Shrubs and Vines 
nothing more is heard of it ; rose after rose has been the 
favorite of an hour, only to be supplanted by another 
short-lived favorite. The naturalist, as such, will not 
concern himself with these ephemeral phenomena, that 
almost cheapen nature’s original simplicity and beauty. 
Yet it is undeniable that art has often assisted nature, by 
bringing inferior species into a finer quality of growth, 
and it is a difficult question at what point art must leave 
nature alone ; for horticulturists are vying with each 
other in attempts to transform every stamen into a petal, 
and every simple flower-cluster into a huge mass of 
bloom, so that catalogues are now thickly sprinkled with 
flore pleno and grandifiora. 
That section of the rose family that furnishes our 
choicest fruits—apple, cherry, peach, plum—and com- 
prised in the genera Prunus and Pyrus, is usually re- 
garded as utilitarian rather than ornamental, or at least, 
as not meeting the high standards of lawn culture. But 
by the improvement of certain native species, with the 
introduction of choice kinds from abroad, the names of 
cherry, apple, etc., are becoming associated with our 
most ornamental sylva and flora. This is signally the 
case in the Chinese crab and the Japanese flowering 
apple, the latter a pigmy tree only five to six feet high, 
profusely covered with beautiful red blossoms in spring, 
and scarcely less interesting when the flowers are fol- 
lowed by an abundance of diminutive apples. One 
writer calls it ‘‘ the most beautiful of its race, and one 
of the best ornamental plants in cultivation.’’ It is 
thoroughly hardy, and has a variety with semi-double 
flowers. The Chinese crab, Pyrus malus spectabilis, is 
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