PINEAPPLE CLOTH 81 



giving of needed air and sunshine speedily lengthened stems and 

 branches of those that remained. Low growing box hedged the 

 walks in the Colonial garden while high growing varieties were 

 clipped into varied ornamental shapes. 



Beautiful was the spring awakening of Flora in the arboretum. 

 The swelling pussy willows, cowl-crowned skunk cabbage whose 

 broad green shafts seek the sunlight, and presage the rare spring 

 blooming of snowdrop and crocus, and a bit later the yellow of the 

 forsythia, often fringed with the damp spring snow, its branches 

 readily blooming w T hen cut and put in water, or forced ahead of 

 time in our hot-beds, all did their part toward vanquishing win- 

 ter. Then came the pink-hued daphne and onward through the full- 

 ness of bloom of spring, summer and fall, until we reach the witch- 

 hazel, that last bloomer, the strange shrub that waits to adorn itself 

 in yellow finery after it has been denuded of its leaves, and gives its 

 life-blood to ease the pain of humanity. Under the warming rays 

 of the sun, this botanical catapult shoots the contents of its seed pods 

 twenty feet or more somewhat in the same way as in continuance 

 of life the poplar, a true anemophilous tree, explodes anther bags 

 of pollen which, borne on the wings of the wind, reaches its consort 

 tree before leaf growth can thwart its mission. The Chinese witch 

 hazel was in the front rank of our late winter flowering shrubs. 



The Banner Shrub. 



What family of shrubs do I most enjoy? If a choice must be 

 made, give me the Viburnum, that fructifies in berries of white, black, 

 coral and scarlet, and whose flowers and foliage vary greatly in size 

 and color. Viburnum rhytidophyllum and Viburnum Davidii were 

 evergreen crowns of glory 'mid their fellows. 



The wand-like red-berried Indian currants and Cornelian cher- 

 ries we placed in the arboretum to contrast strongly with the some- 

 what straggly growth of the snowberry. Fronting these were 

 Japanese iris, the 'Kempferi, whose eyes of purple and white, bronze 

 and yellow, peer out at one between their flag-like leaves like enor- 

 mous spitz dog-faced pansies. Spain, Germany and Siberia were all 

 taxed to fill out our iridescent fleur-de-lis patchwork quilt. 



Beyond the beds of iris grew stately agaves (century plant) 

 many of them variegated, and near by in serried columns the yucca, 

 familiarly called the Spanish bayonet or dagger or Adam's needle, 

 with its wand-like stalks of white, bell-capped flowers, nodded to us 

 as it did to the cliff dwellers who once spun and wove into clothing the 

 threads that dangle from the spike-like leaves, as is done today in 

 the far off Philippines from the foliage of the pineapple.* 



To many the Yucca thread woven garments of the cliff dweller shown in our museums 

 are of keen interest. 



