THE NEGLECTED AMERICAN PLANTb. 341 



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" civilizee " is not more different from the aboriginal man of the 

 forest, than the cultivated and perfect garden-tree or shrub (grant- 

 ing always that it takes to civilization which some trees, like In- 

 dians, do not), than a tree of the pleasure-grounds differs from a 

 tree of the woods. 



Perhaps the finest revelation of this sort in England, is the 

 clumps and masses of our mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, and 

 our azaleas and rhododendrons, which embellish the English plea- 

 sure-grounds. In some of the great country-seats, whole acres of 

 lawn, kept like velvet, are made the ground-work upon which these 

 masses of the richest foliaged and the gayest flowering shrubs are 

 embroidered. Each mass is planted in a round or oval bed of deep, 

 rich, sandy mould, in which it attains a luxuriance and perfection 

 of form and foliage, almost as new to an American as to a Sand- 

 wich Islander. The Germans make avenues of our tulip-trees, and 

 in the South of France, one finds more planted magnolias in the 

 gardens, than there are, out of the woods, in all the United States. 

 It is thus, by seeing them away from home, where their merits are 

 better appreciated, and more highly developed, that one learns for 

 the first time what our gardens have lost, by our having none of 

 these " American plants " in them. 



The subject is one which should be pursued to much greater 

 length than we are able to follow it in the present article. Our 

 woods and swamps are full of the most exquisite plants, some of 

 which would greatly embellish even the smallest garden. But it is 

 rather to one single feature in the pleasure-grounds, that we would 

 at this moment direct the attention, and that is, the introduction of 

 two broad-leaved evergreen shrubs, that are abundant in every part 

 of the middle States, and that are, nevertheless, seldom to be seen 

 in any of our gardens or nurseries, from one end of the country to 

 the other. The defect is the more to be deplored, because our orna- 

 mental plantations, so far as they are evergreen, consist almost en- 

 tirely of pines and firs all narrow-leaved evergreens far inferior 

 in richness of foliage, to those we have mentioned. 



The Native Holly grows from Long Island to Florida, and is 

 quite abundant in the woods of New Jersey, Maryland, and Vir- 

 ginia. It forms a shrub or small tree, varying from four to forty 



