256 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



too, of Zizyphus vulgaris, the Jujube tree ; this beautiful tree, 

 a native also of Northern China, appears perfectly hardy in 

 Germantown. A remarkable plant of Pterostyrax hispidum 

 is more than twenty-five feet high, with a tall, straight 

 trunk and wide-spreading branches. 



The great-leaved Oregon maple, Acer macrophyllvm, is 

 represented by three handsome specimens, twenty to thirty 

 feet high, covered with dark green leaves. Two large 

 plants of a weeping form of Ulmus Americana, found near 

 Galena, in Illinois, show the value of this variety as an 

 ornamental tree. Of the flowering trees in the nursery 

 nothing is so beautiful as Gordonia Altamaha, the rarest of 

 all North American trees. Mr. Meehan raises it extensively, 

 fully appreciating its value and the beauty of its large, 

 fragrant white flowers, which resemble those of a single- 

 flowered Camellia, and of its large leaves which in autumn 

 assume the most brilliant scarlet tints. 



Among the conifers are two of much interest ; one of 

 these, Retinospora squarrosa, a plant which deceived such a 

 good botanist as Maximowicz, who considered it a species, but 

 which here has entirely grown out of its juvenile squarrose- 

 leaved form, with the exception of two lower branches, and 

 displaying its true character, showing that it is only a 

 juvenile form of Retinospora pisifera. The second is the 

 so-called Retinospora ericoides which, growing into its 

 mature form, shows that this plant is only a young 

 state of the common arbor-vitae ( Thuya occidentalis). The 

 ground, although devoted as a nursery to commercial pur- 

 poses, is also a respectable botanical garden, presided over 

 by a botanist of great experience and insight. 



