346 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



TREES FOR AUTUMNAL EFFECT. 



HE Kentucky coffee-tree is one of the most attractive of 

 deciduous trees, with its peculiar trunk and branches and its 

 Hght, feathery, graceful foliage. The broad rounded con- 

 tours of that loveliest of deciduous trees, the Cladrastis tinc- 

 toria, Virgilea lutea, or yellow wood, increases the variety 

 with curious branching and beauty of yellow, fading foliage. 

 All kinds of beeches are fine in the fall. The cut-leaved, the purple, and 

 the common American and European beeches are all most effective and green 

 until winter ; but the noblest of all is the celebrated weeping beech. Its great 

 gleaming masses of foliage assume all kinds of fantastic shapes and reveal bowers 

 and recesses until the leaves of almost every other tree have taken their depart, 

 ure. The foliage of the American beech ( Fagus ferruginea ) is delicate in finish- 

 and it lies in an arrangement of layers that is peculiarly attractive. 



Scarlet is a color almost unknown to the normal foliage of hardy plants. 

 The most familiar example of this rich chord of color is found in the autumns 

 of the swamp, or falsely named scarlet maple (Acerrubrum), and in the common 

 sugar maple. Of all the forms of maples, except the shrubby Polynnorphum 

 from Japan, these are the only species remarkable for their red color in fall- 

 How beautiful they are, thousands can testify, who have stood entranced before 

 the sugar maples of the hills of Vermont, or the scarlet maples on the banks of 

 the Delaware. Sugar maples sometimes color grandly, especially on hillsides. 

 The scarlet or red maple is the richest in autumnal color of all maples, if not of 

 all trees. It seldom fails during any autumn to change more or less splendidly, 

 and therefore deserves to stand out a single flaming monument in the van of all 

 autumnal color. There is something quite indescribable in the glow and inten- 

 sity of tint often displayed by this maple. Is it ignorance, or the want of seeing 

 eyes, that causes its lack of employment on the lawn ? It is true, the scarlet 

 maple is slower growing than the sugar maple, of less regular and pleasing out. 

 line, and certainly less beautiful and satisfactory at other seasons of the year. 

 But in fall, it simply reigns supreme. 



Scarcely less beautiful than the scarlet maple are some of the oaks. Many 

 of them, like the Turkey, English, and pyramidal oaks, are grandly effective 

 with their solid dark green tints. But the white, red, and scarlet oaks, American 

 species, all take on the most distinguished and glowing autumnal colors. All 

 oaks are too much neglected in lawn-planting. Whether for form, color or 

 rugged longevity, they are invaluable for ornamental purposes. The golden oak 

 (Quercus Concordia), although too apt to lose its beauty somewhat before the 

 Indian summer, another color than red becomes, by its intensity, almost the 



