212 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The President: I have a lady friend who thinks a great deal of 

 the wren, and she uses cigar boxes, and the wrens occupy those. 

 She has a beautiful specimen of a nest. After the wren had used 

 the nest she opened the cover of the box, and she has the nest show- 

 ing it just as it was used by the wren. 



Mr. Tomlinson: Where gentlemen do not use cigars, a peach or 

 tomato can will answer the purpose, and one year we found some 

 in an old wooden pump. They will accommodate therjiselves to 

 circumstances. 



NATIVE TREES, SHRUBS AND VINES FOR 

 ORNAMENTAL PURPOSES. 



PROF. D. LANGE, ST. PAUL. 



It has often seemed to me that amongst our many beautiful wild 

 flowers there must be quite a large number that it might pay the 

 florist and hortculturist to improve for ornamental purposes. What 

 little has been done along that line has certainly not been sufficient 

 to make the cultivation of these plants popular or even common 

 This brief paper is restricted to the.discussion of a few woody plants 

 that seem to me to possess some value for lawns, gardens and parks, 

 but which are seldom seen in cultivation. 



Nothing rivals the beauty of our scarlet oaks, Quercus velutina 

 on the autumn landscape. In one grove you may see green, yellow, 

 crimson, dark red and brown. If there are some white oaks, Quer- 

 cus alba, and red oaks, Quercus rubra, mixed with the scarlet oaks, 

 the effect is still more striking. It seems to be a common opinion 

 that these oaks will not endure on a lawn. It is true that they often 

 die in such places, but my observations show that this is usually 

 due to a lack of moisture and sometimes to injury caused to their 

 roots by building operations. 



Another native tree that should be much more planted on account 

 of its truly gorgeous autumn foliage, is the sugar maple, Acer 

 saccharinum. Often you can see a tree shine in a bright golden 

 yellow, which is tinged with a delicate red. No painter could let 

 one color run into the other more skillfully than nature has graded 

 her tints on this splendid native tree. 



The only native vines at all common around our homes are the 

 Virginia creeper, Ampelopsis quinquefolia, and the wild grape vine. 

 All the different species of sumach except the poison sumach, Rhus 

 toxicodendron, deserve a place near our homes, on account of their 

 foliage and their showy fruit. The large pinnate leaves are conspic- 

 uous even in summer, but are truly beautiful when the first frosts 

 have painted them red and crimson. 



In Europe I have seen our sumachs in parks and gardens. We al- 

 low them to grow in the woods only. Instead of native shrubs and 

 vines we plant some Siberian or other foreign species, whose points 

 of merit seem to be sometimes about the following: 

 1. Some nurseryman was able to sell them to us. 



