152 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1892. 



meats — with their two or three oval leaves floating above a half- 

 dozen straight and slender roots extending into the water, a 

 whole plant as large over as the section of a pea. At the other 

 end of the scale comes one of our large pines, one hundred feet 

 high, or perhaps an elm like the giant at Lancaster, whose trunk 

 is five feet in diameter. Perhaps in no part of the country is 

 there a more pleasing variety of trees and shrubs than we have 

 with us. Of trees fifteen feet or more high there are sixty-one 

 species, and of shrubs as many as seventy. These are adapted 

 to every kind of home and park planting, and should be largely 

 employed in place of introduced varieties. That the}' are indi- 

 genous, proves their ability to vanquish others in the struggle for 

 existence ; in other words, that they are best adapted to the 

 climatic and geological conditions of the region in which they 

 have lived. Because a Colorado spruce, or a Salisburia adiantum 

 thrives with us during the first twenty years of its growth, let it 

 not be supposed that in a hundred years, it can compare with a 

 native white oak, or pine or ash of the same age. So let us 

 plant largely of the trees we have about us, that our children and 

 their children may be glad that we had the wisdom to read aright 

 this lesson so plainly set before us by the Maker. 



Among our most desirable shrubs, are the cornels and viburn- 

 ums in variety, the azaleas, pink and white, the rhododendron, 

 the kalmia or spoon-wood, the spice-bush, button-bush and clethra. 

 Many of these may now be seen in magnificent form at Elm 

 Park, where, happily for us Mr. Lincoln planted them, a 

 generation before the general public could properly appreciate 

 them. Leading nurserymen are now making a specialty of 

 native trees and shrubs ; and the best periodicals like " Garden 

 and Forest," and " Meehan's Monthly," never cease insisting 

 upon their merits. By planting with due consideration, there is 

 no time from May, when the leatherwood and spice-bush are 

 in bloom, till November, when the witch hazel puts forth its 

 golden fringes, when we may not discover new beauties in them, 

 of bark, or leaf, or flower, or form. Clethra with its sweet 

 blossoms, coming as it does at a time when most shrubs are in 

 their summer resting stage, has a value which would make it 

 beyond price, were it some rare exotic. Labrador tea can still 



