December 23, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



5" 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducled by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article : — Trees in Public Parks 



The New York Traffic in Christmas Greens M. B. C. 



The Value of Bud Varieties G. Harold Powell. 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 



New or Little-known Plants: — Valeriana Sitchensis. (With figure.) 



Cultural Department:— Selaginellas William Scott. 



Late Chrysanthemums T. D. Hatfield. 



Bamboos y. N. Gerard. 



Fertilizers tor the Orchard J. Troop. 



From the St. Louis Botanic Garden Fanny Copley Seavey. 



Correspondence : — The Growth of Forest Trees T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 



Utilizing: Choke Cherries B. L. P. 



Variety Tests in the Experiment Stations Professor Samuel B. Green. 



The California Buckeye yoseplt Meehan. 



Insect Pests in Madeira Professor T. D. A. Cockerell. 



Recent Publications 



Notes 



Iliustration : — Valeriana Sitchensis, Fig. 74 ■. 



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5'5 



Trees in Public Parks. 



THE determination of the selectmen of the town of 

 Winchester, Massachusetts, to remove a row of large 

 Elm-trees which encroach on the principal street of the 

 town, has met with such a storm of opposition among- the 

 inhabitants, and has been so generally condemned by 

 the press of the state, that this particular row of trees will 

 probably continue to shade the Winchester highway. This 

 vigorous protest against cutting down these trees, which 

 we have reason to believe is entirely justified by the pecu- 

 liar circumstances of the case, represents the usual attitude 

 of Americans toward the trees on their public grounds. 

 They object on general principles and on all occasions to 

 cutting down a tree, without stopping to consider whether 

 it should be cut or not, and therefore often insist that 

 trees should be left standing when really they ought to be 

 removed. Park commissioners and other officers charged 

 with the care of public grounds frequently try to defend 

 themselves against charges of neglect of duty in such mat- 

 ters by entrenching themselves behind the public sentiment 

 against the cutting of trees, which they claim is often so 

 strong that they are helpless to act. Every expert, for 

 example, who visits Central Park, in this city, sees that 

 the excessive crowding of the trees is rapidly destroying 

 their beauty and threatening their lives, and that hundreds 

 of trees should be cut out at once in order to maintain the 

 park in good condition. This has been explained year 

 after year, and from time to time the park authorities have 

 removed occasional trees here and there, but such work 

 should go on steadily and constantly, and in a great 

 pleasure garden like Central Park the axe should never be 

 allowed to rest. The feeling against cutting a tree is, how- 

 ever, so strong in this community that it is exceedingly 

 difficult for commissioners to accomplish any system- 

 atic work in this direction. If, however, the impor- 

 tance of this matter was once clearly understood, the 

 public would not only uphold but demand these opera- 

 tions, and it is, therefore, one of the plain duties of Park 

 Boards and their subordinates to instruct the people on 

 this subject by object-lessons and in every other possible 

 way. 



We allude to Central Park because it is visited yearly by 

 many people who see for themselves the need of prompt 

 action with the axe in order to develop its greatest possi- 

 bilities and beauty, and because we have been somewhat 

 familiar with the workings of its management, but the 

 same thing can be said with nearly equal truth of the con- 

 dition of the plantations in all American parks. In Pros- 

 pect Park, Brooklyn, the thinning of the border plantations 

 has been so long delayed that their usefulness has gone, 

 and they must be renewed at a very large cost and 

 the loss of twenty-five or thirty years. In the Buffalo 

 park the trees, about twenty-five years old, are every- 

 where crowding themselves out of shape, and, unless steps 

 are taken to relieve them at once, the beauty of these plan- 

 tations will be ruined forever. This condition of things 

 exists also in the parks of Chicago and St. Louis, and in 

 Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, and Fairmount Park, Phila- 

 delphia, where many old trees have been allowed to die 

 prematurely through the neglect to apply simple remedies 

 of preservation. Boston, however, enjoys the reputation of 

 having the worst trees in its parks of any American city. 

 The city has spent millions in securing park lands and in 

 building elaborately constructed park roads and expensive 

 park buildings, but little or nothing has been done for the 

 trees which were growing on these lands ; these are over- 

 crowded, unshapely, full of dead and dying branches, and 

 are harborers of dangerous insects, which spread from the 

 parks into adjacent lands. 



This general neglect of the trees in public parks in 

 American cities cannot be explained by the excessive love 

 felt for trees by the public, as park officers often assert. 

 The cause must rather be looked for in the general indif- 

 ference of Americans to their trees, and in the unfortunate 

 fact that the tendency of American park makers in recent 

 times is more to the perfection of park drives and walks 

 and to the erection of expensive buildings, retaining-walls, 

 bridges and other masonry structures, than to the care and 

 maintenance of plantations. It is easier to lay down the 

 lines of a gracefully curved driveway and to get it satisfac- 

 torily built than it is to make and maintain a good planta- 

 tion of trees ; and the thorough knowledge of trees which 

 is essential for good park-planting, comes only from long 

 study and special powers of observation. But, on the 

 other hand, park makers and park commissioners must 

 remember that a road, a bridge or a building can be com- 

 pleted in a single season, and that only a few months are 

 required to change the roughest piece of ground into a 

 smiling lawn, while it takes the best part of a century to 

 bring a tree to perfection, and that this perfection can never 

 be obtained if it is allowed to remain neglected during any 

 considerable period. Roads and walks and buildings of 

 all sorts are needed in parks to make them available for 

 public use, but they are necessary evils to be subordinated 

 as far as possible to the natural features which give them 

 their real value. The most important of these natural 

 features are the trees, and parks are beautiful and useful 

 as they are furnished with good trees ; it is certainly to be 

 deplored that the modern tendency in park management is 

 to do everything else in a park but care for the trees, which, 

 as we have already said, are not only the most essential fea- 

 tures of a park, but the most difficult to obtain. Experts in 

 the care of ornamental trees are sadly needed in the United 

 States, and if they can be found the managers of our parks 

 singularly neglect their duties if they fail to avail them- 

 selves of the technical knowledge of such men. 



The New York Traffic in Christinas Greens. 



THOUSANDS of closely tied Christmas trees piled up 

 in the wide street space before the dock and ferry 

 entrances along West Street have indicated for a fortnight 

 past that the holiday season is at hand. One who would 

 visit the principal seat of another branch of Christmas 

 industry must leave the West Street car at the picturesque 

 fronts of the Gansevoort markets, ami, passing the whole 



