THE FLORISTS MANUAL. 



131 



Magnolia Youlan. 



nomadic in his habits, like the Par- 

 thians of old. 



We have not such a long list of ever 

 greens or conifers, and our winters bar 

 us from planting many of great beauty 

 that thrive in the British Isles, but 

 we have a good variety. You are usu 

 ally advised to plant small trees. Good 

 advice, as long as nurserymen won t 

 furnish you a tree that has been trans 

 planted and furnished with a Compact 

 ball of roots. 



You must remember that many of 

 the evergreens that are hardy in the 

 vicinity of New York and Boston are 

 useless in land in the latitude of Chi 

 cago, and many are catalogued as 

 hardy, such as Cedrus deodara and Cu- 

 pressus Lawsoniaua. They are use- 

 .less in our vicinity. It is not only 

 the low temperature, but some other 

 climatic influence that kills them or 

 leaves them stunted, crippled objects. 



Several of the abies are fine, includ 

 ing alba, white spruce; Canadensis, 

 hemlock spruce, and excelsa, Norway 

 spruce, many forms of it. Several 

 junipers, the Irish, Swedish and our 

 own red cedar, J. Virginiana. Picea 

 pungens, the Colorado blue spruce, is 

 the most beautiful of our conifers, and 

 P. balsainea, P. concolor and P. Nord- 

 maniana, are fine trees. The pines are 

 the noblest of the conifers. The Aus 

 tralian is one of our hardiest trees, and 

 so is P. sylvestris, the Scotch pine. 

 P. strobus, our native white pine, and 

 P. cembra, the stone pine. 



The retinosporas are dense growing, 

 compact evergreens, and are good and 

 hardy. The thuyas ( arbor- vitae) make 

 handsome trees. T. occidentalis ia our 



era! species and varieties, and now some 

 fine double forms. 



Viburnum, the snowball; plicatum 

 and opulis. 



Weiglia, many varieties. Eose, red 

 and white flowers and variegated foli 

 age. 



The above is not a collection but 

 merely a selection. Many desirable 

 kinds could be added. I have not in 

 cluded any of the broad-leaved ever 

 green shrubs, as there are so few. 

 Daphne cneorum does deserve a place 

 in every garden. Euonymus radicans 

 variegatus is used for the margins of 

 shrubberies. Mahonia aquifolia, with 

 its racemes of yellow flowers and pur 

 ple fruit, is a beautiful holly-leaved- 

 like shrub, but unless shaded from the 

 March suns it burns badly. 



Neither have I said anything about 

 the rhododendrons, kalmias, or hardy 

 azaleas. &quot;Where these American plants 

 do well cultivated, as they do so finely 

 at Wellesley, Mass., and doubtless 

 many other places, they are beautiful 

 and desirable, but in a limestone dis 

 trict, without a great labor of trans 

 porting suitable soil, and again with 

 our zero nights and bright days, they 

 are useless, and to plant them is a 

 fraud. They are a fit article for the 

 tree peddler who never goes back after 

 the bill is collected, and who is usually 



Spiraea Van Houttei. 



