June io, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



235 



plant of the three, but the Cranberry Tree, its fertile 

 form, is still more desirable, just as V. tomentosum is more i 

 beautiful than its sterile form V. plicatum. The wild form 

 of V. macrocephalum has never yet been introduced to cul- 

 tivation. 



Camassia Cusickii. — This species was figured in the first 

 volume of Garden and Forest (see page 174), and experi- 



this purpose. These flowers are nearly white when they 

 o„pen, but they turn to a pale blue. Like most bulbs this 

 Camassia delights in an open or sandy soil, and it is espe- 

 cially necessary that the bulbs of this species, which are 

 sometimes as large as a hen's egg, should be planted deeply. 

 The common C. esculenta, the edible Quamash of the 

 Indians, is a smaller plant altogether, and not nearly as 







§B$L 



Fig. 34. — Second-growth Che9tnut-trees, in West Virginia. — See page 234. 



ence has proved what was then predicted, that it would be 

 an excellent garden plant. It is perfectly hardy, and after 

 a winter which has proved so disastrous to many bulbous 

 plants this native of the west has been flowering well on 

 spikes two feet high, with sometimes as many as forty nar- 

 row-petaled, star-shaped flowers on a single spike. They 

 keep well when cut, and the plant can be commended for 



hardy as C. Cusickii, although it has a variety, Leichtlinii, 

 with creamy white flowers two inches across, large leaves 

 and robust stems, which seems able to withstand our win- 

 ters without protection. Leichtlin's Camassia, however, 

 does not open its flowers until late in the afternoon and 

 blooms in the evening. C. Fraseri, sometimes called the 

 wild Hyacinth, has an almost naked stem and a short spike 



