1882,J 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



153 



been some time under culture, chiefly through 

 the energy of Haage & Schmidt, of Erfurt, — 

 Nertera depressa, a small cut of which we give 

 with this sketch. Instead of red, as in our 

 Mitchella, the berries are amber and set so 

 thickly on the plant that often a leaf is scarcely 

 to be seen. 



Nymph^a tuberosa. — The Garden, of Febru- 

 ary 2oth, gives a good colored plate of this pretty 

 North American water lily, which is compara- 

 tively unknown even to ourselves. Most Nym- 

 phfeas have the leaves floating on the surface of 

 the water. This species hiis some of them push- 

 ing themselves up above the surface of the 

 water, as the leaves of the Nelumbium do. They 

 do not all do this, however. Some lie on the 

 surface and turn up their edges as the leaves of 

 the Great Victoria Lily of the Amazon do. 



Vegetation of Arizona.— Mr. J. C. Lemmon 

 gives the following very interesting sketch to the 

 California Academy of Sciences : 



"Arizona Territory comprises a large cross-sec 

 tion of that broad interior region between the 

 Eockies and the Nevadas that is often miscalled 

 the Great Basin. This region is characterized by 

 areas of desert land, so-called, undulating plains 

 of white or reddish sand, sparsely dotted with 

 shrubs such as creosote bush, mesquite, palo 

 verde, acacia, etc., plants that thrive with little 

 water and that love the sun. Also, this is the 

 home, par excellence, of the cacti, of all forms 

 and sizes from the little pincushion to the large 

 and stately tree cactus. 



'■Rising out of these plains are bald mountains 

 of many hues and shapes in accordance with 

 their rock composition. Some of these moun- 

 tains are disi)Osed in long parallel chains, espe- 

 cially those in the north end of the Great Basin, 

 and mostly included in the State of Nevada. 

 Southward in Arizona the mountains are gener- 

 ally so deeply submerged with sand and gravel, 

 the bed of a recent vast inland sea, that only a 

 few of the most elevated peaks remain uncover- 

 ed. These peaks are thus more or less isolated 

 and separated by wide stretches of arid desert, 

 and this isolation inevitably leads to the produc- 

 tion of peculiarities of its products, especially to 

 diS'erentiation and varieties of floral olijects. As 

 most of these mountains are not high and are 

 but a few miles in circuit, with no living springs 

 in them, their flora is limited to dry-weather 

 vegetation and such annuals as are nourished by 

 the rains and coolness of a short winter and the 



few days of rainy season in mid-summer. It 

 will be many years before botanical exploration 

 on this coast will be conducted so thoroughly as 

 to comprise a compleite knowledge of all the 

 peculiar plants that are annually spreading their 

 petals to the sun on those lonely mountains and 

 telling to the untutored aborigines the story of 

 their mysterious origin, and revealing to hia 

 dull eyes the beauty of their peculiar forms. 



" Other higher mountains are usually found 

 disposed in chains of several miles in length. 



"These chains are the more distinct vestiges of 

 great submerged ranges that traverse the whole 

 region parallel with the great Rocky and Nevada 

 ranges. These high chains are often of consid- 

 erable breadth, and their outlying peaks fre- 

 quently enclose valleys of great fertility, which 

 are usually well forested on the north slopes as 

 well as on the floors of the valleys, if high 

 enough to be cool and well watered. In fact 

 some most delightful parks have been discover- 

 ed, almost inaccessible, fenced round with brist- 

 ling peaks and upheld close to the sky and the 

 stars. 



" It is in these alpine valleys and slopes that 

 most of the new things are found, the descrip- 

 tions of which are fast appearing in botanical 

 journals at the East. 



"As stated in a former paragraph, many of the 

 trees of our great Sierra and coast ranges are 

 found also on the highest mountains of Arizona. 

 In several localities lumber factories have been 

 in operation for years. An especially rich val- 

 ley of pine timber is located in tlie Chirricahua 

 Mountains, utilized by a large factory, which for 

 years has supplied the market of Tombstone. 



" Large plateaus of good timber are crossed by 

 the line of the Atlantic & Pacific R. R., near the 

 middle of Arizona, on the parallel of 35°. 



"These forests are composed principally of 

 Pinus ponderosa, Douglas Spruce and White 

 Fir, with several species of Oak. Among these 

 trees, or apart from them, on the highest peaks 

 are found the rare and little known trees to be 

 described." 



SCRAPS AND QUERIES. 



Papaw. — " W. G. B." says : " One of your cor- 

 respondents, on page 120, April number, seems 

 disposed to set at defiance all authority as to the 

 orthography of papaw. We are accustomed to 

 follow Webster. Those who prefer botanical au- 



