THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE OF AMERICA. 



817 



the trial garden was started at Elizabeth Park in Hart- 

 ford. Conn. Xearly fifty new seedlings were wintered 

 there the first season, and results were very gratifying. 

 The Department of Agriculture has come forward and 

 tendered the American Rose Society two acres of 

 land for a Xational Rose Garden at Arlington. That 

 will be your garden, for it will belong to the rose 

 lovers of America. Cornell University and the New 

 Jersey Experiment Station have taken up the work, 

 and the city of Minneapolis has loaned a part of its 

 park for this purpose. These testing grounds mean 

 better roses and better information for the future. 

 That is the work the American Rose Society is trying 

 to do. 



If our trial gardens can help us to grow better roses 

 in our home gardens, and can help us to avoid varieties 

 that will be failures, we have accomplished much. 

 Lack of knowledge is the general reason for planting 

 what should be thrown away. 



The uses of roses are many, and you are all familiar 

 with them. I have never seen the roses of Oregon 

 where they are in their glory, but I know the comfort 

 that comes to me from my own garden where every 

 summer morning and evening I enjoy some new ex- 

 panding flower. I know the local pride of Hartford 

 where 32,000 people attended a communion w^ith 

 Nature one Sunday last June at Elizabeth Park. 

 There is to be a new public rose garden in Cleveland, 

 and the influence will be felt there as in Hartford. 

 This is a clean, honest diversion that makes for better 

 manhood, and I hope that Syracuse will not overlook 

 the fact that public parks and gardens can do much 

 to uplift the people. 



(Extracts from a paper read before the Syracuse Rose 

 Society.) 



TWISTED TREES. 



It sometimes happens with certain trees that the trunks 

 show a marked tendency to twist in a spiral manner. 

 Every one who is at all familiar with our British trees 

 has probably observed this tendency in the common Haw- 

 thorn, a tree often met with in bleak and wind-swept po- 

 sitions, when both trunk and branches bend over with the 

 direction of the prevailing wind. Such trees, if of any 

 age, invariably have rough and gnarled bark, sometimes 



twisted, as in the case of the Hawthorn depicted in the 

 last of the series of illustrations. The advantage of 

 such a twist is obvious, for just as a rope is strengthened 

 by twisting, so is the tree better adapted for withstand- 

 ing the strain placed upon it in a wind-swept position. 



In the case of the Horse Chestnut (Fig. 1), the twist- 

 ing is not at all common, and it is really difficult to un- 

 derstand why certain trees possess this peculiarity while 

 others growing under precisely similar conditions are 



HORSE CHESTNUT AND SWEET CHESTNUT TWISTED IN 

 REVERSE DIRECTIONS. 



normal. Another point of more than passing interest 

 is the direction of the spiral. In all of the cases illus- 

 trated the spiral is from left to right, except in the case 

 of the Sweet Chestnut (Fig. 2), in which the reverse 

 spiral, i. c., right to left, is well defined. This remark- 

 able tree stands in the Arboretum at Kew. The Sweet 

 Chestnut is rather addicted to the production of spirals, 

 which may be in either direction. In the case of the Oak, 

 however, the tendency is by no means common. Fig. 3 

 represents a derelict Oak in Windsor I-'orest which has 

 been killed by lightning. Here the twist is observed not 

 only in the main stem, but also running through the 

 branches. In very hollow trees, open on one side, spiral 

 growth is sometimes seen, owing to new wood continual- 

 ly being deposited on its own inner surface. .\ remark- 

 {Coiitiniied on pageS32.) 



A WEATHER-BEATEN HAWTHORN. 



TWISTED OAK TREE. 



SPIRALS ON IIIRCH TR"Et. 



