372 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 289. 



beauty as individuals or in masses. Bedding-plants which 

 are carefully propagated in the greenhouse during the win- 

 ter and then planted out only to attain their best effect by 

 midsummer, become a blot on the landscape as soon as 

 they are bitten by the first frost. Hardy Asters and other 

 perennials, which take care of themselves, then show 

 their highest beauty, and they will grow into equal 

 beauty another year. Trees which exact still less care not 

 only have special charms to unfold every day of the year, 

 but they increase in interest and in dignity of expression 

 as they grow older, and will be much more impressive 

 when they wear the crown of a hundred years than they 

 were when they were planted. Trees and shrubs live on, 

 developing new beauties every year without expense, 

 while the transitory, summer-day effects produced with 

 tender bedding-plants are always costly. We recently 

 heard that the cost of the bedding-plants, with their care, in a 

 single park in a western city, was $8,000 a year. At the end 

 of ten years $80,000 will have been spent, and the first 

 frost of that tenth year will leave nothing to show for all 

 this money but a blackened mass of decay. If this $80,000 

 could be expended on the permanent improvement of the 

 hardy trees, shrubs and herbs of this same park, no one can 

 doubt that this outlay, intelligently made, would render it 

 one of the most interesting pleasure-grounds in the world. 

 Admitting all the value of color and symmetrical patterns 

 in formal bedding, it is a fact that the usual attempts at 

 planting of this sort are inartistic ; they rarely show any posi- 

 tive beauty in their pattern-lines, and they are often offen- 

 sive by the crude use of colors which are at constant war 

 with each other. But, apart from this, the use of these plants 

 is generally a needless extravagance. Where money can 

 be spent to so much better purpose, it is a waste to lavish 

 it upon a pattern-bed which can, at best, have only a tran- 

 sient interest for the uninstructed, and has no more perma- 

 nent value to the community which is taxed for it than a 

 picture painted on the sands of a beach at low tide. 



We are glad to believe that this view of the case is gain- 

 ing ground. It is only a few years ago since a distinguished 

 horticultural writer declared that one of the Soldiers' Homes 

 in the west was much superior to Central Park because 

 there were used on the lawns about the building ten times 

 as many bedding-plants as there were in the entire park. 

 We are glad that such superintendents as Mr. Parsons, in 

 this city, and Mr. MacMillan, in Buffalo, are entrusted with 

 the administration of public grounds. Neither of them, we 

 fear, can command enough money to properly maintain 

 and develop the parks under their charge, but what they 

 do have they use for the permanent improvement of the 

 people's property. 



The Distribution of some Forest-trees in the 

 Southern States. 



WITHIN the comparatively short time that has elapsed 

 since the rich agricultural lands of the cretaceous plain 

 in Alabama have passed into the undisputed possession of the 

 white settlers, the character of the vegetation of this region 

 has undergone a great change. Of the oldest settlers there are 

 yet a number living who witnessed the original condition of 

 the vast undulating plain, its upland covered with open forests 

 of Oaks and Hickories, or with dense forests of a mixed growth 

 of deciduous leaved trees and of the sombre Red Cedar. The Red 

 Cedars formed a conspicuous feature, interrupted by extensive 

 grassy glades, resembling in the assemblage of their plants 

 the western prairies, or by immense brakes of the large Cane, 

 Arundinaria macrosperma, which filled the bottoms of the 

 streams subject to overflow and the swampy depressions in 

 the plain. From this growth the section between the Alabama 

 and Tombigbee Rivers received the name of the Canebrake 

 region. This cretaceous plain, or so-called central prairie 

 belt, with its deep black calcareous soil, deemed of inexhaus- 

 tible fertility, attracted during the earlier parts of the century, 

 and particularly after the removal of the aboriginal tribes west 

 of the Mississippi River, a large immigration from the older 

 slave-holding states. The open prairie-land having been first 

 subjected to the plowshare, the forest was next encroached 

 upon. Under a skillful system of drainage thecanebrakes dis- 



appeared with no less rapidity. After a few decades the wil- 

 derness was converted into one of the most productive and 

 wealthy agricultural regions on the continent, upon which the 

 world was almost solely dependent tor its supplies of cotton. 



Of the splendid forests of Oak and Hickory, by which the 

 deep black soil of the uplands was covered, only small groves 

 surrounding the premises of the planters now remain stand- 

 ing. Of the Cedar hummocks, with their valuable timber re- 

 sources of Red Cedar, White Ash, White Oak, Red Oak and 

 Hackberries, only isolated tracts are left. These scarcely ex- 

 ceed a few hundred acres in one body, showing the effects of 

 reckless devastation. The canebrakes are now reduced to 

 narrow strips covering the banks of streams subject to frequent 

 overflow, and to the open or so-called bald prairies with their 

 thinner soil-covering utterly exhausted or removed by wind and 

 rain, the bare ledges of limestone-rock being exposed to the 

 surface. The native plants of the calcareous prairie-soil are 

 found on waste lands and along the borders of cultivated fields. 



The scanty remains of the forests which once covered the 

 uplands indicate that three kinds of large forest-trees were 

 formerly abundant. These are now rarely met with, and have 

 until lately escaped the attention of botanists. They are the 

 Nutmeg Hickory, Hicoria myristicaeformis ; the Pecan-tree, 

 Hicoria Pecan, and the southern bastard White Oak or southern 

 Pin Oak, Quercus Durandii, these Hickories being found more 

 or less associated with this interesting and stately Oak. 



The Nutmeg Hickory in Alabama and Mississippi appears 

 to be confined to the cretaceous belt. According to observa- 

 tions made last June it is most frequently met with between 

 the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers in about 32° 30' north 

 latitude. It attains the size of a stately forest-tree, resembhng 

 in habit of growth the Pig-nut Hickory, with a sturdy trunk 

 from eighteen to twenty-two inches in diameter. The full- 

 grown tree is covered with a light gray bark, inclined to 

 exfoliate in thin narrow strips, similar to that of the Shell- 

 bark Hickory. The tree is easily recognized by its grace- 

 ful foliage. The leaflets are smaller than in the allied 

 species, almost silvery white on the lower surface, chang- 

 ing during the fall to a pale bronze. The Nutmeg Hickory 

 produces its fruit in abundance, a thin pericarp, with four 

 prominent ridges, enclosing the oval nut. In shape, size and 

 color it resembles a nutmeg, the hard and thick shell closely 

 investing the sweet kernel. I was first made aware of the 

 presence of this tree in the eastern Gulf states by the nuts seen 

 among the forest-products of the state of Mississippi at the New 

 Orleans Exposition in 1884. Subsequently some nuts were 

 found in the hands of children, and the tree was traced to the 

 vicinity of the banks of the Alabama, in Dallas County, and 

 later on to the vicinity of Demopolis and Gallion, in the basin 

 of the Tombigbee River, By its discovery in the eastern Gulf 

 region the gap has been filled which existed along the line of 

 its distribution from the Atlantic coast in South Carolina 

 through Louisiana, west of the Mississippi River, southern 

 Arkansas and Texas to northern Mexico. 



The Pecan-tree, H. Pecan, has, during the early part of this 

 season, for the first time been noticed as indigenous in Ala- 

 bama. Old trees have been found near Gallion associated with 

 the Nutmeg Hickory, and such trees have frequently been left 

 standing in the clearings of the original forest. At the present 

 day these remains of the original tree-covering of the country 

 are becoming scarce, being, however, replaced by their vol- 

 untary offspring scattered about in the plantations. At Fauns- 

 dale, in Marengo County, there exists under protection a fine 

 grove of such voluntary trees in every stage of growth, sur- 

 rounding the few old trees of the original forest which yet 

 survive. Heretofore this tree was not known outside of the 

 Mississippi bottom in the lower Mississippi region. The Pecan 

 was, under similar conditions, observed in the prairie region 

 of Mississippi at Starkville, as pointed out to me by Professor 

 Tracey. 



Quercus Durandii is rather frequent in the so-called prairie 

 region of Alabama, where, in the rich calcareous soil, it rivals 

 the White Oak in dimensions. This truly noble Oak, first dis- 

 covered by Professor Buckley in this state, reaches its northern 

 limit in Alabama in the valley of the Mulberry fork of the 

 Tombigbee River, in Blount County. In the Cotton belt it is 

 known by the name of Pin Oak. Its wood splits easily and 

 clean, having formerly been used for the pins in the cotton- 

 gins, and also for the making of spools. This tree, receiving 

 no recognition by the writers upon American botany for such 

 a long series of years after its discovery, is now found to have 

 a wide range in the southern Atlantic forest-region west of the 

 Appalachian Mountains^extending over the rich calcareous 

 soils in the south-west from north Alabama to the valley of the 

 Colorado, in Texas (Buckley), and in that state ranging from 



