vi EDITOR'S PREFACE 



cultivation of certain ericaceous plants; Ralph W. Curtis, 

 Professor of Ornamental Horticulture, New York State 

 College of Agriculture, Cornell University. 



The subject of evergreens possesses no close cohesion, 

 although it is recognized as a department of knowledge and 

 practice in horticultural usage. The subject suggests conifer- 

 ous plants, and these are the ones here chiefly intended. The 

 reader must understand that the phrase "coniferous plants," 

 or Coniferse, as currently used, includes other species than those 

 that bear true cones; some of them, as junipers and yews, 

 yield soft berry-like fruits. These plants agree in certain 

 essential floral or sexual characters, rather than merely in the 

 fact of bearing cones, as also in anatomical structure and 

 evolutionary history; they are properly known as gymnosperms. 



In the northern part of the country there are no evergreen 

 trees aside from the gymnosperms, but there are a good number 

 of broad-leaved non-deciduous species of the stature of shrubs 

 and subshrubs. The more prominent of these plants are 

 covered in the book. They are mostly "flowering evergreens," 

 being attractive by their blossoms as well as by their foliage; 

 these are various heaths, rhododendrons, laurels, and their 

 kin, and honeysuckles. Others are typically "berry ever- 

 greens," as hollies, cherry-laurels, viburnums, cotoneaster, 

 and pyracantha. 



It is fi^fty-five years since "The Book of Evergreens," 

 by Josiah Hoopes, nurseryman and "member of the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia," was published in New 

 York. It was long indispensable. A half century has brought 

 us into a new atmosphere. The list of evergreens now has 

 many names strange to that day. The knowledge of insects 

 has vastly increased; and the science of plant pathology has 

 come into being. In those days the best that could be said 



