THE NEW TREE BEAUTY 269 



those who like to have a collection of interesting trees. 

 The greenish flowers are sweet, but the fruits are bitter, 

 like the hop. 



The Pyrusus are a great genus, including as they do 

 the Apple and Pear. In an earlier chapter, where refer- 

 ence was made to the planting of standard trees in mixed 

 shrubberies, the merits of Pyrus floribunda were alluded 

 to. This is the most beautiful member of the whole 

 genus as a flower-garden or lawn tree. It is sometimes 

 planted as a bush, but more often as a standard, when 

 it forms a head fifteen to twenty feet high and through 

 in the course of a few years, and flowers from trunk to 

 tip nearly every season. There is a variety called atro- 

 sanguinea which has brighter flowers than the type, 

 but the former is beautiful enough, and there is plenty 

 of colour in the buds. Scheideckeri is another beautiful 

 tree, a hybrid of floribunda and prunifolia, with blush 

 flowers. Spectabilis should also be mentioned, for its 

 large pink flowers are very bright and gay ; there is a 

 double form of it. The Crabs are of course Pyruses, and 

 many people plant them as much for the beauty as the 

 uses of the fruit. The ordinary Siberian Crab, P. baccata, 

 and its varieties are good ; but still more beautiful are 

 the varieties John Downie, Transcendent and the Dart- 

 mouth, the fruits of which are exquisitely tinted. 



The double form of the American Crab, Pyrus coronaria 

 flore pleno, should not be overlooked, for its flowers are 

 beautiful and have the delicious odour of Violets. 



The Mountain Ash or Rowan Tree, Pyrus Aucuparia, 

 is the most important of the other Pyruses. There are 

 many garden forms of it, of which Backhousei is one of 

 the best and fructu-luteo a yellow-fruited form. The 

 Rowan, with its graceful Ash-like leaves and bright 

 berries, makes a handsome standard tree for the shrub- 



