July 9, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



337 



The flowers are of the purest white, excellent for bouquets, 

 and last a long time when cut. The habit of the plant is de- 

 cumbent, fitting it either for the rock-garden or border, and it 

 produces bloom from June until October. I was surprised to 

 find Erodium Manescavi survive even a mild winter. It is now 

 nicely in bloom, and will continue through the summer. 

 Though not particularly showy, it is yet the brightest of the 

 genus, and combines with its rosy flowers handsome fern-like 

 foliage. This can be increased easily by seeds or by division 

 of the root-stock. 



Genista tinctoria (Woad-wax) is a pretty, dwarf, prostrate, 

 leguminous shrub of great merit, being an ideal rock-plant, 

 and at the same time excellent for cutting purposes. Hard- 

 wood cuttings taken in the fall, and wintered in a cool frame, 

 root freely in spring. Thousands could be raised in this way 

 in a comparatively short time, and no plant, it seems to me, 

 would be better for covering sunny banks and planting on 

 natural ledges, where they occur on estates. A companion to 

 this is G. sagittalis, a very distinct and showy species, which 

 has phylloidal stems and bract-like appendages, taking the 

 place of leaves, and performing their functions. 



Among Sea Pinks (Armeria Laucheana), known also as 

 Crimson Gem and Pink Beauty, is the best. Though old and 

 common plants, they are great favorites everywhere, never 

 being untidy, for when not in bloom their persistent green 

 leaves always look pleasing. Silene alpestris has flowered 

 remarkably well this season. A mass with its elegant star- 

 shaped flowers of the purest white is quite striking. Achillea 

 tomentosa is one of the few species of this genus which is not 

 weedy. The flower-heads are a good clear yellow, not over 

 .one foot tall. The foliage makes a good green carpet. The 

 Alpine Bugloss (Ajuga a/pina) is a common species, and the 

 most attractive of the genus, having whorled spikes of lovely 

 gentian blue. It should not, however, be planted in a choice 

 position on account of its liability to overrun smaller neigh- 

 bors. The path leading to our rock garden takes a zigzag 

 turn through the Ghent Azalea bed. This path is lined on 

 either side with Myosotis palustris semperflorens. This For- 

 get-me-not is equally at home in sun or shade, and would 

 make an excellent plant for covering the ground in shrub- 

 beries did it not so entirely take possession of the soil wherever 

 planted. 



Wellesley, Mass. T. D. H. 



Notes and Queries on Hardy Plants. 



Inula glandulosa is a plant that has been known to gardens 

 about fifty years and is still as scarce as it is beautiful. There 

 is no reason why this should be so, except, perhaps, that it is 

 not sufficiently known. The plant in question is a Composite 

 with bright orange-yellow flowers three or four inches across 

 on stout erect stems two feet high. The flowers have large 

 discs and numerous narrow ray florets and are very orna- 

 mental. There is nothing coarse or weedy about I. glandulosa 

 as in the native species /. Helenium, and it is just possible that 

 the influence of the latter has been prejudicial to the former 

 amongst cultivators of hardy plants. I recently saw a fine 

 Inula, which I think was called /. grandiflora, but whether a 

 species or a variety of the above I do not know. As the seed 

 came from Herr Max Leichtlin, perhaps he can tell us more 

 of the plant. Certain it is that it is one of the best novelties I 

 have seen lately, and the plant is most promising, as it is easily 

 raised from seed, has bright orange flowers and is perfectly 

 hardy here in Massachusetts. 



And now as to Delphinhcm Za/il(sulfiirenm). Mr. Farquahar, 

 of Boston, tells me he saw it at Erfurt last summer fully five 

 feet high, with much branched stems, covered with beautiful 

 lemon-yellow flowers. If this can be done in Erfurt, why not 

 here ? Should the plant be biennial or perennial it certainly 

 would be worth growing. I have seen but one lot of plants, 

 and they were about eighteen inches high when about to 

 bloom and much resembled D. Chinoisis in habit. My own 

 attempts to raise this Delphinium from seed have been failures. 



Nor have I succeeded with Ostrowskya magnifica, another 

 novelty, the figures of which in English papers raise one's 

 expectations. Nothing is better calculated to cool one's ardor 

 than sowing seed and waiting for plants that never come. It 

 is quite possible that there is no difficulty about obtaining 

 the above plants from seed, if we only knew the conditions 

 necessary, whatever they may be. It appears that good plants of 

 Ostrowskya magnifica have thick, exceedingly brittle roots 

 that are often tour feet long, so it is obvious, if we are to have 

 them at all, seed is the least difficult way to get them, if it 

 would only germinate. 



South Lancaster, Mass. E. O. Orpet. 



Oilcake for Wire-worms. — When pasture land is taken into a 

 garden, there is usually trouble from wire-worms. A Prim- 

 rose bed at Wisley was much injured by them. A good gar- 

 dener told me that if bits of oilcake were sunk in the ground, 

 the wire-worms would eat it, and a great gardening authority 

 said that it killed them. My gardener put a number in a box 

 with some cake, but so far they seem none the worse, but it 

 is a most effectual trap. Pieces about the size of a hen's egg 

 sunk three inches in the earth, with a stick to mark the place, 

 and taken up after three or four days, will be found to have 

 wire-worms imbedded in them, eight to twelve to a piece of 

 cake. We have killed many hundreds. Old stagers know the 

 use of oilcake, and gas-lime is said to be effectual, but with 

 plants in the bed this would be dangerous. 



George F. Wilson, in The Garden. 

 [Why not poison the oilcake? In this country, where a 

 dough of sweetened corn-meal is used as a bait, it is 

 poisoned; and arsenites sprinkled on fresh leaves of clover 

 or elder and laid about a field or garden under boards have 

 proved effective. — Ed.] 



The Poorest 



Notes on the Ligneous Vegetation of the Sierra 

 Madre of Nuevo Leon. — I. 



THE Andean Mountain system, continued through 

 Central America, forks in the Mexican state of 

 Oaxaca, the principal or longer branch running on north- 

 ward parallel with the coast of the Pacific Ocean and the 

 Gulf of California, and not far inland, and the shorter 

 though not less elevated branch diverging northward (pre- 

 cisely speaking north by west), and terminating in the 

 scattered mountains of south-western Texas. Within these 

 two giant arms is embraced the high table-land of Mexico. 

 To the loftier summits, the central backbone of both these 

 mountain chains, is applied the name of Sierra Madre, or 

 Mother Range, the flanking ranges and outlying spurs more 

 or less separated from it by inhabited valleys receiving 

 special names. For some two hundred miles of its extent 

 the eastern Sierra Madre chain is included within the state of 

 Nuevo Leon, or forms the boundary between this state and 

 the state of Coahuila on its west. 



Several months of the summers of 1888 and 1889 were 

 devoted by me to attempts to explore this Sierra Madre 

 region with base during most of the time at Monterey — 

 Monterey aptly named, the word telling of the kingly 

 mountains which tower round about this quiet city of 

 white, sunny streets and green, shady parks and gardens; 

 to the eastward Sierra de la Silla, or the Saddle Mountain, 

 with its grotesque sky line only four miles away and 4,000 

 feet above the plane of the city;, on the west the Mitre 

 Mountain, terminating in towers and sharp pinnacles of 

 bare rock, quite as lofty and quite as near; while on the 

 south at scarcely less distance are miles of the Sierra Madre 

 stretching east and west even higher, a bare mountain wall 

 of soft, white lime rock, lichen-stained, terminating in a 

 thin comb, on whose crest are seen waving a few scattered 

 Pines and Palms. The northern face of this mountain wall 

 it is not possible for the foot of man to scale, but we pass 

 around it at either end through canons plowed out in the 

 soft lime rock by the torrents of countless summers — canons 

 with vertical walls often hundreds of feet high — and mount 

 by these with severe toil to wooded slopes and summits, 

 only to see higher and higher summits beyond and above 

 us, and to find too often our further advance rendered 

 perilous or impossible by a network of forking canons. 



Across this Sierra Madre range the traveler by train of 

 the Mexican National Railroad between Monterey and 

 Saltillo is borne almost as swiftly and gently as though by 

 the enchanted tapestry of the Arabian Nights. Looking 

 backward and away to the south-east as the train mounts 

 the mesas of Garcia and nears the base of the mountains, 

 he sees several successive ranges with serrated summits 

 rising one above the other and receding far away in the 

 soft blue haze. Soon after passing Garcia station, twenty 

 miles west of Monterey, the train enters a labyrinth of 



