1882. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



311 



VARIETIES REPRODUCINCTHEMSELVES. 



BY MISS M. M. B. RODMAN, WASHINGTON, N. C. 



I find in my box of seedling roses, of last 

 autumn's sowing, a rose so exactly like Laurette 

 that one might suppose they were taken from 

 the-same bush. What seems peculiar about this 

 is that, Laurette being a double rose, never seeds. 

 I have several bushes of this rose growing near 

 a Safrano, which seeds freely, and presume 

 the solution of the mystery is that the "little 

 busy bee" knows how to capture and distribute 

 pollen no matter how securely it may seem to 

 be hidden away. Still it seems strange that one 

 rose should so exactly reproduce another. 



Should you deem any of my notes worthy of 

 publication, I shall esteem it an honor to see 

 them in the pages of the Gardener's Monthly. 



[It is well known in hybridizing, that the 

 female parent may be exactly reproduced though 

 under the influence of pollen very unlike its 

 own. This was proved especially by the experi- 

 ence of Mr. Francis Parkman among lilies J 

 Lilium Parkmanni being the only remarkable 

 departure from the female type. There is proba- 

 bly no reason why the inverse might not be 

 true — that is the female wholly reproducing the 

 male form, and this experience with the rose 

 points that way. — Ed. G. M.] 



NOTES FROM THE WEST. 



BY IROQUOIS. 



It is always a m^'stery to those familiar with 

 the native flora of our fields and forests why so 

 few of our common plants, shrubs, trees, &c., 

 are utilized by the American landscape gardener 

 in his efforts to procure suitable material tu 

 beautify our lawns and the public parks, espe- 

 cially as there seems to be actually nothing in 

 the market, in many instances, exactly appro- 

 priate for many a contemplated improvement. 

 Probably the reason best assigned for this omis- 

 sion is contained in the two words, too common. 

 Be this as it may, the truth remains indisputa- 

 ble, that many of our native plants, shrubs, <&c., 

 are just as suitable and efTective, for service in 

 many a desirable place on the lawn, as though 

 they had traversed the broad ocean, possessed 

 an almost unpronounceable name, and com- 

 manded a fal)ulous price in the market for their 

 possession. Of course all our native plants are 

 not desirable for cultivation ; in fact some are a 

 source of great annoyance to the cultivator by 



taking entire possession of the ground they 

 occupy, i. e., from tlieir wonderful power of in- 

 creasing both by suckers from the roots, and 

 also by their stems and prostrate branches that 

 reach the ground, taking root and spreading 

 with great rapidity to the exclusion of every- 

 thing else. Others are quite showy and effec- 

 tive, but are such great feeders they soon absoi'b 

 all the strength and nutriment from the ground. 

 These, by common consent, have received the 

 popular name of weeds. However, it would be 

 very difficult for any one to define, with any 

 degree of accuracy, the exact limit of the term 

 weeds. 



In wandering through the fields and forests in 

 autumn, after the highly-colored fruit and foliage 

 of nearly all our ornamental vegetation has dis- 

 appeared, nothing seems more attractive than 

 the shrubs so common in many parts of the 

 country, and withal so familiar by name to most 

 of our people, under the popular name of wax 

 work or bitter-sweet, Celastrus scandens, and 

 Waa-hoo, or strawberry bush, Euonymus Ameri- 

 canus, and E. atropurpureus. Both the bitter- 

 sweet and strawberry bush belong to the same 

 natural order of plants, for which Linnteus 

 adopted the old Greek misname of Celastracese. 

 These three species, together with three other 

 varieties or sub-species, are the only represen- 

 tatives of this order of plants to be found in the 

 northern portion of the United States, although 

 the order is represented in the United States, 

 principally South, by eight genera, sixteen spe- 

 cies and three varieties, and about forty genera 

 and nearly three hundred species have been 

 described by botanists and travelers from all 

 parts of the world, all, or nearly all of which 

 are indigenous to the temperate zones. 



Perhaps no other hardy native vine of the 

 United States is so widely known by name, or so 

 completely interwoven in the popular romance 

 of the new world, by popular writers of fiction, 

 as the bitter-sweet, or, as it is sometimes called, 

 the wax work, and still its identification is almost 

 unknown to most of our people. To fully 

 realize its grandeur it must be seen in its native 

 ' hubiiut in autumn, creeping along the neglected 

 { fence rows and thickets, or climbing and twisting 

 among the branches of a low-growing tree or 

 I shrub, often from thirty to forty, or even more, 

 feet in length, with its entire, oblong, pointed 

 I and thin leaves and highly ornamental fruit 

 ' hanging from the numerous little terminal fruit 

 'spurs or short branches along its entire length. 



