1 86 



Garden and Forest. 



[Al'RIL l6,*lf 



which confines itself to some practical suggestions relating 

 to the transplanting and culture of trees, and excellent 

 suggestions they are. Mr. Ensign tells those who are 

 interested in the day what kinds of trees should be chosen 

 for the different portions of the state, how they should be 

 arranged on school-grounds for the best effect, how the 

 transplanting should be done and how the trees should be 

 cared for afterward. 



Of course, the sentimental side of the celebration has its 

 uses, and the cultivation of an affection for trees and of an 

 appreciation of their beauty is an object worth striving 

 for. But the love for trees will be no less when it is asso- 

 ciated with a knowledge of what they require for whole- 

 some growth. Arbor Day will prove most beneficial in 

 those places where the trees are not forgotten as soon as 

 the songs have been sung and the poetry recited. If the 

 memorial trees have been properly selected and planted, 

 the teacher will help to encourage a genuine regard for 

 them if he explains to the young persons in his charge why 

 the ground about them should be kept free from grass, 

 why it is beneficial to stir the surface occasionally or to 

 mulch it well. If it appears on the next annual recurrence 

 of this festival that the trees planted this year have been 

 neglected, robbed of food and moisture by grass and 

 weeds, loosened by the wind, preyed upon by borers or 

 other insects, this will prove that the celebration has been 

 a mockery, and all the feasting and oratory and music 

 wasted on a sham. 



Notes on North American Trees. XVI. 

 of Nomenclature. 



-A Question 



A WIDELY distributed Xanthoxylum of tropical 

 America, with a geographical range from Florida 

 to Peru, was described by Linnaeus in the " Species Plant- 

 arum," published in 1753, as Schinus Fagara. A few years 

 later he recognized the fact that his genus Schinus could 

 not contain this plant,which he named in the " Amcenitates" 

 (v. 393), published in 1760, Fagara Pterota. The next 

 botanist to impose a name upon the plant was Patrick 

 Browne, who called it Pterota subspinosa, in his " Natural 

 History of Jamaica," published in 1789. Willdenow, in 

 his enumeration of the plants cultivated in the Berlin gar- 

 den, published in 1809, gave it a new name, Fagara lentisci- 

 folia, citing a manuscript name of Humboldt and Bon- 

 pland. Finally, Kunth recognized that this plant might be 

 referred to theLinnaean genus Xanthoxylum, and published 

 in 1823 in the " Nova Genera and Species " of Humboldt, 

 Bonpland and Kunth (vi. 3), Xanthoxylum Pterota ; but in 

 referring this plant to Xanthoxylum, Kunth passed by the 

 earliest specific name, Fagara, which had also been used as 

 the generic name of the plant by Linnaeus and by Willde- 

 now, and took up the later name, Pterota. 



Under the principle that the earliest Linnaean specific 

 name should, when not preoccupied, be adopted as the 

 specific name of a plant, which I have followed in the 

 " Silva of North America," this plant, which is one of the 

 commonest of the small trees of south Florida, and widely 

 distributed through western Texas, should be known as 

 Xanthoxylum Fagara. 



This name of Fagara, as applied to our plant, is due, 

 too, to a misunderstanding. The name Fagara, according 

 to Avicenna, the famous Arabian physician, was in use 

 among the early Arabians to designate an aromatic plant 

 of which the name is now lost. It was afterward taken 

 up by Clusius and the early European apothecaries, who 

 designated, under the name of Fagarce majores, the aro- 

 matic fruit of some eastern tree which is supposed to be 

 the Xanthoxylum Rhetsa DC of India. Linnaeus, in his 

 "Materia Medica," published in 1749, where he first men- 

 tions our plant, appears to have supposed that it was the 

 origin of the Fagarce of commerce, and so used later, in the 

 "Species Plantarum," the old Arabian Fagara as its 

 specific name. C. S. Sargent. 



The Art of Gardening — An Historical Sketch. 

 XIX. — The Arabs in Spain. 



IN no land did the Arabs (or the Moors, as we more often 

 call them in this connection) rise to so great a height of 

 wealth, cultivation and luxury as in Spain. " No nation," says 

 Draper,* "has ever excelled the Spanish Arabs in the beauty 

 and costliness of their pleasure-gardens. Retaining the love 

 of their ancestors for the cooling effect of water in a hot cli- 

 mate, they spared no pains in the superfluity of fountains, 

 hydraulic works and artificial lakes. . . . There were also me- 

 nageries of foreign animals and aviaries of rare birds 



Among flowering shrubs there were winding walks, seats cut 

 out of the rock, and crypt-like grottoes hewn in the living 

 stone. . . . Not only did the artist try to please the eye . . . 

 He also boasted of success in the gratification of the sense of 

 smell by the studied succession of perfumes from beds of 

 flowers." A recent writer,! speaking of the southern part of 

 the peninsula, says that its gardens are survivals of the Moor- 

 ish ideal of what a garden should be, modified by the require- 

 ments of country and climate. This ideal, in the hot, arid 

 lands of the Arab's nativity, meant as much shade and cool- 

 ness and moisture as could be obtained — thick bowers and 

 vistas of foliage, plashing fountains, trickling rills and "creep- 

 ing Roses and Jasmine to beget the perfume that his soul 

 loves." In Spain so much shade was not needed and the gar- 

 dens were made more open, yet shadowy foliage greatly pre- 

 dominated over sunlit spaces. Even in the days of the Re- 

 naissance, after the Moors had been expelled, many garden 

 arrangements were but repetitions of their own, as, for in- 

 stance, the very elaborate arabesques in oriental patterns 

 which appear on a magnificent scale in the gardens of the 

 Escurial, wrought with low clipped hedges of Box. "Another 

 survival of Moorish times is the wall running by the garden- 

 paths, hand-high, faced with painted tiles {azulejos), along 

 whose top is scooped a deep furrow filled with garden-earth, 

 and planted mostly with Carnations, Pinks and Gilliflowers, or 

 the dwarf, sweet-scented Iris of Portugal. All these plants 

 love the drought ; and so set their flowers can be plucked or 

 smelled without bending, the back — an ingenious device of the 

 ease-loving Oriental." Clipped hedges were frequently used 

 by the Moors; but we read of no fantastically artificial shapes 

 such as those that were beloved in ancient Rome and through- 

 out Europe in the seventeenth century. 



Every Moorish house had its court-yard, the original of the 

 patio which is ubiquitous to-day in Spain. It was floored with 

 stone or mosaics, openings being left for planting a few large 

 trees. Smaller trees and shrubs stood about in pots with 

 bright flowers growing around their roots. The walls were 

 formed of simple loggias or fantastically rich arcades, accord- 

 ing to the weaith of the proprietor, and arbors were constructed 

 with vines upon a net-work of wire. A running spring occu- 

 pied the centre, or, if water-power was available, a fountain 

 took the place of the spring, and little holes were pierced in 

 the pavement through which rose miniature jets. If a garden 

 was connected with the house, it was regularly disposed with 

 a multitude of canals and basins, broad, shadowy roads, and 

 narrower paths overarched with flowers, trained on colored or 

 gilded wire, leading to more open spaces where pattern-beds 

 were planted with bright-hued flowers or arabesqued in Box. 

 Patios were attached to the mosques as well as the houses, 

 and an old Moorish example may still be seen near the cathe- 

 dral of Seville. 



The Moorish palace-garden was sometimes wholly formal 

 in arrangement. The gardens of the Alcazar, near Seville, for 

 instance, although greatly altered during Renaissance years, 

 still preserve enough of their original character to be recog- 

 nized as of Moorish origin, and they consist of numerous great 

 square court-yards, divided from each other by walls and col- 

 onnades, like a succession of large patios. % But in other 

 places we find royal gardens of a very different character, yet 

 equally typical of Saracenic art — gardens which prove, indeed, 

 that the charms of picturesqueness, mystery and variety were 

 appreciated as well as those of balance and architectonic 

 grandeur. The bold, varied character of the landscape in 

 many parts of Spain, and its richness in contrasts between 

 temperate and semi-tropical forms of vegetation, inspired the 

 Spanish Arab to develop to the full that instinct for the wild, 

 or seemingly wild, in gardening art, signs of which had already 

 been displayed in Persia. Nothing could be less like the 



* " Intellectual Development of Europe." 



t Oswald Crawfuid, "Summer-time in Rural Portugal," Fortnightly Review, 

 June, 1888. 



X Jaeger : " Gartenkunst und Gaerten," 



