BUD VARIATION IN ELEAGNUS 



C. S. POMEROY 



Riverside, California 



THERE are a large number of 

 ornamental Evergreen plants 

 that are quite generally grown 

 in Southern California and several 

 of them have forms with variegated 

 foliage which are usually considered 

 to be much more beautiful than the 

 solid green forms. These plants are 

 commonly propagated by cuttings of 

 mature or half-ripened wood and so 

 far as the writer has been able to learn 

 all the variegated forms have originated 

 as bud \-ariations in plants of the 

 typical green forms. Descriptions of 

 some of these variations have been 

 presented in these pages during 

 the past few years, together with 

 illustrations showing instances of the 

 various green and variegated forms 

 occurringon the same individual plants.' 

 Similar instances of variegated var- 

 iations in orange and lemon trees 

 have also been described and illus- 

 trated.= 



ATTRACTIVE FOLIAGE OF VARIEGATED 

 FORMS 



Two variegated forms of the shrub 

 Eleagnus pimgens have come to the 

 attention of the writer in one of the 

 city parks of Riverside, California, 

 and in both instances branches have 

 been found on the plants that are 

 made up entirely of non-variegated 

 leaves showing a reversion to the 

 solid green forms from which the 

 ^•ariegated forms doubtless arose as 

 bud variations. 



The various species of this genus 

 represent a group of shrubs or small 

 trees that are grown chiefly for their 



handsome foliage and decorative fruits 

 and the variegation of the two forms 

 mentioned makes the varieties par- 

 ticularly attractive and desirable as 

 specimen plants or in ornamental 

 groups or hedges. In one of these 

 forms, variety Frederici variegata (fig. 

 1), the light colored areas occur as 

 irregular streaks or blotches in the 

 centers of the leaves, and in the other 

 form, variety aurea (Fig. 2), the light 

 color is usually confined to the margins 

 of the leaves, though frequently the 

 chlorophyll disappears from larger 

 areas, sometimes absent from the 

 entire leaf. 



Eleagnus pungens is a spreading 

 shrub, ordinarily considered as reaching 

 a maximum of six feet in height but 

 one of the specimen plants with which 

 the writer is familiar is fully 15 feet high. 

 The branches are reddish brown and 

 usually spiny, the leaves are alternate, 

 short-petioled, entire, oval or oblong, 

 with both ends obtuse, undulate and 

 often crenulate at the margin, clothed 

 with silvery scales when young, at 

 length becoming glabrous above, sil- 

 very beneath, more or less inter- 

 spersed with brown scales, two to 

 four inches long. The flowers are 

 inconspicuous but fragrant and are 

 borne in the fall in axillary clusters. 

 They are apetalous and perfect, the 

 tube cylindrical, slightly narrowed 

 at the base, longer than the limb, 

 perianth 4-lobed, stamens four, in- 

 cluded, on ve-y short filaments. The 

 fruit is a 1-seeded false drupe, red when 

 mature, short-stalked, about three 

 fourths of an inch long, covered with 



1 Shamel, A. D. 



A Bud Variation of Pittosporum. Jour. Hered., Vol. 8, No. 8, Aug. 1917, p. 357-358. 



A Bud Variation of Euonymus. Jour. Hered., Vol. 8, No. 5, May, 1917, p. 218-220. 



Origin of the Striped Cane. Jour. Ikred., Vol. 8, No. 10, Oct. 1917, p. 471-472 



Origin of the Striped Oleander. Jour. Hered., Vol. 12, No. 1, Jan. 1921, p. 42-45. 

 = Shamel, A. D. 



An Orange Bud Variation. Jour. Hered., Vol. 8, No. 4, April, 1917, p. 176-177. 

 Shamel, A. D., Scott, L. B., Pomeroy, C. S., and Dyer, C. L. 



In Citrus Fruit Improvement: A Study of Bud Variation in the Eureka Lemon. U. S. 

 Dept. Agric, Bui. 813. See p. 21-22 and pi. V. 



227 



