574 



Garden and Forest. 



[November 26, 1890. 



As the editor points out, " It is singular that so common an 

 American plant with an edible fruit should not have been in- 

 troduced by the Spaniards and become an 'escape' in the Old 

 World, where I think it would be naturalized with great 

 rapidity." 



The colored plate in the Revue Horticole of the issue of 

 November 1st is devoted to the Mexican Senecio Ghiesbreghti, 

 a native of Mexico and an extremely ornamental species, which 

 is now often seen in the gardens of southern Europe. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



Trees in Towns. — Dr. M. T. Masters, editor of the Garden- 

 ers' Chronicle, lectured recently before the Royal Horticultural 

 Society on the subject of Tree-planting in Towns. An enor- 

 mous amount of material and labor are or have been wasted 

 by planting indiscriminately all kinds of trees and shrubs, most 

 of which prove incapable of enduring the atmosphere and 

 other trials inevitable in town streets and gardens. The right 

 thing to plant and the manner of planting are unknown to 

 vestries and local boards, and many of these bodies have 

 already learned by sad experience how ignorance, when it 

 dabbles with planting, must inevilably come to grief. Dr. 

 Masters' lecture will be published in the Journal of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society. It will include an exhaustive list of such 

 trees and shrubs as have proved to be adapted for cultivation 

 in towns. It would be interesting to us to have the results of 

 American experience in this matter. 



Pernettya mucronata. — Are American gardeners ac- 

 quainted with the pretty berried varieties of this plant, which 

 were raised in an Irish nursery about ten years ago ? The 

 type is, of course, well known everywhere as a first-rate hardy 

 shrub which bears an abundant crop of bright crimson berries 

 every winter if happily situated. Mr. Davies of the Hillsboro 

 Nurseries, County Down, has added considerably to the value 

 of this plant by raising from it a number of varieties remark- 

 able for the rich colors of their berries. White, pink, lilac, 

 purple, cerise and almost black berried varieties were obtained, 

 and these are now becoming popular, not only for the open 

 border, but as pot-shrubs for winter decorations in-doors. 

 Plants a foot high, compact as Box and thickly laden with 

 berries may be grown in a five-inch pot, and such plants are 

 as attractive as any berry-bearing plants in cultivation. Out- 

 of-doors the plants sometimes fail to produce berries, that is 

 in some gardens. In Mr. Davies' nursery I saw acres of them 

 about seven years ago, and every plant, from babies six inches 

 high to large bushes as tall as a man, was a mass of fruit. It 

 is probable that a sandy, peat soil is most conducive to fruit- 

 production in these plants ; such, at any rate, is the character 

 of the soil in Mr. Davies' nursery. Variegated conifers were 

 much better colored in this nursery than I remember to have 

 seen them elsewhere. In Ireland the Pernettyas are almost as 

 commonly grown for winter effect as Solatium Capsicastrum. 

 The varieties are named Alba, Carnea, Purpurea, Macrocarpa, 

 etc., names which are descriptive of the berries. They are 

 worth trying in America, if this has not been done already. 

 \Pernettya mucronata, like other plants of the southern Hemi- 

 sphere, is not hardy in the northern states. — Ed.] 



Chrysanthemums.— There will be over fifty large exhibi- 

 tions of Chrysanthemums held in England during next week. 

 The National Chrysanthemum Society will devote four days to 

 a gigantic exhibition, conference, etc., to mark the centenary 

 of the introduction of the Chrysanthemum into England. In 

 most of the parks and public gardens of London special efforts 

 are annually made to produce an imposing show of this most 

 popular of all winter flowers. Kew, Finsbury Park, Victoria 

 Park, Temple Gardens, with several other places of popular 

 public resort, have each an exhibition of no mean order. The 

 literature of the Chrysanthemum crops up everywhere at this 

 time of year, daily papers, society papers, papers of every de- 

 scription commenting upon, discussing and offering advice on 

 the management of the hundreds of varieties now cultivated. 

 No flower, not even the Rose, has ever been more generally 

 cultivated and admired in England than the Chrysanthemum 

 is now. The taste for large, well formed flowers, combined 

 with bright colors, which now prevails in England, was re- 

 cently very much laughed at by the President of the Japanese 

 Horticultural Society when on a visit to Kew. The perfection 

 of Chrysanthemum culture in Japan is a large bush bearing an 

 enormous number of small flowers. Such kinds as E. Moly- 

 neux, Elaine, Avalanche and Mrs. G. Rundle would not, he 



said, find any favor with Japanese growers. In my opinion 

 the finest Chrysanthemum ever raised is E. Molyneux. It is 

 almost a miracle in form and color. Nothing in horticulture 

 is more remarkable than the development of such a flower 

 from the little yellow buttons of the progenitor of garden 

 Chrysanthemums — namely, C. morifolium. 



Salvia splendens and S, azurea, var. grandiflora, are most 

 useful plants in the greenhouse at this time of year. The rich 

 scarlet flowers and bushy habit of the former are as effective 

 as anything we have, whilst the bright blue flowers of C. 

 azurea are charming amongst the commoner colors which 

 prevail in the greenhouse in November. At Kew about a 

 dozen species of Salvia are grown out-of-doors all summer 

 along with the Chrysanthemums, and housed at the same 

 time. The treatment that is good for the one is equally good 

 for the other. These two genera and Celosia pyramidalis are 

 the most striking features of the conservatory just now. 



Cattleya Warocqueana. — Better acquaintance with the 

 plants distributed under this name and a comparison of their 

 flowers with those of some of the forms of Cattleya Gaskell- 

 iana has led to the conclusion that the latter name must stand 

 for both. In the time of flowering, the character of the pseudo- 

 bulbs, the form of the flowers and the wide range of variety 

 in their colors, there is no marked difference between what was 

 introduced and distributed by Mr. Sander seven years ago as 

 C. Gaskelliana and this new introduction of M. Linden's Com- 

 pany. At the same time, there are amongst the latter forms 

 which differ from anything previously seen in what was intro- 

 duced by Mr. Sander as C. Gaskelliana. We are indebted to 

 M. Linden for additional proofs of the exceptional value of this 

 sub-species as a garden plant. Some of the flowers recently 

 exhibited by M. Linden showed a close resemblance to C. 

 speciosissima {Luddemanniand). 



Odontoglossum crispum. — There is apparently no danger 

 of this Orchid ever becoming extinct as a wild plant, for it 

 must be as abundant on the mountains of New Grenada as 

 the Primrose is in the copses of England. Hundreds of 

 thousands of plants are imported into England every year, and 

 they may be bought at the auction rooms at seventy-five cents 

 a dozen. Ever since the year 1863, when the three collectors, 

 Weir, Blunt and Schlim, found themselves sailing in the same 

 steamer on the same errand, namely, to collect plants of 

 Odo7itoglossum crispum for the Horticultural Society, Messrs. 

 Hugh Low & Co. and M. Linden respectively, this Orchid has 

 been imported in enormous quantities annually. What has 

 become of the millions of plants thus poured into European 

 gardens ? At first many were killed by growing them in a 

 stove temperature, but even now, when the conditions afforded 

 under artificial treatment are the best possible, there are not 

 in cultivation many examples of 0. crispum that measure a 

 foot in diameter. Is this plant naturally a short-lived one ? 

 Auction sales are not always the best means for stocking 

 one's Orchid houses. The farming of Orchid grounds where 

 the plants are wild enables the "farmers" to select the best 

 varieties before the plants are dispatched to England or other 

 countries to be sold as " unproved." On this side the best 

 growers send to the auction rooms all the varieties that are 

 not considered worth growing, keeping only those that are of 

 good quality. It therefore follows that the beginner who re- 

 turns from the auction rooms with "good established plants, 

 bought for a few pence each," has got only the refuse of other 

 collections. Of course they are Orchids all the same, and 

 worth what they cost. Good varieties are costly in spite of the 

 abundance of the plants in the market. 



Kew. 



W. Watson. 



Cultural Department. 



"Very Good" and "Best" Apples. 



A^7E who are and have been working upon our cold north- 

 * * ern border to extend the culture of tree fruits success- 

 fully into the region of hard winters occasionally feel, when 

 we read the criticisms of some who are recognized as experts 

 in pomology, that our labors are not thought of very great 

 worth to the country at large. I have sometimes thought 

 that perhaps some prejudice entered into the criticisms we 

 meet with ; and I have to console myself with recollections of 

 the kindness with which such work was recognized, even in 

 its small beginnings, by such noble leaders as Downing and 

 Wilder. The former showed his strong recognition of the 

 importance of these experimental labors when he bequeathed 

 his pomological library and notes to Professor Budd ; while, 

 as for myself, nothing gave me more encouragement than 

 the receipt, four years since, of a letter from Mr. Wilder in 



