478 breck's new book of floavees. 



ment as the Rhododendron or Azalea, and may be propa- 

 gated by seeds, layers, or cuttings. 



V. Opulus. — Cranberry Tree, High Cranberry. — " A 

 handsome low tree, five to ten feet in height, ornamented 

 throughout the year with flowers or fruit. In May, or 

 early in June, it spreads open at the end of every branch, 

 a broad cyme of soft, delicate flowers, surrounded by an 

 irregular circle of snow-white stars, scattered, apparently, 

 for show. The fruit, which is red when ripe, is of a pleas- 

 ant acid taste, resembling cranberries, for which it is 

 sometimes substituted." This is the parent of 



V. Opulus, Var St^rilis, the Guelder Rose or Snow- 

 ball. — A common ornament of the garden, producing 

 large bunches of white flowers, shaped like those of the 

 Hydrangea. When grouped with the Laburnum, Lilacs, 

 — the dwuble-flowerins; Thorns, etc., it has a fine effect. 

 In flower the last of May, and early in June ; eight or 

 ten feet high ; readily propagated from suckers, layers 

 and cuttings. 



V. macroc^phalum. — Great-clustered Snowball. — " This 

 is a new and splendid species, that has not been much, if 

 any, cultivated in this country. M. Van Houtte describes 

 it as found growing in the gardens about Chusan, China, 

 where it forms a shrub, or tree, twenty feet high. It 

 flowers every year, in May, producing its enormous clus- 

 ters, which equal those of the old garden Snowball^ or 

 ' Guelder Rose,' in purity of color, and fiir eclipses them 

 in size and beauty. Each blossom is more than an inch 

 across, and the clusters measure eiglit or ten inches in di- 

 ameter. The leaves are regularly oval, with short i)etioles 

 and about three inches long. It flourishes in the opeu 

 border, in the same soil as the common Snowball ; and M. 

 Van Houtte considers it one of the most beautiful addi- 

 tions to the shrubbery." — {^Downing.'] 



