TTbe 



Canadian 



Dorticulturiet 



Published at Toi\onto and Grimsby, Ont. 

 OFFICE ADDRESS— GRIMSBY, ONT. 



VOL. X.] 



DECEMBER, 1887. 



[No. 12. 



THE NEW WEEPING DOGWOOD. 



fOO MANY weeping trees would 

 be out of place in a pleasure 

 ground. They give a stiflP and 

 sombre appearance to a place, and are 

 suggestive of grief rather than of good 

 cheer. Yet an occasional weeping tree 

 in a group of other trees, or standing 

 alone in the rear of a yard, is a grace- 

 ful object. One old Weepirg Willow 

 (Salix Babylonica), standing for a hun- 

 dred years or so on the roadside near 

 Grimsby, is most conspicuous for the 

 beauty of its long, slender drooping 

 branches, and we never pass it without 

 looking upon it with admiration. But 

 this is a tree of colossal proportions, 

 and one that would be out of place in 

 a lawn of limited extent. For such a 

 place there are several suitable weepers, 

 as for instance the Cut-leaf Weeping 

 Birch, the Kilmarnock Weeping Wil- 

 low, the Weeping Mountain Ash, and 

 the new Weeping Dogwood. 



The latter, known technically as 

 Cornus Florida Pendula, shown in our 

 colored picture for this month, belongs 

 to the Dogwood Family or Cornaceae, 

 a name derived from the Latin word 

 cornu, a horn, alluding to the hardness 

 of the wood. The bark is bitter, and 

 by some considered medicinal. It is 

 a variety of the White Cornus (C. 

 Florida), which is common in rocky 

 woods southward — a tree which only 

 attains a height of twenty or thirty 

 feet, and which is also a very attrac- 

 tive ornamental tree, with showy 

 white flowers in spring and clusters of 

 red berries in autumn. The Weeping 

 Cornus is similar in flower and fruit, 

 as is well shown in the upper part of 

 the painting. The so called flowers 

 are in reality close heads of flowers 

 surrounded by a foui'-leaved corolla- 

 like involucre, the whole somewhat 

 resemblinof a clematis flower. 



