 impunity and arise in Spring with more than 



