156 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 27, li 



Notes. 



Two new parts of Baillon's indispensable " Dictionnaire de 

 Botanique" being Fascicles xxii. and xxiii., have reached us. 

 The work is now brought down to "Leth." 



Miss Emily L. Gregory's studies upon the " Development of 

 Cork Wings on Certain Trees " is now reprinted in pamphlet 

 form from the pages of the Botanical Gazette. 



Last winter a Philadelphia gardener placed a frame over a 

 spring in which Water-cress grew. The warmth of the water 

 prevented freezing, and he had Water-cress all the winter. 



Mr. Frederick Janson Hanbury, F.L.S., proposes to publish, 

 by subscription, an illustrated monograph of British Hieracia. 

 It will be issued in quarterly parts at six shillings for the col- 

 ored, and at four shillings for the uncolored edition ; and five 

 years, it is estimated, will be required to complete the publica-, 

 tion. Mr. Hanbury's address is 69, The Common, Upper 

 Clapton, London. 



Sixteen plans were recently presented in competition for the 

 commission to lay out a new public park in Utrecht, Holland ; 

 but although two were rewarded with second prizes none was 

 thought worthy of the first prize. Had as many plans been 

 prepared for a work of this description in America it is cer- 

 tain that the most careful and exacting judges in the world 

 would have been amply satisfied with some of them. 



The Philadelphia Select Council, on March 7th, passed an 

 ordinance appropriating Bartram's Garden and two other 

 pieces of ground for park purposes, and providing for their 

 purchase. Some other small parks have been given to the 

 city, and additional ground will probably be bought by the city 

 to increase the number and area of its open spaces. The 

 movement for this object is most judicious and important. 



The National Horticultural Society of France offers a prizeof 

 2,500 francs, to be paid at the end of the present year, for the 

 best practical work upon vegetable and fruit gardening and flo- 

 riculture published since April 6th, 1886. It is offered in the 

 name of the late Dr. Joubert de I'Hiberderie, who left the sum 

 of 60,000 francs to the Society for the purpose of establishing 

 this prize. Presumably the work must be written in French. 



The Monograph of North Axnencan Umbelliferce, upon which 

 Messrs. Coulter & Rose have been constantly engaged for a 

 number of years and which has appeared in the Botanical Ga- 

 zette, is now issued separately in a handsome pamphlef of 144 

 pages with ten plates of 159 figures of cross-sections of the seed 

 of the different genera, of which there are fifty-two indigenous 

 to the continent north of Mexico with 217 indigenous species. 



The annual banquet of the Philadelphia Florists' Club, was 

 held last Thursday evening, and the guests from Boston, New 

 York and other cities had renewed occasion to observe that 

 the florists of Philadelphia excel in hospitality and good-fellow- 

 ship, as they do in intelligence, taste and skill. A unique feat- 

 ure of the occasion was the toasting of several of the newer 

 Roses, and the responses by the growers who had been 

 specially interested in the dissemination of these varieties were 

 instructive as well as entertaining. 



Dr. C. C. Parry has recently printed in the proceedings of the 

 Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences an account of the 

 genus Ceanothus, with an enumerated list, and notes and de- 

 scriptions of several Pacific coast species, based upon his forty 

 years' observation of these plants in their native habitats. Dr. 

 Parry disfinguishes for the first fime the following : C. intrica- 

 tus, known only on the summit of Mt. Tamalpais, near San 

 Francisco ; C. Andersoni, from the Santa Cruz Mountains, C. 

 Californicus and C. divergens from Napa Valley. With the two 

 species of eastern America, thirty-three species are included 

 in this, the latest revision of this difficult genus. 



Professor Eaton, who lectured recently on Oaks at New 

 Haven, said that the largest and most famous Oak that had 

 been known in the State of Connecticut was the Charter-oak, 

 on the Stewart estate in Hartford. " Two hundred and one 

 years ago it was a large and ancient tree. The historical 

 connections which have made it famous are well known. On 

 August 2oth, 1856, a great storm swept over this part of New 

 England, and the aged tree was blown down. It was then 700 

 or 800 years old. The event caused much excitement. A 

 dirge was played by the army band, and the bells were tolled 

 at sunset. It was thirty-three feet in circumference and thirty- 

 seven men could stand in its cavity at one time." This Oak 

 was a White Oak {Quercus alba), while the tree recently cut 

 down by vandal hands at Woodbridge, Connecticut, was a 

 Black Oak (g. ti?tctoria). 



The Cercle Floral, of Antwerp, proposes to hold next year an 

 exhibition illustrative of " Botany in its Geographical, Commer- 



cial and Industrial Aspects " — that is to say, not only the floras 

 of different countries will be illustrated, but also, as fully as pos- 

 sible, the various products derived from them. Of course, collec- 

 tions with a similar aim have already been formed in various 

 places, notably at Kew. But in this temporary exhibition it is pro- 

 posed to bring the living and the manufactured products more 

 closely together than is possible in permanent museums. The 

 results of the skill of the hybridizer will also be systematically 

 shown. Great botanical collectors will be honored by having as 

 many as possible of the plants which they severally introduced 

 grouped together and appropriately labeled. Those plants will 

 also be gathered together which are most useful from an artis- 

 tic point of view, as furnishing decorators and artisans with 

 graceful suggestions. A congress will be held for the discus- 

 sion of the various questions which such an exhibition will 

 naturally bring up, and if the wide-reaching programme is car- 

 ried out with any degree of success, Antwerp ought to be very 

 attractive to students and lovers of plants during the summer 

 of 1890. 



It is usual, says the Illiistrirte Garten Zeitung, of Vienna, to 

 believe that the prices paid for Tulips in Holland during the 

 celebrated " Tulip mania " have never since been equaled. The 

 fact that they have been rivaled in recent times has not ex- 

 cited much attention because no single class of plants has 

 been so conspicuously preferred as was the Tulip in its day. 

 For example, a sum equaling $2,250 was paid by a nurseryman 

 in Erfurt, Germany, for the original plant of Magnolia Lenne ; 

 in 1876, Mr. Francis Parkman, the historian, sold a hybrid Lily 

 {Lilium Parkmanni) which had been produced on his estate 

 near Boston to an English nurseryman for $1,200 ; and about 

 a year ago Monsieur Lemoine, of Nancy, France, gave $200 

 for a bulb with two or three bulblets of the first seini-double 

 Gadiolus. The prices given in this country for the Bennett 

 and the Puritan Roses at the time of their introduction, and 

 more recently for the Mrs. Alpheus Hardy Chrysanthemum, 

 are familiar to all, but in these instances, of course, a large 

 amount of stock was sold, while the sums paid by old Dutch 

 amateurs were for single bulbs. Orchids bring higher prices 

 to-day than any other plants. The Messrs. Veitch paid 

 $1,800 for a Cypripediiim Stonei platytoenium, a plant more 

 curious than beautiful, which consisted of but a single flower- 

 stalk, at the base of which were three young shoots about one 

 and a half inches in length; the same firm, on another occasion, 

 gave $1,400 for two plants of Cattleya Triance var. Leeana, 

 and a list of similar prices might be greatly extended. 



A correspondent of an English journal, replying to a query 

 whether there is such a thing as a plant that moves spontan- 

 eously, replies that Desmoditcm gyrans must be the plant re- 

 ferred to. It belongs to the Pea family and is a native of the 

 East Indies, "where it rejoices in the name of Burram Chan- 

 dali. It is a somewhat slender plant, seldom exceeding two 

 feet in height ; the leaves are not large, but trifoliate, the two 

 leaflets at the base being much the smallest, and these com- 

 prise that portion of the plant which appears to be continually 

 on the move, but the movement is very irregular, although 

 rapid. The texture of the plant is somewhat thin, the color of 

 the leaves being a bluish green, and the constitution appears 

 somewhat delicate. I believe it to be a biennial, but have 

 found it difficult to keep the plant alive during the winter 

 months. Seeds can be obtained from the principal seeds- 

 men. . . . The plants become characterisfic as soon as the 

 first leaves next the seed-leaves are formed, and the eccentric 

 moving powers are developed. It does not like cutting, and 

 the best plan to produce a bushy plant is from time to time to 

 pinch out the extreme point of the shoot. It enjoys strong 

 heat and a moist atmosphere. It is one of the rnost extraordi- 

 nary plants in the vegetable world, but it does not possess any 

 beauty." In Nicholson's Dictionary of Gardening ' Moving- 

 plant 'and ' Telegraph-plant ' are given as the popular names 

 of this Desmodium, and it is said that the leaflets move up 

 and down "either steadily or by jerks, the movements being 

 most marked during bright sunshine." 



Catalogues Received. 



J. J. Jarmain, Yokohama, Japan; — Bulbs. — ^John Laing & Sons, 

 Forest Hill, London, Eng-land; — Chrysanthemums. — Thomas Meehan 

 & Son, Germantown, Pa.; — Trees, Vines, Shrubs, Fruits. — W. H. 

 Moon, Morrisville, Pa.; — Fruit and Ornamental Trees, etc.— Parsons 

 & Sons Co., Limited, Flushing, N. Y.; — Hardy Ornamental Trees, 

 Flowering Shrubs and Vines. — PrrcHER & Manda, United States Nur- 

 series, Short Hills, N. J.; — Hardy Perennials. — Temple & Beard, 

 Shady Hill Nurseries, Cambridge, Mass.; — Trees, Shrubs, Vines, 

 Plants ; also, Hardy Perennials. — David G. Yates & Co., Mount Airy 

 Nurseries, 5774 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa.; — Hardy 

 Ornamental Trees and Shrubs, Greenhouse and Bedding Plants, etc. 



