September 2, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



35i 



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, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — The Spruce-trees of Eastern North America. (With 



figure.) 351 



Botanical Gardens. — I Professor N. L. Brittoti. 352 



The Sand Dunes of Northern Indiana and their Flora Rev. E. J. Hill. 353 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter 11'. It \itson. 354 



Cultural Department :— The Osage Cantaloupe R. P Harris. 356 



The Chinese Hibiscus as a Lawn Plant G. IV. Oliver. 356 



Water-lilies in Extreme Heat IVm. Tricker. 356 



Ornamental Grasses Edward J. Canning. 356 



Fancy -leaved Caladiums G. IV. O. 357 



Correspondence : — To Protect the Beauty of the Woods G. F. Schwarz. 357 



The Massing of Wild Flowers Lara S. La Mance. 358 



Notes from Germantown, Pennsylvania Jose/>h Meehan. 358 



The Forest: — The Burma Teak Forests. — V Sir Dietrich Bramiis. 358 



Recent Publications 359 



Notes. 360 



Illustration : — The White Spruce (Picea alba) on the Maine Coast, Fig. 47. ... 355 



The Spruce-trees of Eastern North America. 



THE best descriptions and figures of the Spruce-trees 

 which are indigenous in the eastern United States 

 were published in London in 1803, in the first of Lambert's 

 splendid folios devoted to the genus Pinus. Before the 

 appearance of this work botanists referred all our Spruces 

 to two species, the Black Spruce and the White Spruce, but 

 Lambert, from material obtained in Newfoundland, recog- 

 nized a third species which he called the Red Spruce. 

 This species, however, has generally been neglected by 

 botanists, who have either overlooked it entirely or have 

 considered it a variety of the Black Spruce, although the 

 late Dr. Lawson, of Halifax, who had exceptional opportu- 

 nities for studying these trees in their native forests, insisted 

 that the Red and Black Spruces were distinct trees, and his 

 views will certainly be shared by every one who sees them 

 alive and understands their distribution and peculiarities. 



The Black Spruce, the Picea nigra or Mariana of bota- 

 nists, is an inhabitant of cold, wet sphagnum swamps, 

 where it rarely grows sixty feet high or lives a hundred 

 years. It is a tree of open habit, with rather remote 

 branches which sweep downward in slender, graceful 

 curves. The slender branchlets are covered with fine rusty 

 pubescence, and the leaves are blue-green and very glau- 

 cous. The cones are broadly ovate and from three-quar- 

 ters of an inch to an inch and a quarter in length, with 

 rigid scales conspicuously erose on the margins ; the}' are 

 strongly incurved at the base, dark purple when fully 

 grown, and remain on the branches for many years. Trees 

 stunted by wet and cold often begin to produce cones 

 when only four or five feet high. The Black Spruce is 

 common in Labrador and Newfoundland and ranges to 

 Hudson's Bay and much farther north-westward, but 

 probably does not reach the shores of the Pacific Ocean 

 or as high latitudes as the White Spruce, although the con- 

 fusion which has existed with regard to these trees makes 

 it impossible to speak with confidence of their distribution 

 in the Arctic Circle, or even on the waters of the upper 

 Mackenzie River; it is common in the maritime provinces 

 of Canada, following down the Atlantic coast to New Jer- 

 sey, although south of Cape Ann it is not common in the coast 

 region, being confined to a few isolated swamps ; it ranges 



westward to Manitoba and northern Minnesota, and south- 

 ward to Pennsylvania. Michigan and Wisconsin, and is said 

 to grow in elevated swamps on some of the high mountains 

 of Virginia. The Black Spruce, however, is a rare tree on 

 the Appalachian hills, although Black Spruces do occur on 

 the White Mountains of New Hampshire and in several 

 Pennsylvania swamps. It is, however, the only Black 

 Spruce of the states surrounding the Great Lakes and the 

 only Spruce which reaches the Atlantic coast south of 

 Cape Ann. As a timber tree the Black Spruce has little 

 value and probably has never been manufactured into lum- 

 ber, except, perhaps, for local use. In cultivation it loses 

 its beauty early, growing thin and straggly, and is one of 

 the least desirable of all conifers as an ornamental tree. 



The Red Spruce is a tree often one hundred feet and 

 occasionally one hundred and twenty feet high, with a tall 

 trunk three or four feet in diameter ; short, slender, slightly 

 pendulous branches which form a narrow, compact, pyra- 

 midal head ; stout branchlets clothed with rusty pubescence 

 and dark green lustrous leaves. The cones are oblong and 

 from two inches to two inches and a half long, with thin, 

 rigid, entire or obscurely erose scales, and are straight at 

 the base, light green, sometimes slightly tinged or streaked 

 with purple, and fall within a year after ripening. The Red 

 Spruce grows in Labrador and Newfoundland ; it occurs in 

 the Canadian maritime provinces, although less commonly 

 than the Black and White Spruces, and follows down the 

 Atlantic coast to the neighborhood of Rockport, Massa- 

 chusetts ; it is the common Spruce-tree of all the interior 

 regions of New England, New York and Pennsylvania, and 

 ranges south along the Alleghany Mountains to the high 

 peaks of North Carolina and Tennessee. As far as the 

 United States is concerned, it is an Appalachian tree, and 

 does not extend into the lake region. It is the upland 

 Spruce of the northern states and the common timber 

 Spruce of New England, New York and Pennsylvania, 

 nearly all the spruce lumber of these states being ob- 

 tained from this tree, which is the Black Spruce of lum- 

 bermen and most botanists. 



The Red Spruce, which was formerly occasionally planted 

 as an ornamental tree in New England, has generally es- 

 caped the notice of gardeners. In cultivation it is a beau- 

 tiful long-lived tree of excellent color and habit, with the 

 general appearance of the Oriental Spruce, Picea orientalis, 

 which, in the northern states at least, does not surpass it in 

 beauty, while it is less hardy and grows less rapidly. 



The White Spruce, Picea Canadensis, differs from the Red 

 and Black Spruces in its stouter, pale and glabrous branchlets 

 and larger buds, in its bluer and more glaucous foliage, 

 although on some Black Spruces the leaves are as glaucous 

 as those of the White Spruce, and in the thin entire cone- 

 scales, which are so flexible that a dry cone is easily 

 compressed between the fingers, while the cones of the 

 other species break under slight pressure. The strong, 

 disagreeable, wildcat odor of the bruised leaves of the 

 While Spruce distinguishes it from all other conifers, making 

 it easy to recognize this tree at all seasons of the year. The 

 White Spruce is common in Labrador and Newfoundland ; 

 it is probably the common Spruce of the subarctic and 

 arctic forests which stretch across the contii ■! ap- 



pears to reach the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains .if 

 British Columbia, and possibly crosses their northern exten- 

 sion to the Pacific coast in Alaska ; it is the common Spruce 

 of the St. Lawrence valley, extending down the Atlantic 

 coast at least to the shores of Casco Bay, in Maine, and in 

 the interior it finds its southern home on the high mountains 

 of northern New England and New York, northern Mich: 

 Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Black Mills of Da!. 

 where, apparently, it is the only Spruce-tree. The White Spruce 

 is occasionally manufactured into lumber in northern New 

 Hampshire and New York, although it is so rare in these 

 regions that it cannot play an important part in :he lumber 

 supply ; it is more abundant in Maine, ami it is the princi- 

 pal timber Spruce in New Brunswick and the maritime 

 provinces ; and the wood of this tree is probably the only 



