June 25, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



313 



cut back the new ones. Weeds and grass will not hold their 

 own with Blackberries in good soil. 



The Lucretia Dewberry has been advertised well, and is 

 really a superb fruit; but it must be laid down for winter. The 

 fruit is enormously large, very early and excellent. It can 

 only be grown well by being tied to stakes and bent back to 

 about three feet of iron. 



There are two drawbacks to Blackberry culture which se- 

 riously mar our pleasure and profit. The first difficulty is with 

 the cruel thorns. Women cannot gather the fruit without 

 having their clothes torn to rags. The rust is another serious 

 trouble. The remedy for this fungus is to cut and burn. I 

 should not try to cultivate any sort that rusted to any extent. 

 With me Kittatinny alone is diseased, and that rarely. This 

 rust is a mischievous malady, and it is not advisable to propa- 

 gate it. It is not confined to the Blackberry. 



The kind of soil for the Blackberry is invariably dry, well 

 drained, strong clay, if possible ; but well drained it must be. 

 If I intended to cultivate a plantation I should have the rows 

 ten feet apart and a row of Potatoes between. 



Clinton, N. Y. E. P. Powell. 



New Orchids. — A plant of more than ordinary interest is 

 Odontoglossum hybridum Leroyanum, the first hybrid Odonto- 

 glossum raised artificially. Its parents are 0. crispum and 0. 

 luteo-purpureum , which were crossed about five years ago by 

 M. Leroy, gardener to Baron E. de Rothschild, in his garden 

 at Amandvilliers, near Paris. The hybrid flowered in May this 

 year, and proves its origin by combining the characters of the 

 two species named. Mr. Sander will shortly publish a figure 

 of it in Reichenbaclda. Many have obtained seeds, and even 

 seedling Odontoglossums, by crossing one species with an- 

 other, but they have never come to anything. 



Odontoglossum Bleai splcndens is another hybrid, its parents 

 being 0. vexillarium and 0. Roezlii. Properly, however, the 

 three should be called Miltonias. This hybrid also originated 

 in Paris, where it was raised by M. Bleu. Its flowers are as 

 large as those of an ordinary O. vexillarium, white, tinted 

 with rose, with a crimson blotch at the base of the labellum, and 

 radiating lines of the same color extending a little out toward 

 the margin. It is a curiosity as a true hybrid Miltonia, other- 

 wise it is scarcely equal to a good variety of either of its pa- 

 rents. It is in the collection of Mr. F. Sander. 



Phajus Henryi appears to be merely a rose colored variety 

 of P. Hwnblotii. Probably the two are the extreme color 

 variations of one variable species. Plants of both were shown 

 in flower by Mr. Sander at the Temple Show. P. Humblotii is 

 likely to prove a good garden Orchid, as it grows freely and 

 flowers well. 

 Kew. W. 



Sagitiaria Chinensis was received from a Chinese laundry- 

 man early in the year as an egg-shaped, whitish tuber with a 

 short sprout. It was planted in a bowl of earth and kept sat- 

 urated with water, and proved a very rapid grower and attrac- 

 tive plant a foot high, with light green foliage and the many 

 arrow head leaves rather broad. Removal to an outside tank 

 has checked its growth and flowering so that it is not possible 

 to say whether or not it is S. Latifolius, the only Chinese species 

 which can be found in catalogues. Special interest was ex- 

 cited in this plant from a hope of discovering that our Chinese 

 friends, with their materialistic reputation, were not without 

 some of that sentiment which has led emigrants in all ages 

 to take with them some favorite plants as a reminder of their 

 birthplace. We are already indebted to them for the Water 

 Narcissus or " Sacred Water Lily," apparently first brought 

 here without hope of gain, and it seemed as it the Sagittaria 

 might be an introduction of another favorite home plant. 

 This theory I regret not being able to verify, as my interviews 

 with growers of the plant in the Chinese colony simply proved 

 that they grow the plant, but with no great enthusiasm, such 

 as they evidently feel about the "Sacred Lily." A Chinaman 

 is not usually an open hearted enthusiast, but I found a num- 

 ber of them in humble quarters become bright-eyed and viva- 

 cious over the Narcissus. Lately the street fakirs have offered 

 dormant tubers Sagittaria, but of what variety is unknown to 

 me. 



Tulipa ciliaiula. — This is the name I find given by Mr. J. G. 

 Baker to a new Tulip which he describes in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle for May 24th. I received it directly from Mr. Whitall, 

 who collected it on the Anti-Taurus Range in Asia Minor, and 

 sent it out last year. With me it came into bloom in the open 

 border in April. It is nearly allied to T. Gesneriana, with the 

 same bright crimson-scarlet petals, and glaucous, undulated 

 foliage. It is of very dwarf habit, the peduncles being only two 



inches long, and is an excellent plant for bright bedding or 

 for the rockery. 



CEnothera Fraseri is one of the best of the Evening Primroses, 

 The flowers are light golden yellow, borne profusely on a 

 dwarf plant a foot high, which remains in bloom for several 

 months. It is a native plant long in cultivation. The fields are 

 now bright with Oenothera biennis and Dog Roses, and it may 

 be noted that for a bright bouquet there are few more pleasing 

 combinations than these two flowers, loosely arranged. 



Iris laevigata opened its first bloom on the 15th of June, 

 on the borders of the pond, where they seem to be about a 

 fortnight earlier than in a dry and somewhat shaded border. 

 There are handsomer flowers among the Irises than 

 Kaempfer's, but these have a quaintness and a grace of their 

 own. The varieties with dark reticulations are specially 

 quaint, and good white forms are very pleasing. It is inter- 

 esting to grow this plant from seed, as it comes into bloom in 

 two and three years. 



Elizabeth, N. J. G. 



A Good "Cutting" Lettuce. — The French works on gardening 

 describe a class of so-called " cutting Lettuces," of which a dis- 

 tinguishing characteristic is that if the leaves are plucked from 

 the plant one by one others will develop to take their places, 

 and thus a single planting will continue to furnish a crop of 

 leaves through nearly the whole season. I have tested these 

 Lettuces and found none of them to be of the finest quality, all 

 being too bitter to suit our American taste. It may not be 

 •generally known, however, that some of our best common 

 Lettuces, when given good soil and culture, will furnish sev- 

 eral successive crops of foliage without running to seed, if the 

 leaves are picked off one at a time, and are not drawn upon 

 too largely. I have grown the Prize Head Lettuce in this way 

 during the past two seasons with excellent results. A bed 

 covering a few square feet furnishes sufficient lettuce for daily 

 use during several successive weeks. 



University of Wisconsin. -£■■ ■->. Goff. 



Correspondence. 

 Appropriate Bridges. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — You can do no better work, I think, by means of the 

 charming illustrations you publish, than to continue to show 

 American readers what good rural bridges should look like. 

 There is a growing desire in this country to build substantial 

 bridges and to make them beautiful as well as solid. But often 

 there seems no realization of the fact that beauty means ap- 

 propriateness, or, at least, no true feeling for what is appro- 

 priate and inappropriate. For example, while passing through 

 Connecticut by rail the other day, I noticed in one of the 

 smaller towns (was it in Milford ?) a small stone bridge, 

 spanning a stream close to the railroad, which seemed to have 

 been recently built. Although neither long nor high and 

 placed in a modern town of modest aspect, where most of the 

 neighboring buildings were of wood, this bridge has cren- 

 ellated sides, and, at one end, a circular turret, whose top, as I 

 remember, was similarly protected against impossible ene- 

 mies. In itself it was not beautiful, looking sadly like the 

 papier-mache fortifications of the scene-painter. And could 

 anything more inappropriate be imagined in a New England 

 town of to-day than a battlemented bridge, suggesting the 

 conditions under which people lived in other lands in me- 

 diaeval times ? Of course, the cost of such a structure must 

 have been much greater than that of a simpler stone bridge, 

 and every penny of the difference had been worse than wasted, 

 producing a thing which was not beautiful in itself, and which 

 looked still less so by contrast with its surroundings. 



Philadelphia. Viator. 



The Paragon Chestnut and The Crandall Currant. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — Referring to your report of the Nurserymen's Conven- 

 tion, page 292, allow me to enquire (1) whether the Paragon 

 Chestnut was not propagated from grafts furnished by my late 

 neighbor, Mr. W. L. Shaffer. 



Mr. Shaffer's tree was from a Spanish Chestnut. 



(2) Again, what is the difference between the Crandall Cur- 

 rant and the Utah Black and Utah Yellow Missouri Currants, 

 which have been under cultivation for twenty-five years, and 

 were originally distributed by Siler, Reading and others? 



Germantown. Tliomas Meehan. 



[1. Perhaps Mr. Van Deman was incorrectly quoted as say- 

 ing that the Paragon Chestnut is of "purely native origin." 



