39 2 



Garden and Forest. 



[August 13, 1890. 



small spring below the summit, and close by on the rocks 

 were pretty little clumps of the delicate bluish Houstonia pur- 

 purea, var. longifolia, and along- the road below were great 

 masses of the showy Purple-Flowering Raspberry (Rubus 

 odoratus). 



The twelve-mile drive on the return to Buchanan was, if 

 possible, more beautiful than the ascent, and when the valley 

 was reached we were unanimously in favor ot returning at 

 some later season of the year, for the promise of autumn 

 flowers was enchanting. It would be hard to find anywhere 

 a spring trip offering more beautiful and varied scenery, nor a 

 more easily accessible one. Along the valleys the railroad 

 companies are putting up everywhere charming little "Queen 

 Anne " inns, in which the accommodations and fare leave little 

 to be desired, though off the beaten track, roughing it must be 

 accepted with good grace. The trains are marvels of unpunc- 

 tualitv, and time down there is no consideration whatsoever ; 

 but these defects were made up for by the politeness and at- 

 tention we received from the trainmen and their evident desire 

 to make every one as comfortable as possible. 



New York. Anna M. Vail. 



Earliness With Unripe Seed. 



THERE seems to be a fair amount of evidence to prove that 

 seeds from immature fruit will give a product requiring 

 less than the usual time to ripen, and that the earliness thus 

 gained can be increased by continuing the selection. The 

 strain of Tomatoes from green seed, mentioned by Dr. Sturte- 

 vant in his timely notice of the subject in a recent number of 

 Garden and Forest (page 355) is still grown in the garden of the 

 Indiana Experiment Station, and with increasing interest. The 

 present season is the fifth generation. A report on the result 

 of this study will eventually be published. Some information 

 gathered from this and other attempts to investigate the sub- 

 ject of the relation of unripe seeds to the development of di- 

 vergent characters in the product makes clear some points 

 which it will be well to bear in mind in any attempt to apply 

 such a method to the production of early varieties. 



It is not the slightly unripe seeds that give a noticeable in- 

 crease in earliness, but very unripe seeds, gathered from fruit 

 scarcely of full size and still very green. Such seeds do not 

 weigh more than two-thirds as much as those fully ripe. They 

 germinate readily, but the plantlets lack constitutional vigor 

 and are more easily affected by retarding or harmful influen- 

 ces. If they can be brought through the early period of 

 growth and become well established and the foliage or fruit 

 is not attacked by rots or blights, the grower will usually be 

 rewarded by an earlier and more abundant crop of slightly 

 smaller and less firm fruit. These characters will be more 

 strongly emphasized in subsequent years by continuous seed 

 propagation. 



In the observations so far made, it has been found that the 

 plant as well as the fruit tends to early ripeness, and so the 

 period of fruitfulness — that is, the time between the first and 

 the last ripe fruit — is much shortened. 



With the increase in the amount of fruit there is also a cor- 

 responding decrease in the size of the vegetative parts of the 

 plant— that is, the stems and foliage. A Tomato plant grown 

 from green seed in the fourth g-eneration was found to bear 

 three and a half times as much fruit as tops— that is, stems and 

 leaves together — while a similar plant from ripe seed had but 

 one and an eighth times as much fruit as tops. 



It therefore follows logically that while earliness may be con- 

 sidered as a usual condition in all crops from unripe seed, an 

 increase in the amount of the crop only occurs when the true 

 fruit is the part harvested, as in Tomatoes and Peas, and a de- 

 crease in the amount of the crop occurs when any part besides 

 the fruit is harvested, as in Turnips and Potatoes. 



Whether any method can be found to counteract the enfeeb- 

 ling of the plant and yet preserve earliness remains to be seen. 



La Fayette, Ind. J- C. Arthur. 



Plant Notes. 



Tecoma grandiflora. 



THE figure of Tecoma grandiflora on page 393 is from 

 a photograph of a plant grown in a pot in a green- 

 house and exhibited at the last (June) Rose Show of the 

 Massachusetts Horticultural Society by Mr. James H. 

 Comley, gardener to Mrs. F. B. Hayes, of Lexington, Mas- 

 sachusetts. Mr. Comley states that he received the original 

 plant, without a name, from Mr. John Cadness, of Flush- 

 ing, New York, some six or seven years ago. For the 



last five years the plant has been growing in the 

 open air at Lexington without any protection except 

 that afforded by a stone wall, against which it is planted, 

 and by some surrounding shrubbery, and it seems to 

 be almost as hardy as our native Trumpet Creeper (T. 

 radicans), which is its near ally. It blooms freely every 

 year, beginning early in August, and continuing to pro- 

 duce flowers for six or eight weeks, or until checked by 

 frosts. Even when the whole plant is cut back to near the 

 ground a profusion of flowers is produced on the strong, 

 new shoots the first year. 



Our figure represents a plant grown from a hard, or ripe, 

 wood cutting, taken from the open-air plant in the autumn 

 of 1889, and therefore about eight months old when exhib- 

 ited. It is undoubtedly T. grandiflora, a Chinese species, 

 which has also been introduced from Japan, where it ap- 

 pears to be known only in cultivation. It was introduced 

 into England in the early part of this century, and in 181 1 

 a figure was given in the Bolaiiical Magazine (t. 1398) 

 under the name of Bignonia grandiflora. 



T. grandiflora is a climbing plant, like T. radicans, 

 although it does not appear to grow so rampantly or to 

 produce climbing rootlets on the stems so freely as the lat- 

 ter. The seven to thirteen ovate, pointed leaflets composing 

 each leaf are of a lighter green and more coarsely toothed 

 than those of T. radicans, which also differ in being more 

 or less pubescent beneath. Instead of being produced in 

 short terminal bunches at the ends of the branches, the 

 flowers of 7'. grandiflora form large spreading panicles. 

 The young calyx-covered flower-buds gradually taper to a 

 point, and are noticeably five-angled, instead of being 

 rounded and terminating abruptly in a small point, as in 

 our common species. The magnificent bell-shaped flowers 

 are from two to three inches deep, while the wide spread- 

 ing mouths average three inches across. They are of a 

 bright, light orange within the tube, orange-red with darker 

 streaks on the outer spreading portion, while on the outside 

 they are a soft salmon-yellow. Altogether the colors are 

 much more pure and rich than those of the native flowers. 



It does not seem to have been generally known, in this 

 country at least, that this Tecoma would flower at so early 

 an age, and therefore it has been suggested that the plant 

 illustrated represents a specially precocious strain or va- 

 riety. Indeed, it was exhibited under the provisional 

 name of T. prcecox superba. It is not improbable, how- 

 ever, that any plant of the species when treated in the 

 same way would bloom as early. A plant received from 

 Veitch last year is now flowering in the Arnold Arboretum. 

 Mr. Parsons, of Flushing, who prefers to propagate it by 

 grafting on T. radicans, has a plant in a three-inch pot 

 which was grafted last winter and has just now finished 

 blooming-- 



As already shown, this beautiful Tecoma is well adopted 

 for forcing, and it may be propagated by hard or soft wood 

 cuttings or from pieces of the root. For pot or out-door 

 culture the plant may be very easily trained in a dwarf, 

 bushy form. 



Like man)' other exotics this was grown as a greenhouse 

 plant when first introduced into cultivation in Europe, and 

 it may be said to flower most freely when forced by artifi- 

 cial heat. 



The plant shown in the figure is now producing flower- 

 buds on new shoots which have been thrown out. 



The Virginia Creeper. — This luxuriant climber is the best sub- 

 stitute we have for the English Ivy in cold climates where 

 Ampelopsis tricuspidata is not hardy. But those who plant 

 this vine with the expectation that it will cling to brick or stone 

 walls are likely to be disappointed unless they select the va- 

 riety with much care. The fact that an individual vine of this 

 plant clings tenaciously to the trunk of a tree is no sure indi- 

 cation that it will attach itself to a wall. The tendrils on differ- 

 ent plants vary much in their structure. On some they are 

 much like those of the Grape, coiling about objects with 

 which they come in contact, but little branched and producing 

 no sponge-like disks at their extremities. Such vines will 

 climb up the trunks of trees having rough bark, but they are 



