14 MASSACHrSETTS HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



year. Enrlv in September the gardener expects frost ; later in the 

 month the low lands are hoar with rime. October, with bland, 

 charming days, has a killing night breath. November ends even 

 the show of vegetable life, and thenceforward. " a leafless branch 

 his sceptre, winter rules the inverted year." 



Though we have our open and mild winters at long intervals, 

 the mean temperature is below 32''. with frequent sudden ranges 

 below zero. In tMs period of intense cold, the streams are locked 

 in thick-ribbed ice ; the ground, often bare of snow for weeks, 

 freezes to a depth of three or four feet ; there is no sign of life in 

 herbaceous plants, and the loosened winds howl o'er the pendent 

 globe. Nor does the scene assume the beauty that belongs to vege- 

 table growth until late in the spring: usually " Winter lingering 

 chills the lap of May." Summer comes with June, and though it 

 has been asked, "What is so raic as a da}' in June?" — from the 

 advent of our divine month there will be one-quarter of the year 

 without frost : nature is often yet more benignant, and we have 

 four months of warm weather. 



With this climate we have a thin, hard, stony soil ; the few 

 plants necessary for the support of man (for of the thousands 

 known to botany he uses scarcely a hundred) perish in winter, 

 and must be continually renewed from seed, or by the preservation 

 of their roots, bulbs, or tubers. 



Our summer, though all too brief, is hotter than in the tropical 

 or equatorial region of our continent, and favorable to the growth 

 of any plant that will mature within ninety days. Plants of warm 

 regions that, introduced here, endure the inclemencj- of the winter, 

 we call ** hardy," and adopt them into our flora. 



Science has labored in vain to determine why one plant endures 

 severe cold without harm, and another withers and perishes. An 

 inhabitant of the tropical world, stumbling over the rocks firm set 

 in the frozen surface of a Massachusetts pasture, or floundering in 

 the snow-drifts of a swamp darkened by hemlock boughs, and 

 gaunt with the bare limbs of birch trees, would start with amaze- 

 ment to see the glossy, dark leaves of evergreen kalmia or rhodo- 

 dendron, so like the tropical foliage of lemon, orange, or cacao. 

 If he cuts the wood, he finds it, like them, hard and fine of grain ; 

 the imperceptible, unexplained difference in character being in 

 the power to live through the winter. This remarkable difference 

 is also noticed in bulbs and tubers ; but as yet unaccounted for. 



Our cold winter does not exempt us from the introduction of 



