October 22, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



509 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUUI.ISUF.n WEEKLY HY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by ■ . Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER AT THE TOST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The Madrona. (With illustration.) 500 



The Proposed State Forcst-ParU. — Greater Protection Needed tor National 



Forest-Property •• 5'° 



Cape Cod Cranberries Professor L. H. Bailey. 511 



New or LirrLE Known Plants :— Clematis Stanlc) i. (With figure.) W. 512 



New Orchids R- A. Rol/e. 513 



The Coco-de-Mer W. 514 



Cultural Department:— Autumn Work in the Hardy Flower-Garden, 



E. O. OrJ>et. 514 



Dahlias 7- 5 ' 6 



Notes on Native Ferns F. H. Horsford. 516 



The Borsdorfer Apple T. H. Hoskins, AID. 516 



Strawberries -P. 5"7 



Hymenocallis macrostephana H. Nehrling. 517 



Dendrobium aqueum John Weathers. 517 



Hardy Perennials from Seed, A Reserve Garden T. D. Hatfield. 517 



The Autumn-Bearing Raspberries Professor E. S. Goff. 517 



Correspondence : — The American Elm Professor E. S. Goff. 518 



Three Questions Albert Salisbury. 518 



Recent Publications •' S l8 



Notes 5*9 



Illustrations :— Clematis Stanleyi, Fig. 65 5'3 



The Madrofia {Arbutus Menziesii) 515 



The Madrona. 



THE forests of North America contain two broad- 

 leaved evergreen trees unsurpassed by those of any- 

 other temperate region of the earth's surface. They are 

 the Great Magnolia, the glory of our southern forests, the 

 handsomest and perhaps the most esteemed of all garden 

 decorations, and the Madrona of the humid coast-region of 

 Oregon and California. This is the Arbutus Menziesii, and 

 by far the largest and most beautiful of the trees of the 

 small genus to which it belongs, and one of the most re- 

 markable and interesting of all the trees of the northern 

 Pacific forests. 



The genus Arbutus is common to the Old World and the 

 New. One species is widely distributed through southern 

 Europe from Spain to the Caucasus, ascending the west 

 coast of the continent to Ireland, where it abounds in the 

 neighborhood of the Lakes of Killarney. This species, the 

 Arbutus Unedo of botanists, the so-called Strawberry-tree, 

 has been cultivated from time immemorial in gardens, 

 which it decorates with its evergreen foliage and hand- 

 some white flowers. These appear late in the autumn 

 simultaneously with the ripening of the brilliant red fruit 

 of the previous year. A second Species, Arbutus Andrachne, 

 inhabits the Levant, and is sometimes seen, too, in the 

 gardens of southern Europe. But the headquarters of 

 the genus in the multiplication of the species is Mexico, 

 where several little known and imperfectly defined forms 

 exist. Two of these extend north of the boundary of the 

 United States, one into Texas, where it occurs in the west- 

 ern part of the state in a few isolated stations, and the 

 other into Arizona, where it grows high up on some of the 

 mountain ranges in the extreme southern part of the terri- 

 tory. The home of the Madrona or of its ancestors was 

 once, no doubt, among the Mexican mountains, where 

 species which much resemble it still occur ; but now it 

 ranges far northward from the Santa Lucia Mountains, in 

 southern California, to the islands which guard the coast of 

 British Columbia. In favorable situations in forests influ- 

 enced by the fogs and rains attracted to the coast from the 

 surface of the Pacific, it attains a great size, shooting up to 

 a height of more than ioo feet, and forming, when it grows 



surrounded by other trees, a tall, stout trunk three or four 

 feet in diameter. Such a specimen appears in our illustra- 

 tion on page 515. It is made from a photograph of a forest- 

 scene in California, sent by Mr. C. II. Shinn. 



Often the Madrona appears on the dry foot-hills cast of 

 the outer coast range, where the forest is open, and the 

 trees stand at a considerable distance apart, assuming a 

 round-topped, spreading habit of growth. Developed un- 

 der such conditions the Madrona looks at a little distance 

 like some great Apple-tree. A surprising specimen of this 

 sort — the greatest Madrona-tree in existence, perhaps — is 

 growing near the reservoir in the town of San Rafael, 

 across the bay from San Francisco. Great horizontal 

 branches shoot out from the short and immensely thick 

 trunk, and support a broad, symmetrical mass of foliage. 

 This tree, which is certainly one of the marvels of 

 arborescent growth, might well be taken for one of the 

 great Live Oaks of California, which hardly surpass it in 

 breadth of branch or in density of foliage. Its portrait will 

 appear later in this journal, and will serve to illustrate one 

 form of the Madrona which, south of the Bay of San Fran- 

 cisco, grows less vigorously than at the north, becoming 

 smaller and smaller, until toward the southern limits of its 

 distribution it is reduced to a low, stunted shrub. 



The bark of the Madrona, like that of the other species of 

 Arbutus and of the nearly related Manzanitas, which abound 

 in California, is its most striking feature. It is very thin 

 and smooth on the branches and young trunks through its 

 separation into thin plates, and bright red-brown. On old 

 trunks only, especially near their base, it becomes thick, 

 furrowed and dark colored. In the species which is found 

 in Arizona the mature bark is nearly white, or not unlike 

 in color the bark of the White Oak, which it further re- 

 sembles in the small, thin scales into which the surface 

 separates. The bright red color of the branches of the 

 Madrofia heightens the effect of the ample ovate leaves, 

 which are four or five inches long by half that breadth. 

 They are thick and beautifully lustrous on the upper sur- 

 face and pale on the lower. The flowers, which are 

 shaped like those of some of our Blueberries and Andro- 

 medas, for Arbutus, like these, belongs to the Heath family, 

 are white or greenish white, and are produced in large, 

 terminal clusters or racemes. They unfold in early spring, 

 and are followed by masses of orange-red berries, which 

 brighten the trees for weeks in the late autumn. 



The Madrona was naturally one of the first trees of our 

 Pacific forests to attract the attention of botanists. Archi- 

 bald Menzies, who is commemorated in its scientific name, 

 the Scotch physician and naturalist, who sailed with Van- 

 couver from 1790 to 1795, and who discovered and carried 

 to England another remarkable tree, the Araucaria of 

 Chili, first detected it, probably, near the mouth of the Colum- 

 bia River. Thirty years later David Douglas recognized its 

 value and sent seeds to England from the same region. 



Economically the Madrona is a tree of considerable 

 value, yielding a hard, straight, close-grained wood of 

 a handsome pale red color, of real value in cabinet- 

 making, provided sufficient care is taken in properly 

 seasoning it. It is already largely consumed in the manu- 

 facture of charcoal, and the bark furnishes excellent tan- 

 ning material. It is as an ornamental tree, however, that the 

 Madrona first claims attention. It is not an easy tree to 

 manage always, as the absence of fibrous roots makes any 

 but nursery-grown specimens difficult to transplant. It is 

 not hardy in the eastern states, and in Europe it will prob- 

 ably develop its greatest beauty only in such exceptionally 

 warm and moist regions as Devonshire, the south of Ire- 

 land, the islands of the British Channel and some parts of 

 western France. Specimens are occasionally seen in these 

 favored localities, but we have no record of any large or 

 exceptionally fine ones. 



The Californians, who possess within their own ter- 

 ritory the most wonderful as well as some of the most 

 beautiful trees known to man, unfortunately neglect 

 the material they have ready to their hands and ransack 



