November 5, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



533 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY 1SY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 









S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER AT THE 



POST OFFICE AT NEW 



YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, 



WEDNESDAY, 



NOVEMBER 



5, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The Catalpa. — Forests of the White Mountains 533 



Ornamental Fruits in the Pines Mrs. Mary Treat. 534 



Cranberry Culture in New Jersey Professor John B. Smith. 535 



A Bit of Forgotten History Carl Bollc. 536 



Two Remarkable Catalpa-trees. (With figures.) ...Henry Brooks. 536 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 536 



Cultural Department: — Rose Notes E. G. Hill. 538 



Notes on Shrubs J. C. J. 538 



Some Native Ferns F. H. Horsford. 540 



Autumn Crocuses E. O. Orpet. 540 



Vanda Sanderiana John Weathers. 540 



Setting Strawberry Plants in Autumn E. Williams. 541 



Grapes in Eastern Massachusetts Benjamin G. Smith. 541 



A Dangerous Enemy to the Radish Professor Byron D. Halsted. 541 



Adlumia cirrhosa..." W. T. 542 



Correspondence : — The Palms of the Southern California Border, 



Samuel B. Parish. 542 



The Quality of Russian Apples H. E. Van Deman. 542 



Periodical Literature 543 



Notes 544 



Illustrations :— A Remarkable Old Catalpa-tree, Fig. 68 537 



The Catalpa-tree {Catalpa bignonoides), Fig. 69 539 



The Catalpa. 



THE genus Catalpa is eastern American and eastern 

 Asiatic in the distribution of its species. Two of 

 these occur in North America, one in the West Indies, one 

 in Japan and one in the northern regions of China. They 

 are all trees with ample, generally opposite, simple leaves, 

 large terminal panicles of showy flowers, and long, slen- 

 der, nearly cylindrical capsular pods. The flowers, which 

 appear in all the extra-tropical species in early summer, 

 are characterized by the deeply two-lipped calyx, the 

 irregularly two-lipped, bell-shaped corolla, which is white 

 and conspicuously marked with purple and yellow in the 

 throat, and by two, or rarely four, fertile, and one to three 

 sterile, rudimentary stamens. The capsule is divided into 

 two cells by a partition which is at right angles to its 

 valves. The seeds are numerous and densely packed in 

 the cells of the pod ; they are furnished on each end with 

 long, papery wings, cut at the extremity into delicate 

 white fringe. 



The familiar species, and the type of the genus as it is 

 now constituted, is Catalpa bignonoides, the Catalpa-tree or 

 Indian Bean. It is a low, wide-branched tree, with a 

 short, stout trunk covered with thin, pale, furrowed bark. 

 The wood, like that of the other species, is light brown, 

 and contains numerous large open ducts, which mark the 

 layers of growth. The wood of all the species is remark- 

 able for the thin sap-wood, which consists of three or four 

 layers of annual growth only. The leaves, which emit a 

 disagreeable odor when crushed, are cordate at the base, 

 somewhat acuminate, and are occasionally provided 

 with a pair of salient lateral teeth. They are light yellow- 

 green in color, and do not unfold until nearly all other trees 

 are covered with foliage. The flowers open at the north 

 late in June or during the early days of July ; they are pro- 

 duced in very large, compact panicles, and are about an 

 inch or an inch and a half long. They are peculiar in 

 their campanulate corolla, with an oblique limb and entire 

 lower lobe. The inner surface is thickly covered with 

 purple spots and is streaked with yellow. 



This tree has much to recommend it as an ornament for 

 the garden. It is hardy ; it grows rapidly ; it is not very 



particular about soil, and insects do not prey upon its 

 foliage. The large, brilliant leaves have an almost tropical 

 appearance, and the flowers, which appear late in the sea- 

 son, when flowers are particularly valuable, are produced 

 in the greatest profusion. There are few trees, certainly, 

 of temperate regions which present a more remarkable 

 floral display than a large Catalpa-tree in full bloom. 

 These qualities have made the Catalpa one of the most 

 popular trees in all the temperate regions of the world ; in- 

 deed, it has been cultivated so long, and has now become 

 so completely established in many parts of the southern 

 states, that it is not easy to determine exactly where it 

 grew before man carried the seeds from one part of the 

 country to another. 



The Catalpa appears to have been first made known to 

 Europeans by Mr. Mark Catesby, the English naturalist, 

 who was in our south Atlantic regions early in the last cen- 

 tury and who is remembered by his handsome "Natural 

 History of Carolina," which appeared in London in 1731. 

 He published an excellent figure of the tree, which he says 

 was unknown to the inhabitants of the settled portions of 

 Carolina until he introduced it from the remoter parts of 

 the country. What Catesby meant by the remoter parts of 

 the country is not clear ; but it is hardly probable that he 

 ever penetrated more than oneortwohundredmiles from the 

 coast, and certainly he never crossed the mountains into 

 the region which is now generally regarded to have been 

 the first home of this tree — south-western Georgia, and 

 central Alabama and Mississippi. It is probable, therefore, 

 that the Catalpa was first brought east of the Alleghany 

 Mountains by the Cherokees, who are known to have been 

 somewhat interested in plants, and that it was from their 

 cultivated trees or their offspring escaped to the forest 

 that Catesby obtained the plants for the Carolina planters 

 and for his English correspondents, to whom he sent the 

 Catalpa as early as 1726. Even to this day there is doubt 

 in regard to the true home of the species. It may be seen 

 growing on the banks of the upper Apalachicola and Flint 

 Rivers in south-western Georgia, so remote from existing 

 habitations that it is difficult to imagine that the seed which 

 has produced these trees could ever have been blown from 

 cultivated plants. Still, it is impossible to surmise how far 

 a plant provided with seed so admirably adapted for 

 transportation by the agency of the wind can eventually 

 be carried from an original starting point ; and the fact 

 that the Catalpa is hardy so far north, and that it has even 

 become naturalized in some parts of Pennsylvania, seems 

 to be an indication that its true home is not in the hot, 

 low, semi-tropical country of the Gulf states, but rather in 

 some still unexplored mountain region of the Appalachian 

 foot-hills, from which it was early carried by the Indians 

 east into Carolina and south-west into Georgia and Ala- 

 bama, through which states and beyond it has gradually 

 spread until it is now found over a large area of the middle 

 and southern states. 



Two well marked varieties, at least, of this tree have 

 appeared. The first, the so-called Golden Catalpa, has 

 bright yellow foliage. The second is a dwarf, compact 

 shrub rarely attaining a height of six feet, but spreading 

 widely, and thickly covered with leaves. This curious 

 plant, which is not known to have produced flowers, passes 

 universally in nurseries as Catalpa Bungei, although it has 

 nothing to do with the Chinese species of that name. It is 

 sometimes grafted as a standard on tall stems of the 

 Catalpa, and, grown in this fashion, it makes a small tree 

 with a compact round head, useful for the decoration of 

 small gardens and city squares. 



The second North American Catalpa, C. speciosa, was 

 distinguished specifically a few years ago by the late Dr. 

 J. A. Warder, a Nestor among American tree-planters in 

 the west. It is a native of the river-swamps which abound 

 about the mouth of the Ohio and the adjacent parts of Mis- 

 souri. Dr. Warder's attention was directed to some Ca- 

 talpa-trees planted in the streets of an Ohio town, and found 

 that they grew more rapidly than other individuals planted 



