September. 3, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



425 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 









ENTERED 



AS SECOND CLASS MATTER AT THE 



TOST OFFICE AT NEW 



YORK, N. Y. 



NEW 



YORK, 



WEDNESDAY, 



SEPTEMBER 



3, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



EditorialArtici.es : — The Flowering Dogwood. (With figure.)— ThcTreatment 



of Trees in Drought 425 



California Forests and Irrigation Charles H. Shinn. 426 



Earliness from Unripe Seed Professor E. S. Goff. ^ij 



The Cactus in Garden Art 427 



New or Little Known Plants : — Prunus Allegheniensis. (With figure.) 



Professor Thomas C. Porter. 428 



Lilium Henryi IV, 428 



New Orchids R. A. Rolfe. 428 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 428 



Cultural Department : — Preparing for Easter Flowers fames Dean. 430 



Ferns of Singular Form IV H. Taplin. 432 



Notes on Shrubs f. 432 



A Few Annuals G. 433 



Growing Pears E. P. Powell. 433 



Correspondence : — Forests and Scenery in New Hampshire. ■ ..f.B. Harrison. 433 



Wheat and Rye Hybrids f. G. fark. 434 



A Mysterious Conifer ... .Dr. Carl Bolle. 434 



Tree Peonies Auguste Dessert. 435 



The Pepo of Peru E. Lewis Sturtevant, 1\I. D. 435 



Recent Publications - 435 



Notes , 435 



Illustrations :— Prunus Allegheniensis, Fig. 53 429 



The Flowering Dogwood, Fig. 54 431 



The Flowering Dogwood. 



THE trees called in popular language Flowering Dog- 

 woods give a peculiar charm to the forests of North 

 America. There are two of these trees, and their counter- 

 part is not found in any other part of the world. In early- 

 spring one of them enlivens the deciduous forests of south- 

 eastern America, and the other lights up the gloomy Pines 

 and Firs of the far north-west. 



We will glance first at the floral structure to which these 

 plants owe their peculiar beauty. The flowers of the 

 Cornel are individually small, and green or greenish white 

 or white in color. They are arranged in some species in 

 close heads, and in others in open, flat, spreading cymes. 

 The last is the more common arrangement, and the flower- 

 clusters of some of the American species in which the 

 flowers are grouped in this fashion are very beautiful, 

 especially those of Cornus circinata and of Cornus alternifolia, 

 the former a good-sized shrub, and the latter a small tree 

 or tree-like shrub, of the north Atlantic forests. In those 

 American species in which the flowers are placed in a close 

 head the flower-cluster is surrounded by four or five large 

 leaf-like bracts which enclose it in the bud. These open 

 before the flowers expand and soon begin to enlarge. At 

 this time they are of a rather dirty greenish white color and 

 not more than a quarter of an inch long. They grow rap- 

 idly, and at the end of ten days or two weeks are one and 

 a half or two inches long on the eastern tree, or sometimes 

 twice that length on the Pacific coast species, and pure 

 snowy white. To these large showy bracts or floral 

 leaves the Flowering Dogwoods owe their name, and not 

 to the flowers, which are very small, of a pale greenish 

 color, and quite inconspicuous. 



The fact that the vernal beauty of these trees is due to 

 leaves and not to flowers lengthens the time of what is 

 popularly supposed to be their flowering period; for the 

 floral leaves have already grown to more than half their 

 size before the true flowers open, and their time of greatest 

 beauty does not come until after the flowers have fallen. 

 The flowers and the floral leaves open and fade before the 

 trees put forth their true leaves, so that they appear in 

 flower like one mass of dazzling white. 



The Cornels with showy floral leaves are confined to the 

 New World, the group being represented by the two Flow- 



ering Dogwood-trees, one in the east and the other in the 

 west, and by the pretty little herbaceous Bunch-berry, a 

 familiar flower of our northern woods, which it carpets in 

 spring with its large white bracts, and cheers in the late 

 autumn by its large clusters of brilliant scarlet fruit, and by 

 another species resembling this last, and peculiar to Alaska 

 and the far northern parts of the continent. These are all that 

 have come down to us from a very peculiar group of plants 

 which, in earlier times, were more widely scattered over 

 the earth's surface than they are now. For the ancestors of 

 our Flowering Dogwoods occurred in Europe, where, how- 

 ever, their descendants have been unable to obtain a foot- 

 hold, as well as in America. 



As ornamental trees, the Flowering Dogwoods, especially 

 the eastern species, are not easily surpassed. This tree, to 

 which botanists have given the name of Cornus florida, is a 

 low, round-headed plant, with spreading branches and a 

 straight, usually slender, trunk. Under favorable condi- 

 tions it attains sometimes in the south a height of forty 

 feet, with a trunk often a foot or a foot and a half in 

 diameter. The leaves are ample in size, dark, lustrous 

 green on the upper surface, the lower surface covered with 

 pale glaucous bloom. They turn in autumn to a crimson 

 color, which finds its only equal in brilliancy among 

 American trees in those of the Sour Gum and of the Liquid- 

 ambar. The effects of the color of the tree at this time of 

 the year are heightened by the contrast between the darker 

 hues of the upper surface with the paler shades of the lower. 

 The fruit is an oval scarlet drupe half an inch long, borne 

 in dense spherical heads. It ripens in the late autumn, 

 and then adds much to the beauty of the trees when birds 

 permit it to escape them. The claims, therefore, of the Flow- 

 ering Dogwood as an ornamental tree are its hardiness, its 

 size and habit, the beauty and durability of its inflorescence, 

 its handsome foliage and fruit and the brilliancy of its au- 

 tumn foliage. It grows from southern New England and 

 Minnesota to Florida and eastern Texas, reappearing on 

 the mountains of north-eastern Mexico. This tree is not 

 common at the north, and east of the Hudson River it 

 never reaches any great size. In the middle states, how- 

 ever, and in the south and south-western part of the region 

 which it occupies, it is one of the most common inhabit- 

 ants of the forests of deciduous-leaved trees, affording the 

 most conspicuous feature in the landscape, and lighting up 

 the borders of forests and fields with masses of dazzling 

 white. 



This little tree produces wood which is not exceeded in 

 strength and in the toughness and closeness of its grain 

 by that of many other American trees. It is valued in 

 turnery, for the hubs of small wheels, for the bearings of 

 machinery, and even for wood-engraving. The bitter 

 properties of the bark make it useful as a tonic and give it 

 a place in the materia medica. 



The appearance of this tree when in flower is shown in 

 our illustration on page 431. It represents a fine specimen 

 growing in the country place of Mr. A. L. Barber, at Grimes' 

 Hill, Staten Island, and is from a photograph by J. Loeffler, 

 Tompkinsville, New York. 



The Pacific Coast Flowering Dogwood, the Cornus Nul- 

 iallii of botanists, is in some respects a finer tree than its 

 better known Atlantic relative. It grows taller, and it is 

 not unusual to find individuals among the great Fir-trees 

 near the shores of Puget Sound, a region remarkable for its 

 great trees, sixty feet or more in height. The flower- 

 bracts are nearly twice as large, and therefore more con- 

 spicuous. The leaves, however, do not assume the brilliant 

 autumn tints of those of the eastern tree, and its tall, slen- 

 der mode of growth makes it less desirable as a culti- 

 vated plant. Apparently the Pacific Coast Dogwood is 

 not an easy plant to cultivate outside the region where it 

 grows naturally. It was first introduced into gardens 

 many years ago, but we cannot remember to have ever 

 seen a plant of any size in any garden, and all recent 

 attempts to cultivate it have proved unsuccessful. Other 

 plants of the same region are, however, perfectly at home 



