April 15, 1S96.] 



Garden and Forest. 



151 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



entered as second-class matter at the post-office AT NEW YORK, 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The Tree Palms of the United States. (With figure.) 151 



A Forest Reservation in the Alleghenies 152 



Some Native Ornamental Grasses.— I T. H. Kearney, Jr. 152 



Alpine PI nts and some of their Peculiarities H. Correvon. 153 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W, Watson. 154 



Cultural Department: — Pruning Shrubs 67. A. Henry. 156 



Growing Tomatoes 5. 157 



Asparagus T. D. Hatfield. 157 



Hoveaelliptica O. 157 



Mahernia glabrata. Kennedya [Maryattsej prostrata major. . . . N. J. Rose. 153 



Correspondence:— The Plans of Madison Square S. A., L. G. S. 158 



Meetings of Societies :— Forestry in Pennsylvania 159 



Recent Publications 159 



Notes l6 ° 



Illustrations: — Oreodoxa regia, in Florida, Fig. 21 155 



Plan of Madison Square, New York, Fig. 22 158 



The Tree Palms of the United States. 



A NUMBER of Palm-trees live on the southern borders 

 of the United States, adding special interest to the 

 forest flora of this country, which, rich in many forms of 

 the common trees of the northern hemisphere and in many 

 special and peculiar types, is extraordinary in the variety 

 of its composition and in the size and beauty of its indi- 

 viduals. 



Of these Tree Palms of our country the best known is 

 the Cabbage Palm, or Cabbage Palmetto (Sabal Palmetto), 

 of the coast region of the south-eastern states, where in the 

 immediate neighborhood of the sea it ranges from an island 

 off the mouth of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina to 

 southern Florida, and along the Gulf coast to the Apalachi- 

 cola. This tree is interesting to botanical geographers as 

 the most northern arborescent Palm in the world ; and 

 probably nothing so delights and instructs northern trav- 

 elers in the south as their first introduction to a grove of 

 these plants. The large terminal leaf-bud of this tree and of 

 many other Palms is cooked as a vegetable — a fact to 

 which it owes its common name. The custom is an 

 extravagant one, as the removal of the bud, which is never 

 replaced, kills the tree, and as young vigorous trees pro- 

 duce the most succulent buds it is rather remarkable that 

 the species has escaped extermination in a region abound- 

 ing in negroes who are credited with a special fondness 

 . for cabbages which can be had without agricultural fore- 

 thought or labor. But if it has survived the vegetarian it 

 will not long survive the maker of scrubbing-brushes, who 

 now uses the fibres of the sheaths of the young leaves in 

 his industry. To obtain his material the top of a young 

 plant with its bud is cut off, trimmed down to a disk of 

 about eight inches in length, and then, after the soft edible 

 core has been removed, boiled to separate the fibres. The 

 removal of the top kills the plant, as we have already said, 

 and as one concern in Jacksonville, Florida, alone con- 

 sumes 7,500 buds a week, the time is not very far distant 

 when -the Sabal Palmetto will become a rare tree. The 

 buds, which are now mostly procured from the west coast 

 of Florida, where the Palmetto is most abundant, are worth 

 at the mill only six or seven cents each, and it is not prob- 

 able that the extravagance and wastefulness of this brush 



industry is exceeded by that of any other in the United 

 States. 



A rude stockade made of the stems of the Palmetto on 

 one of the islands in Charleston harbor, and manned by 

 less than a hundred Americans under Moultrie, repulsed, on 

 June 2Sth, 1776, Sir Peter Parker's British fleet and decided 

 the fate of the Carolinas. A year later South Carolina placed 

 on her official seal, in memory of this victory, a Palmetto 

 erect, emblematic of its strength, and below it an Oak-tree 

 torn from the ground and shorn of its branches to recall the 

 fate of the oaken ships of her oppressors ; and the Palmetto 

 state took her place in the L r nion. In these days the trunks 

 of this Palm are found as serviceable against the attacks of 

 the teredo as they were in withstanding British shot, and 

 make excellent wharf-piles for our southern coast. 



A second arborescent Sabal enters our territory. This is 

 Sabal Mexicana, a tree which is widely scattered along the 

 Gulf-coast of Mexico and, crossing the Rio Grande, follows 

 its Texas bank for a distance of some thirty miles from the 

 coast, growing to a height of fifty feet on the rich bottom- 

 lands of the river, where it is associated with the Texas 

 Elm, the Texas Green Ash, the Mimosa and other trees 

 peculiar to that region. In habit it resembles the Carolina 

 Palm, but the leaves are rather larger, the flower-clusters 

 are three or four times longer, with stouter branchlets, and 

 the seeds are more than twice as large and much darker in 

 color. In Texas the leaves of this tree are cut off almost 

 as fast as they appear, being highly prized as thatch for 

 buildings. It is occasionally planted as a street tree in the 

 towns along the lower Rio Grande, and in some of the 

 Mexican states this Sabal is regularly cultivated to produce 

 leaves from which cheap straw hats are made in great 

 quantities. 



The third of our arborescent Palms inhabits the Colorado 

 Desert in southern California. Found by the Jesuit mis- 

 sionaries, who settled in California, on the low shores of 

 the depression of the desert which once held the waters of 

 a great arm of the sea, the Washingtonia was taken to 

 decorate the gardens of their southern missions. Some of 

 these mission trees have now grown to a great size, and 

 not long- aeo two of them standing- near an old well in San 

 Pedro Street, Los Angeles, were nearly one hundred feet in 

 height, with trunks nine feet in diameter at the base. 

 Specimens of such a size are rare, and on the desert and 

 in the dry mountain canons which this species selects for 

 its home, and where it is subject to the constant hardship of 

 drought, wind and fire, it is rarely more than fifty or sixty 

 feet tall. Nature, in thatching the trunk with a thick cone 

 of dead pendent leaves extending from the base of the 

 living crown of foliage nearly to the ground, has furnished 

 Washingtonia with the best possible protection against the 

 drying winds of the desert. But, unfortunately, this thatch, 

 which becomes as dry as tinder, is very inflammable, and 

 usually falls a prey to the fires of Indians who find that it 

 prevents them from climbing the tree to gather the fruit, or 

 of untaught white men who enjoy the sight of the mass of 

 dead leaves disappearing in a flash of flame. The tough 

 outer rim of the trunk, fortunately, does not burn easily, 

 and through uncounted ages Washingtonia has survived 

 hardships of environment and the vandalism of man from 

 a time, perhaps, when its broad and splendid crown of 

 foliage was reflected in waters which have disappeared 

 with its less robust and enduring forest companions. 

 But, whatever may have been its history and its hard- 

 ships in the past, the lines of Washingtonia have at last 

 fallen again in pleasant places, and, nourished by the 

 waters of limpid mountain streams, it is growing now 

 in countless thousands in all the gardens and parks of 

 southern California ; and in all the countries of southern 

 Europe this lonely denizen of the desert has become a 

 rival in stately beauty of the Talms of every semitropical 

 country. 



Washingtonia is now known to contain a second 

 cies, an inhabitant of western Sonora and Lower Caliiornia. 

 and very like our California trie, except iii some unimpor- 



