June 28, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



273 



Wild Flowers in Market. 



FROM March until Asters disappear wild flowers may be 

 found in the Harrisburg markets, but this year in sucli 

 quantity and variety as to deserve passing mention. The wet 

 weather of April and May was almost prohibitory of country 

 expeditions, but buying one's wild flowers is not an unmixed 

 pleasure, as gathering them is, for they look so unhappy in the 

 tight little bunches, tied with bands of thick gingham. How- 

 ever, one sometimes finds branches and sprays of the flower- 

 ing shrubs, but the tight bunches have an advantage in transit 

 over our not very good roads. 



There is one group of market-stalls where very many of our 

 wild flowers can be found throughout the season, but during 

 the latter part of May each stall has an individuality, owing to 

 the different localities from which its products come, and all 

 are then specially interesting. Most of the Ferns and more 

 delicate flowers are brought from Fishing Creek Valley, and 

 one family there has made quite an art of the successful trans- 

 portation of Ferns. In hundreds of plants of Maidenhair 

 Ferns one rarely finds a broken stem, and the stall-woman 

 always shows new customers the " nice dirt" about the roots, 

 and warns them not to disturb it. This stall is always bowery 

 and delightful as Anemone and Hepatica, Amelanchier and 

 Columbine, Red-bud and Dogwood, Wild Ci"ab-apple and 

 Azalea succeed each other. The ist of June it was a study in 

 soft tones against a deep border of Maidenhair, bunches 

 of Smilacina racemosa and S. trifolia, and platters of Bluets. 

 The next week the Bluets had disappeared, but their place 

 was filled by masses of Mountain Laurel, Golden Aster, Ascle- 

 pias quadritolia and Gillenia trifoliata. Milkweed has an un- 

 certain place in rural minds, for on two occasions when inquir- 

 ing from different people whether Asclepias quadrifolia was 

 not Milkweed, I have received the same reply, "That's not 

 Milkweed ; that's a wild flower." 



Another Fishing Creek stall is presided over by a scornful 

 soul, who dealt out blossoming plants of Cypripedium acaule 

 and C. pubescens for a penny a plant to weak-minded towns- 

 people who liked such trash. "No, she didn't know if they 

 had a name ; may be they hadn't one. A neighbor woman 

 called them Indian Tulips, but, for her part, she never bothered 

 to look at such things. She just sold them for the children 

 who brought them in from the woods, and once her garden 

 got growing wouldn't bother with such truck." 



Across the aisle a stand was pink and blue with Azaleas and 

 Lupines from the country back of town — country that looks 

 monotonously flat when seen from a height, but really is roll- 

 ing, and filled with beautiful little streams and dells with all man- 

 ner of lovely things growing in them. Another stall is gorgeous 

 through May with Castilleia from a York County meadow. 

 Inquiry, so far, has failed to discover any place else near by 

 where the plant grows, so the meadow is gaining quite a repu- 

 tation. My York County friend confided to me one morning 

 that " three doctors from town had walked over the hills to see 

 the meadow, and they certainly were pleased with the sight, 

 and they gave the flower the same name that I did." This 

 tribute touched me deeply, for a town-man ranks infinitely 

 higher than a town-woman when it comes to expressing an 

 opinion, but in her heart I know she classed us all as harmless 

 lunatics. 



The only floral path to a true country-woman's heart is lined 

 with Cacti and paved with flowers that " look like wax." The 

 more hideous and prickly the Cactus the deeper it appeals. 

 Beauty of form and coloring, fragrance — all these are as 

 naught compared with that embodiment of grace and charm. 

 Old-man Cactus. 

 Harrisburg, Pa. M. L. Dock. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — XVI. 



ALTHOUGH we have learned to look upon Japan as the 

 ^_ home of the Persimmon, which is intimately asso- 

 ciated with the expression of modern Japanese art, it is 

 doubtful if either of the species of Diospyros commonly 

 encountered in that country is really indigenous in the 

 empire, where they were both probably introduced, with 

 many other cultivated plants, from China. The more common 

 andimportantofthetwospeciesis,ofcourse, theKaki, Dios- 

 pyros Kaki, which is planted everywhere in the neighbor- 

 hood of houses, which in the interior of the main island 

 are often embowered in small groves of this handsome 

 tree. In shape it resembles a well-grown Apple-tree, with 

 a straight trunk, spreading branches which droop toward 

 the extremities and form a compact round head. Trees 



thirty or forty feet high are often seen ; and in the autumn, 

 when they are covered with fruit and the leaves have turned 

 to the color of old Spanish red leather, they are exceedingly 

 handsome. Perhaps there is no tree, except the Orange, 

 which, as a fruit-tree, is as beautiful as the Kaki. In cen- 

 tral and northern Japan the variety which produces large, 

 orange-colored, ovate, thick-skmned fruit is the only one 

 planted, and the cultivation of the red-fruited varieties with 

 which we have become acquainted in this country is con- 

 fined to the south. A hundred varieties of Kaki at least 

 are now recognized and named by Japanese gardeners, but 

 few of them are important commercially in any part of the 

 country which we visited, and, except in Kyoto, where 

 red kakis appeared, the only form I saw exposed for sale was 

 the orange-colored variety, which, fresh and dried, is con- 

 sumed in immense quantities by the Japanese, who eat it, 

 as they do all their fruits, before it is ripe and while it has 

 the texture and consistency of a paving-stone. 



Diospyros Kaki is hardy in Pekin, with a climate similar 

 to that of New England, and fully as trying to plant-life ; 

 it fruits in southern Yezo and decorates every garden in the 

 elevated provinces of central Japan, where the winter cli- 

 mate is intensely cold. There appears, therefore, to be no 

 reason why it should not flourish in New England if plants 

 of a northern race can be obtained ; and, so far as climate 

 is concerned, the tree, which, in the central mountain dis- 

 tricts of Hondo, covers itself with fruit year after year, will 

 certainly succeed in all our Alleghany region from Penn- 

 sylvania southward. In this country we have considered 

 the Kaki a tender plant unable to survive outside the 

 region where the Orange flourishes. This is true of the 

 southern varieties which have been brought to this coun- 

 try and which may have originated in a milder climate 

 than southern Japan, for the Kaki is a plant of wide dis- 

 tribution, either natural or through cultivation, in south- 

 eastern Asia. But the northern Kaki, the tree of Pekin and 

 the gardens of central Japan, has probably not yet been 

 tried in this country. If it succeeds in the northern and 

 middle states it will give us a handsome new fruit of good 

 quality, easily and cheaply raised, of first-rate shipping 

 quality when fresh and valuable when dried, and an orna- 

 mental tree of extraordinary interest and beauty. 



Diospyros Lotus, which is probably a north China species, 

 and which is naturalized or Indigenous in northwestern India 

 and naturalized in the countries bordering the Mediterra- 

 nean, is occasionally cultivated in northern Japan, where, 

 however, as it does not appear to be more hardy than the 

 Kaki, it does not seem to be much esteemed. The fruit 

 is small and of an inferior quality. Diospyros Lotus 

 may be expected to endure the climate of our northern 

 states. 



In Japan, Styraceae is represented by Symplocos with 

 half a dozen species, all shrubs rather than trees, by Pter- 

 ostyrax, which replaces our Halesia, from which the Jap- 

 anese genus only differs in its terminal paniculate inflores- 

 cence, five-parted flowers, and small fruit ; and by Styrax 

 with two species. Neither of the two species of Pterosty- 

 rax equals in size our Halesia tetraptera, which, under 

 favorable conditions, becomes a tree eighty to a hundred 

 feet high on the southern Alleghany mountains, and neither 

 of them approaches our arborescent Halesias in the beauty 

 of their flowers, which, although produced in ample clus- 

 ters, are individually small. Pterostyraxcorymbosum, which 

 I believe to be almost exclusively a southern species, I 

 only saw in the Botanic Garden in Tokyo, where there is a 

 bushy plant eighteen or twenty feet in height. Pterostyrax 

 hispidum, which is now beginning to be known in our gar- 

 dens, where it is hardy from Boston to Philadelphia, is a 

 bushy tree or shrub which we only saw wild in Japan on 

 the banks of a stream among the mountains above Fuku- 

 shima, on the Nagasendo, where we found a single plant 

 twenty or twenty-five feet in height. 



As an ornamental plant the most valuable of this family, 

 as represented in Japan, is certainly Styrax Obassia, a tree 

 which grows as far north as Sapporo, in Yezo, and which 



