Jul i, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



261 



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-OFFICH AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article: — YewTrees. (Willi figure.) 261 



Plant Names of Indian Origin. — II //'. R. Gerard. 262 



Mycology in the Southern Slates Lucie n M. Underwood. 263 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter William Goldring. 264 



Cultural Department: — Filmy Ferns in the Dwelling house G. //". Oliver. 266 



Notes on Hardy Perennials Robert Cameron. 266 



Rhododendrons at Wellesley T. D. Hatfield. 267 



Correspondence : — Native Plants at Niagara Falls John Cha n. berlin . 268 



Notes from West Virginia Danske Dandridtre. 268 



The Winter-killing of Plants ill. A. Carpenter. 265 



The Larch Sack- bearer and a Birch Pest % G. Jack. 269 



Recent Publications 269 



Notes.. 270 



Illustration : — An Algerian Yew-tree (Taxus baccata), Fig. 37. . . 265 



Yew Trees. 



IN England the Yew-tree has long- been a favorite with 

 planters, and the oldest trees in Europe are believed to 

 be Yews which were old enough to influence the selection 

 of the sites of some of the oldest churches now standing in 

 Great Britain, or were planted when they were built. Some 

 of these trees are certainly four or five centuries old, and 

 their enormous stems and broad picturesque heads of dark- 

 foliage are fitting emblems of the longevity of the British 

 nation. In Europe the Yew-tree has furnished, from the 

 time of the ancients, the best material for the bow, and 

 long after the Anglo-Saxon Conquest Yew-tree bows were 

 the principal weapons of the English. In the United States 

 the Yew has never been much planted, and is compara- 

 tively little known here in gardens. In the New England 

 and other northern states the European species is not hardy, 

 and in the middle states, where it flourishes, there has been 

 less general interest in planting and gardening, during this 

 generation at least, than in New England. Many fine old 

 Yew-trees, nevertheless, may be seen in the neighborhood 

 of this city and in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Baltimore 

 and Washington, and the fact that this tree has remained so 

 rare in this part of the country can only be accounted for 

 by the fact that its slow growth has deterred Americans, 

 who want quick results, from using it more generally. But 

 now that it is known that the Japanese Yew, Taxus cuspi- 

 data, is perfectly hardy in the northern states and that it 

 grows more rapidly than the European tree, it is probable 

 that the Yew will play a more important part in the deco- 

 ration of American gardens than it has before. The Japa- 

 nese Yew is an inhabitant of Manchuria, Corea and Yezo, 

 where it is scattered through the forests of Oaks and other 

 deciduous-leaved trees, and where it rises to the height of 

 fifty feet, often forming a tall straight stem two feet in 

 diameter. A favorite with the Japanese, it is often found 

 in their gardens trimmed into grotesque and fantastic 

 shapes. The Japanese Yew was introduced into the United 

 States thirty years ago through the agency of the Parsons' 

 Nursery, in Flushing, Long Island, but gardeners are only 

 just beginning to learn its beauty and value. 



Taxus, which is confined to the northern hemisphere, is 

 widely distributed through North America, Europe, north- 



ern Africa and Asia, six species being recognized by bota- 

 nists. The species, however, all resemble one another, 

 except in hain't and in some trivial leaf characters, and 

 might as well be considered geographical forms as species, 

 all six being practically identical in the structure of their 

 flowers and fruit and in the character of their bark and 

 wood. Three of these so-called species inhabit the United 

 States ; one is endemic in Mexico ; one is widely scattered 

 through Europe, northern Africa, and Asia, and the fourth 

 is found only in eastern Asia. Of the species of our United 

 States flora, one, Taxus Canadensis, which is a low shrub with 

 wide-spreading, prostrate branches and a stout stem, is a 

 common inhabitant of northern woods, forming dense car- 

 pets or low thickets in their shade from Newfoundland to 

 the shores of Lake Winnipeg, and southward through the 

 northern states to New Jersey and Minnesota. This plant 

 is occasionally cultivated in northern gardens, where it 

 might be used much more freely than it has been to cover 

 moist ground shaded by trees. The other Yews of the 

 United States are arborescent in habit, one being found grow- 

 ing in Florida and the other in the Pacific states. The 

 Florida Yew, Taxus Floridana, which is one of the rarest 

 of the North American trees, inhabits the bluffs and ravines 

 of the eastern bank of the Apalachicola River, where it 

 grows with the Florida Torreya in the territory extending 

 southward from Aspalaga to Bristol, in Gasten County, for 

 a distance of about thirty miles. Taxus Floridana is a 

 bushy tree, rarely thirty feet high, with a short trunk occa- 

 sionally a foot in diameter, and many stout, spreading 

 branches. Although discovered as long ago as 1833, the 

 fruit was seen for the first time last winter, and this hand- 

 some bushy tree appears to have remained unknown in 

 gardens until the past winter, when living plants were 

 introduced into Mr. Vanderbilt's arboretum on his estate at 

 Biltmore, in North Carolina. 



The second arborescent Yew in the LTnited States, Taxus 

 brevifolia, often attains a height of eighty feet, with a tall 

 lobed trunk two or three feet in diameter. An inhabitant 

 of the shady banks of mountain streams, damp ravines and 

 deep gorges, growing usually under the shade of larger 

 evergreens, it is distributed from Queen Charlotte's Islands 

 and the valley of the Skena River in British Columbia 

 southward on the Coast Mountains to the shores of the 

 Bay of Monterey, in California ; it also inhabits many of 

 the interior ranges of British Columbia and the Cascade 

 Mountains, ranging eastward over the mountains of eastern 

 Washington and Oregon to the western slopes of the Rocky 

 Mountains of Montana, and occurs on the western slopes 

 of the Sierras of northern and central California, between 

 elevations of five and eight thousand feet. The wood of 

 this tree furnished the Indians of the north west coast with 

 the material from which they made their bows, the handles 

 of their spears, their paddles and fish-hooks ; and the white 

 man finds it the most durable material for his fence-posts. 

 Introduced into English gardens forty years ago, the west- 

 ern Yew is occasionally found in European collections. 

 Unfortunately, this beautiful tree has not yet shown its 

 capacity to withstand the severity of our eastern climate. 



Of the fourth American species nothing is known beyond 

 the fact that fifty years ago a German botanist collected 

 specimens of a Yew-tree in southern Mexico, which was 

 afterward described in Germany as Taxus globosa. Bota- 

 nists who have traveled in Mexico in recent years have 

 seen nothing of this plant, and there is nothing to say about 

 it except to comment on the interest which would attach 

 to its rediscovery. 



The Yew-tree, however, in which the world has been 

 interested since the time of the Greeks, is the Old World 

 Taxus baccata. This is not only the best known of all the 

 plants of the genus, but it surpasses them all in the rich- 

 ness and beauty of its dark lustrous foliage and in its size, 

 individuals one hundred feet high, with trunks five or six, 

 or even ten, feet in diameter being known. The Old World 

 Yew, which usually grows in shady situations on the noi th- 

 em slopes of hills or under the cover of deciduous-leaved 



