EURYBIA. 



THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



FAGUS. 



557 



Eurybia. See OLEARIA. 



Eutoca. See PHACELIA. 



EXOCHORDA (Pearl Bush}. E. 

 grandiflora is one of the loveliest of hardy 

 shrubs allied to the Spiraeas, but with larger 

 flowers. It is a graceful shrub, making 

 when full grown a rounded bush of 

 about 10 ft. high and as much through. 

 It flowers about the middle of May, just 

 after the foliage unfolds, and affords a 

 charming contrast between tender green 

 leaves and snow-white flowers as large as 

 florins. It likes shelter, and grows best 

 in warm loam. Syn., Spiraea. 



EXOGONIUM (Jalap Plant). A 

 graceful perennial trailing plant, none 

 more beautiful among climbing plants 

 than E. Purga, and of its hardiness 

 there can be little doubt. It has lived 

 for years at Bitton, Gloucestershire, with- 

 out any protection, and each year it has 

 flowered well. It has also grown well 

 at Kew, Fulham, and in the Edinburgh 

 Botanic Gardens. Mr. Ellacombe grows 

 it in a sheltered corner, and provides 

 a tall wire trellis with a spreading 

 top for it to grow up. It does not 

 flower in the lower parts, but the entire 

 top and the pendent shoots become a 

 mass of lovely bloom. If not checked by 

 late spring frosts at Bitton, it comes into 

 blossom early in September, and continues, 

 to flower till cut down by frost. It has 

 roundish tubers of variable size, those of 

 mature growth being about as large as an 

 orange and of a dark colour. These are the 

 true Jalap tubers. The plant gets its 

 name from Xalapa, in Mexico, its native 

 region, and is increased by division of 

 tubers. 



FABIANA (False Heath}.- F. imbri- 

 cata is a pretty shrub of the Potato family, 

 but so much resembling a Heath, that it 

 might well be mistaken for one. It is 

 slender, with evergreen leaves, and in 

 early summer every shoot is wreathed 

 with small white trumpet-shaped flowers. 

 A native of Chili, it is not perfectly 

 hardy as a bush except in the southern 

 and western counties, in which it is often 

 a very distinct and beautiful shrub. 



FAGUS (Beech}. Not a very large 

 family of trees, but including one of the I 

 noblest of all our native beech. It is a great 

 tree in all the countries of Europe, from 

 Northern Greece to Denmark,- thriving 

 admirably in soils useless for the oak and 

 other trees, and a beautiful object in many 

 of our poor chalky and limestone soils. It 

 is so often seen in our woodlands that there 

 is no need to advocate its use elsewhere ; 

 a wild tree common in the woodlands and 



forests in Europe everywhere can have 

 little place in gardens, although it is one 

 of the trees which used to be clipped and 

 mutilated to conform to the architect's 

 notion of a garden, but wrong, and ugly 

 so treated. The varieties of the beech, 

 however, are of the highest garden value 

 as lawn trees. Some of the most beauti- 

 ful weeping trees in England are those of 

 the weeping form of the beech, as in the 

 Knaphill nurseries, and at Lough nurseries, 

 Cork (in Ireland) and elsewhere. The fine 

 character of the pendant beech is that it 

 is not only graceful in a young state, but 

 improves remarkably every year of its life, 

 very old trees being picturesque in a high 

 degree. It is needless to enumerate all 

 the varieties, which are almost without 

 end. Every state or chance variegation 

 is given a Latin name and sent out from 

 nurseries, though many of them are worth- 

 less. Merely curious and variegated 

 varieties are not worth getting. The fern- 

 leaved variety is one of the best, and the 

 purple beech is the most striking of all 

 our coloured trees, and very popular. The 

 purple form will often come truly from 

 seed, which is a gain. Even if all the seeds 

 do not come true it does not matter in 

 the least as long as we get some plants 

 of the colour we seek, and in raising 

 trees from seed we always obtain some 

 slight variation. The copper beech is a 

 little paler and more coppery than the 

 old purple beech, and there is a weeping 

 form as well as a dark purple form. If 

 anything the danger is using these dark 

 coloured forms too freely. Our propor- 

 tion would be one to three purple beeches 

 in each parish, but a weeping one in many 

 gardens. Among the best varieties of the 

 European beech are the following : 

 Miltonensis, peridula, heterophylla, mac- 

 rophylla, purpurea, purpurea pendula, 

 purpurea tricolor, and a new variety 

 Zlatia. 



Fagus Americana (the American 

 beech) is in its own country a forest tree 

 well above looft.high, inhabiting the north- 

 ern regions, Canada, and Nova Scotia, 

 as well as westwards and southwards, 

 but the European beech is a so much 

 greater tree, for our climate at least, that 

 little importance is attached to the 

 American variety. As to other species 

 of which there are birch-like evergreen 

 ones as well as summer leafing kinds, such 

 as those inhabiting the antarctic regions 

 and Terra del Fuego, little is known of 

 them in this country. F. Betuloides, an 

 evergreen one, is a very graceful, low 

 tree, and so is F. Cunninghami, and others 

 probably will be found in antarctic regions. 



