June 25, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



305 



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. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles:— The Locust-tree. (With illustration) 3°5 



Hardv Plants Naturalized 3°6 



The Kecskemet Heath 3° 6 



Who is the Vandal? 3°7 



Danger to Orange Groves in California Charles //. Shinn. 307 



Legislation against Fungous Diseases. Professor B. D. llalsted. 307 



Plant Notes :— Hybrid Firs 308 



New or Little Known Plants :— Cypripedium Philippinense. (With figure.). 308 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson. 308 



Cultural Department: — Notes on Shrubs J. G. Jack. 309 



Some American Plants F. H. Horsford. 310 



A Few Good Forms of Ficus IV. H. Tafilin. 3 1 1 



Crown and Root Grafts T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 312 



Notes about Blackberries E. P. Powell. 312 



New Orchids IV. 3'3 



Sagittaria Chinensis.— Tulipa ciliatula.— (Euolhera Fraseri. — Iris lsevi- 



' gata G. 313 



A Good "Cutting" Lettuce Professor E. S. Goff. 313 



Correspondence: — Appropriate Bridges Viator. 313 



The Taragon Chestnut and the Crandall Currant Thomas Meehan. 313 



The American Association of Nurserymen : — Fifteenth Annual Meeting.— III. 



The Cultivation of the Chestnut Samuel C. Bloon. 314 



Hardy Perennials J. IV. Manning, Jr. 314 



Periodical Literature 3'5 



Notes 3 '6 



Illustrations :— Cypripedium Philippinense, Fig. 43 309 



The Oldest Locust-tree in Europe 311 



The Locust Tree. 



THERE is not in Europe a more interesting tree for 

 Americans to visit than the venerable Locust in the 

 garden of the Museum of Paris, whose portrait is repro- 

 duced on page 311. The first of its race to grow in the 

 soil of Europe, it has survived for more than two centuries 

 and a half the wars of the elements and the social cyclones 

 which have swept over it. The seed from which it sprung 

 was planted in 1635 by Vespacian Robin, gardener of 

 Louis XII., in the Jardin du Roi, now called the Jardin des 

 Plantes. Vespacian Robin was the son of a gardener more 

 famous than himself, Jean Robin, who had charge of the 

 Royal Gardens under Henry of Navarre ; and it was for 

 the elder Robin that Linnaeus, more than a century after 

 his death, named the genus Robinia, to which our Locust- 

 tree belongs. Little is left of the old tree but the shell of 

 the trunk and a few feeble branches which clothe them- 

 selves year after year with leaves and flowers, testifying to 

 the wonderful vitality of the Locust-tree and to the care 

 which has been bestowed upon this specimen by the 

 authorities of the garden, the most interesting in the 

 world, perhaps, in its historical associations with men 

 famous in the annals of botany. 



The Locust-tree {Robinia Pseudacacia) has excited, from 

 a cultural point of view, more interest than any other in- 

 habitant of the American forests. There is no other North 

 American tree about which whole volumes have been 

 written, and no other of our trees has been so enthusiastic- 

 ally praised or so widely scattered by cultivation. 



The earliest account of the Locust-tree was published in 

 1640 by Parkinson in his classical " Theatrum Botanicum," 

 it having been cultivated in England about that time by 

 the Dutchman John Tradescant, a great traveler and bota- 

 nist, who held the position of gardener to Charles I. 

 Evelyn, in his "Sylva," published in 1664, records the fact 

 that the Virginia Acacia thrives in the King's new planta- 

 tion in St. James Park ; while his great French contempo- 

 rary, Duhamel, gave a few years earlier specific directions 

 for its cultivation. A hundred years later the Locust had 

 so grown in esteem in Europe that something was said 



about it by nearly every writer who discussed rural 

 economy or the possibility of increasing national wealth 

 through the cultivation of exotic trees. The first book de- 

 voted entirely to the Locust was published in Paris in 1803. 

 It is a small octavo of 314 pages, and is entitled " Lettre 

 sur lc Robinier connu sur 1c nom impropre de faux Acacia. " 

 It was written by M. N. Francois de Neufchateau, a Sena- 

 tor and member of the Institute. This work contains the 

 essence of all that had been previously published about the 

 tree in France, and a great deal of information relative to 

 its culture and uses. A translation of portions of Monsieur 

 Francois' essay is published in an English book on the 

 Locust, which appeared from the pen of W. Withers, of 

 Holt, in Norfolk, in 1842, under the title of "The Acacia- 

 Tree: Its Growth, Qualities and Uses." William Cobbett, 

 however, better known perhaps as the vituperative political 

 essayist, Peter Pindar, than as an enthusiastic and success- 

 ful planter of trees, did more by his writing and example 

 than any other man to make known the value and spread 

 the cultivation of the Locust-tree. 



Cobbett, during a forced residence in the United States 

 from 181 7 to 1 8 19, occupied himself in farming on Long 

 Island, where he established a small nursery for the propa- 

 gation of fruit and timber-trees. It was at this time that 

 he came to the conclusion "that nothing in the timber line 

 could be so great a benefit as the general cultivation of the 

 Locust." On his return to England he carried a small 

 package of the seeds of this tree home with him and began 

 the systematic raising and selling of Locust-trees, his total 

 sales amounting to more than a million plants. This he 

 tells us in his book called "The Woodlands," which, in 

 some respects, is the best book on tree-planting which has 

 been written in the English language. The author in his 

 preface gives his reasons for having written it: "Many 

 years ago," he says, "I wished to know whether I could 

 raise Birch-trees from the seed. I looked into two French 

 books and into two English ones without being able to 

 learn a word about the matter. I then looked into the great 

 book of knowledge, the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' ; there 

 I found in the general dictionary, ' Birch-tree, see Betula, 

 Botany Index.' I hastened to Betula with great eagerness; 

 and there I found, ' Betula, see Birch-tree.' That was all ; 

 and this was pretty encouragement to one who wanted to 

 get, from books, knowledge about the propagating and rear- 

 ing of trees." There are tree-planters of the present genera- 

 tion who turn to the literature on the subject with results 

 which are hardly more satisfactory. Cobbett's book has 

 long been out of print, but no other work gives such clear 

 and specific direction for rearing and planting trees, and 

 there are portions of it which might well be reprinted for 

 general circulation. 



Cobbett's enthusiasm for the Locust-tree, and his zeal 

 in propagating it, caused it to be planted generally in En- 

 gland in his time, and the fashion, as is often the case with 

 English fashions, crossed the Atlantic, and fifty or sixty 

 years ago no tree was so often planted in this country. 

 Remnants of these old plantations may be seen up and 

 down the Hudson River and in the neighborhood of all 

 our seaboard cities ; and the Locust is now fairly natural- 

 ized in a large part of the country east of the great plains, 

 although originally its range was a comparatively restricted 

 one, it being found only in the forests of the Alleghany 

 Mountains, from Pennsylvania to northern Georgia, and, 

 doubtfully, in a few isolated stations west of the Missis- 

 sippi River. So far as the United States is concerned, how- 

 ever, the Locust-tree has not fulfilled the hopes of the early 

 planters. It is preyed upon in this country by a horde of 

 insects who bore into the trunk and destroy the trees or 

 the value of their timber, and the prophecy of the younger 

 Michaux, that the Locust-tree would become more com- 

 mon in Europe than in its native country, has probably 

 been fulfilled. 



It is, however, one of the few American trees, if not the 

 only one, which has become really naturalized in Europe, 

 and there is no other exotic tree which travelers in central 



