26o 



Garden and Forest 



[Number 277. 



tered into the cultivated varieties. Our native R. maximum 

 has received some attention from nurserymen, but it has not 

 yet entered largely into the named kinds. One of the most in- 

 teresting displays is a collection of fifty-five large plants m 

 boxes of R.Californicum about the Washington State Building. 

 This species has recently been designated as the state flower 

 by the Legislature of Washington. The plants were received 

 late in May in rather poor condition, having been three weeks 

 on the way in a dark car, but they are now rallying and are be- 

 ginning to bloom. The species occurs locally in Washington, 

 especially about Seattle and the base of Mount Hood. It forms 

 dense plantations, four to eight feet, and even fourteen feet, in 

 height. The flowers vary from pink-white to rose. 



Altogether, this is undoubtedly the best display ever held 

 west of the AUeghanies. Although the Rhododendron is a 

 captious plant in our climate, it must be remembered that one 

 of the best species is native here, and that many varieties can 

 be relied upon with tolerable certainty, even in trying places. 



There seems no reason why American nurserymen should 



not originate races which will be perfectly hardy and happy in 



our climate. j rj td„;j^„ 



Chicago, 111. ^- ^- Bailey. 



Notes. 



Young fruit-trees which were properly transplanted last 

 autumn had fine earth very compactly placed about their 

 roots, but just now there is danger that this soil may be- 

 come hardened and crusted, which condition is altogether un- 

 favorable to growth. It is important, therefore, to keep the 

 ground about newly set trees not only clean, but thoroughly 

 pulverized on the surface. 



There are many attractive shrubs and small trees in bloom 

 in Central Park at the present time, including Philadelphuses, 

 several of the Thorns and Viburnums, but none of them are 

 more attractive than ChionanthusVirginica. The delicate snow- 

 white flowers hang in abundant loose panicles from every 

 spray, and the long slender petals produce a lace-like effect 

 which makes the common name of Fringe-tree most appro- 

 priate. 



At the Maine Experiment Station a modified form of the 

 mixture known as "Eau celeste," consisting of two pounds of 

 copper sulphate, two and a half pounds of carbonate of soda, 

 one and a half pints of ammonia and thirty gallons of water 

 proved the most effective means of checking the Apple-scab. 

 The experiments emphasized the value of spraying early in 

 the season before the blossoms open and applying the fungi- 

 cide repeatedly during the summer. 



At the annual meeting of the Linnaean Society, recently 

 held in London, the Linnaean medal was presented to Pro- 

 fessor OHver, for many yeai'S the curator of the Kew Herba- 

 rium, a position from which he has now retired, although 

 he still continues to render marked service to botany and hor- 

 ticulture in his ready and valuable assistance to those who 

 seek the benefit of his vast experience and great knowledge 

 of the plants of all parts of the world. 



One of the largest Redwood-trees ever felled in California, cut 

 near the Eel River, about ten miles from Scotia, was recently 

 sent to Chicago, wliere it will be exhibited. The trunk was 

 seventy-seven feet in circumference at the base, 417 feet in 

 leno-th, and at a height of 207 feet it was nine feet in diameter. 

 The section cut out for exhibition is twelve feet high and sixty- 

 three feet in circumference. The entire tree contained 400,000 

 feet of lumber, solid measurement, and cut up into 305,000 

 feet of merchantable lumber. Only the shell of the section 

 cut out has been sent to the Columbian Exposition, where it 

 will be put up in the shape of a room. 



In Meehans' Monthly, for June, the editor states that out of 

 100,000 flowering plants known to botanists, possibly not one- 

 tenth of the number have any odor. The large majority of 

 plants are, in fact, scendess. In many large genera there are 

 only one ortwofragrantspecies;for instance, in the Mignonette 

 family, of fifty known species only the one in our garden has 

 any odor. Among one hundred species of Violets there are 

 not a dozen fragrant ones. In other large genera, as for exam- 

 ple in Begonia, the scentless varieties are as one hundred to 

 one, and among our wild flowers the sweet-smelling ones are 

 comparatively rare. 



The first number of the Journal of the Kcw Guild speaks 

 of the destruction of the old Chilian Pine, Araucaria imbricata, 

 which had been failing for several years and which was re- 

 moved last autumn. In 1792 Archibald Menzies, navy sur- 

 geon and botanist, was dining with the Viceroy of Chili, when 

 at dessert some nuts were brought to the table which were 



unknown to him. He sowed a few of them in a box of soil ; 

 they germinated onboard ship, and he finally brought five 

 plants home to Kew, which were the first ever seen in Eng- 

 land. Of these the old specimen which was destroyed last 

 year was one, so that when it died it was exactly one hundred 

 years old. 



The usual supply of pineapples from the West Indies is, for 

 the first time this year, supplemented by the Florida crop, so 

 that this fruit was never before so abundant in our market. 

 Although this fact has had the effect of cheapening the price 

 of strawberries, the latter fruit has held better prices during 

 the past week, good strawberries selling for fifteen cents a 

 quart as against ten cents a week ago. There is a limited 

 supply of Florida canteloupes at thirty-five and forty cents 

 apiece, and the best peaches from the south, and a few from 

 California, are held at sixty cents a dozen. Niagara grapes, 

 from Georgia, are forty-five cents a pound. New California 

 apples command fifty cents and California apricots twenty-five 

 cents a dozen. 



The editor of the Rural New Yorker is pleased with the con- 

 duct of the Papaw (Asimina triloba) on his grounds. His 

 specimen was taken from the woods some twenty years ago, 

 and grows in wretchedly poor soil and bears an immense crop 

 of fruit, which he chooses to call the northern banana, every 

 year. Not a bud of the tree was killed by the cold last winter, 

 which reached twenty degrees below zero. It was in full 

 bloom about the 20th of May, with flowers as pretty as those 

 of an Akebia, and the tree assumes a symmetrical shape, while 

 the large leaves give it a peculiarly tropical effect. He adds 

 that the fruit is liked by many peisons. Some years ago Mon- 

 sieur Charles Naudin wrote to this journal that the fruit of 

 some of the Papaws which he was cultivating was to his 

 taste delicious, and altogether the best of the wild indigenous 

 fruits of North America. Unfc rtunately, the iruit contains 

 many large seeds, which leave the proportion of edible pulp 

 too small to make it valuable. But, then, this Papaw has never 

 been improved by cultivation, and when we remember how our 

 orchard fruits have been altered by selection and hybridizing 

 from their original types, it would seem that the effort to im- 

 prove this fruit was worthy of experiment. 



A bulletin has recently been issued by President Mills, of 

 the Ontario Agricultural College, offering a short summer 

 course of instruction to the teachers of that province in agri- 

 culture and the sciences most closely related thereto. Since 

 farming is the main industry in Ontario, President Millsargues 

 that it is the duty of the public schools to consider to some 

 extent that fact, so that the children can be instructed, not only 

 in the elements of general education, but in some of the prin- 

 ciples that underlie the successful practice of the industry by 

 which most of them will have to earn a living. This short 

 course is provided for the teachers in the belief that they may 

 be enabled to give valuable instruction in agriculture by plain 

 lectures to children in conversations on soils, plants and ani- 

 mals, so simple that the lower classes in a public school may 

 understand them, so attractive as to interest all, and of such a 

 character as to benefit the children, whatever their occupation 

 may be in after life. The course will extend throughout the 

 month of July. The forenoons will be devoted to lectures, 

 and the afternoons to botanical and geological excursions in 

 charge of an officer, together with practical work in laborato- 

 ries, with observation trips to gardens, fields and experimental 

 plots. 



We have received from Mr. Joseph Meehan, of German- 

 town, a spray of Cornus Kousa, which is just now in full flower. 

 This plant, generally known in nurseries as Benthamia Ja- 

 ponica, blooms every year, and the large white bracts have 

 more substance than those of our Flowering Dogwood, which 

 it so much resembles. The bracts are not so purely white as 

 those of Cornus florida, but they appear two weeks later than on 

 our native plant, and after the bright green leaves have attained 

 full size. Mr. Meehan also sent a flowering branch of the beauti- 

 ful Pterostyrax hispidum, a figure of which was published in 

 Garden and Forest, vol. v., page 389. The tree from which 

 the spray was taken is now nearly twenty feet high and has borne 

 flowers for several years. It is a strong-growing tree and of 

 pleasing ouUine, and just now it is covered with abundant 

 white flowers in pendulous racemes. A branch of Styrax 

 Obassia, which came with the above, had nearly passed out of 

 flower, but it still showed the racemes of large white flowers, 

 standing outsomewhat horizontally and not drooping, as in the 

 case of the Pterostyrax. The largest specimen in the Meehan 

 Nurseries is fifteen feet high, and yet it never flowered unfil this 

 year. A smaller one, only eight feet in height, also bloomed 

 for the first time. 



