January i8, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



25 



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. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGB. 



Editorial Article :— The Names of Garden Flowers 25 



The Battle-ground in Prospect Park. (With figure.) John DeWolf. 26 



Notes on tlie Forest Flora of Japan. — I C. S. S. 26 



New or Little-known Plants :— Salix balsamifera. (With figure.) C. S. S. 28 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson. 28 



CuiT.iRAL Department :— Late-keeping Pears T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 30 



Work of the Season VV. H. Taplin. 30 



Irises and their Cultivation.— V J. N. Gerard. 31 



Euphorbias Robert Cameron. 32 



Glo.vinias E- O. Orfet. 33 



Hardy Orchids for Outdoor Cultivation F. H. Horsford. 33 



The Forest : — Hygienic Significance of Forest Air and Forest SoiL.fi. E. Fernow. 34 



Correspondence : — The Season in Northern California Carl Purdy. 35 



A Case of Inherited Variegation E. G. Lodeinan. 35 



Notes 35 



Illustrations:— Sali.x balsamifera. Fig. 5 29 



Scene near Battle Pass, Prospect Parlt, Brooldyn, N. Y., Fig. 6 31 



The Names of Garden Flowers. 



A RECENT article in these columns called attention to 

 the lack of imagination displayed by florists in the 

 names they give to the beautiful blossoms of the Chrysan- 

 themum, which, in the land whence they come, bear 

 such delicate and appropriate appellations that the title is 

 almost as charming as the flower. The same contributor 

 has been consulting the index to our last volume and its 

 list of the names with which these unhappy blossoms are 

 weighted, and the examination shows that out of a hundred 

 and forty flowers, ninety bear the surnames of men or 

 women, with a Christian name or an initial attached, such as 

 Mrs. H. J. Smith, Mrs. R. A. Jones, Mrs. Governor Robinson, 

 and the like, the ladies being largely complimented in this 

 manner ; and when J. John Rafferty, Jacob Beemer and a 

 score more of that sort are added, the catalogue reads like 

 a Sunday-school list. 



Then follow various proper names, such as Leila, Ethel, 

 Olga, Irma, Roselyn and Clarence, or meaningless titles 

 like Mars, Exquisite, Faust, Syringa, Gold, Thrumpton and 

 Good Gracious, all of which might with equal propriety 

 be applied to a cow or a kitten. This leaves about twenty, 

 which aspire to be descriptive or to have some fanci- 

 fulness or grace to recommend them. Of the twenty, 

 a few are fairly happy, such as Avalanche, Rosy Morn, 

 Snowflake, Pink Pearl and Mont Blanc. The others are 

 simply tolerable and commonplace, like Golden Ball, White 

 Cap, Sunflower, Black Beauty and Marvel, which convey 

 no particular idea. 



Our contributor finds quite as much to criticise in the 

 names of modern Roses. The old-fashioned Sweet-brier was 

 redolent of fragrance and eloquent of thorn in its very name. 

 The Baltimore Belle and Prairie Rose wreathed about our 

 portals, the Cinnamon Rose scattered its musky petals at our 

 feet, the Damask Rose spoke to us of the far east, the 

 Provence Rose brought with it memories of the trouba- 

 dours, but nowadays our parterres bristle with Marshals 



and Generals like a battle-field, or are gay with Dukes and 

 Countesses like a royal ball-room. Even Ferdinand de 

 Lesseps and Charles Darwin are to be had for the picking, 

 and Captain Christy appropriately climbs hand-over-hand 

 upon a trellis.. Empress of India is, to be sure, not a bad 

 name for this regal flower, and the titles of the court ladies 

 who lend their proud names to adorn the proud blossom 

 do not seem quite so out of place as Mrs. Jones and Mrs. 

 Smith attached to a Chrysanthemum ; but how much bet- 

 ter we like Boule de Neige or Perle des Blanches or Perle 

 d'Or, The Bride or Sunset or Gloire de Dijon than even the 

 stateliest of these unmeaning titles, which, after all, flatter 

 the person and not the Rose. 



Our correspondent might have uttered the same lamen- 

 tation over the names of Dahlias, Gladioli, Geraniums and, 

 in fact, all other flowers whose garden forms are rapidly 

 multiplying every year. The case of Orchids is still more 

 distressing, because, while the names are quite as inappro- 

 priate, they have been made ridiculous by giving them 

 barbarous Latin terminations. A glance at the list of 

 Irises proved so staggering that our correspondent wrote : 

 "It is not easy to run a word like Kolpakowskyana trip- 

 pingly off the tongue, or to airily recommend a Xiphioides or 

 a Scorpioidesas an attractive object of contemplation. There 

 is a crawliness about the one and a deadliness about the 

 other that are truly repellant, while so lovely a blossom 

 seems to merit something better at the hands of its baptizer 

 than such a word as Missouriensis or Chamaeiris as its only 

 handle." But the nurserymen are not responsible for these 

 names, and they only show that the botanists are quite as 

 prosaic as the commercial plantsmen. 



But, after all, while there is something to regret in all 

 this, the practice of the producers of new garden-flowers 

 is not singularly reprehensible. There is occasion for simi- 

 lar complaint wherever many new names are in constant 

 demand. Jay-Eye-See and Maud S. are neither of them 

 ideal names for trotters, and the names of distinguished 

 individuals in all the other families of horse-flesh, from the 

 Percheron to the pony, are generally unpoetical and mean- 

 ingless. The herd-books of various breeds of blooded 

 stock repeat the same lesson, which is emphasized in the 

 inappropriate names of our towns and counties and the 

 streetsof our cities. Our common wild flowers rejoice in pic- 

 turesque and winning names because the name represents a 

 type, and not one of a thousand individual forms. We praise 

 the skill of the Japanese in their selection of names, and 

 argue that in sky and light and in the phenomena of night 

 and day there are similes enough to set forth fitly the deli- 

 cate charms of an Iris, the opulent gorgeousness of a 

 Chrysantheinum, or the fragrant fullness of a Rose. But, 

 after all, a thousand or so of such names for Chrysan- 

 themums as "Disheveled Hair in Morning Sleep," or 

 " Border of the Thin Mist," however suitable they may be 

 for the use of the oriental poet, would become absurd to 

 the unimaginative western mind. In these rapidly multi- 

 plying garden forms of a popular flower a name is 

 only needed for purposes of identification, so that we 

 can talk about it and know which one of a thousand forms 

 is referred to. It is utterly impossible that each one of 

 these forms should have an accurately, or even poetically, 

 descriptive epithet. The best that we can hope for is that 

 the)^ will not be vulgar or repulsive or utterly common- 

 place. Nine-tenths of them will never be heard of in a few 

 years, and the names of those flowers that prove worthy 

 to live will become mellowed, if not hallowed, by associa- 

 tion. Who objects to Madame Plantier as the name of that 

 grand old Rose to-day? Besides this, the selection of a 

 name of a man or woman may be justified by some fact in 

 the history of a plant, just as the name of Mrs. Alpheus 

 Hardy was appropriately given to the sensational flower of 

 that name, because the lady had befriended the young 

 Japanese who sent the Chrysanthemum to her on his return 

 to his native land. 



At all events, before we utterly condemn the general 

 practice we ought to be able to lay down some general 



