i68 



Garden and Forest. 



[April 3, iJ 



Notes. 



The great summer horticultural exhibition at the Crystal 

 Palace, near London, will open this year on the nth of May. 



The death is announced in England of the Rev. J. G. Wood, 

 a very popular writer on natural history subjects. Most of his 

 works have addressed themselves to students of animal life 

 only, but his "Garden Friends and Foes" has a special inter- 

 est for horticulturists. 



At a recent meeting of the Horticultural Society of Paris a 

 red-berried Mistletoe ( Viscum cruciatum) was exhibited by 

 Monsieur H. Luiseau. It is a native of Portugal, where it 

 usually grows on the branches of the Olive-tree. Its leaves are 

 cuneiform in shape and smaller than those of the common 

 Mistletoe ( Visctiin album), and its berries are a bright crimson- 

 red. 



An English correspondent writes : There is little of interest 

 in bloom out-of-doors, but in frames and cool-houses the 

 European Cyclamens, Crocuses, Hepaticas, Iris Persica, I. 

 reticulata, Bongardia Rauwolfii, with numerous kinds of 

 Narcissus, are now in full blow. The Snowdrops, with their 

 numerous names, but all looking alike at a distance of ten 

 yards, are at their best, and so is the beautiful Snowflake. 



The Revue Horticole calls attention to the merits of the new 

 dwarf Polyantha Rose, Mademoiselle Blanche Rebatil, already 

 figured in the Journal des Roses. The value of this introduc- 

 tion, which was raised by M. Alexandre Bernaix, near Lyons, 

 in 1885, is the dark color of the flowers, something unknown 

 before in this class, and a character which the raisers of new 

 varieties will not be slow to take advantage of in improving 

 this charming class of dwarf Roses. 



English journals say that a fence about five feet high and of 

 considerable extent which encircles the grounds of a new 

 house erected for Baron Knopp at Forest Hill in the environs of 

 London, is built entirely of " Jarrah timber," and " attracts con- 

 siderable attention from the passers-by" as the "vai'ied and 

 delicate shades of the wood " are conspicuously ornamental. 

 Jarrah timber is the wood of Eucalyptus robiista, van rostrata, 

 a native of western Australia. 



M. Cr^pin has succeeded in obtaining from India a few 

 seeds of the new climbing, white-flowered Rosa gigantea, 

 which, it is believed, is destined to become a valuable addi- 

 tion to our single Roses. The flowers are dazzling white and 

 of enormous size. It is a native of Upper Burmah, a region 

 where frosts are unkown, so that in the Northern States Rosa 

 gigantea must be treated as a green-house climber ; but in the 

 Southern States it will doubtless prove perfectly hardy. 



Some idea of the new class of demands made upon the Amer- 

 ican forests will be gained from the fact that a firm of wood- 

 workers in one of the smaller towns of southern Illinois has 

 recently received an order from St. Louis for forty million 

 wooden butter-dishes. Its product last year was thirty-three 

 million butter-dishes, besides immense numbers of fruit-boxes, 

 sugar-buckets, etc. The principal wood used for this purpose 

 in the Mississippi Valley States is Liquidamber or Sweet Gum 

 {Liquidatnbar Stryracijlua). 



M. Cornu, Professor of Culture at the Jardin des Plantes, 

 exhibited on the 28th of February, before the National Society 

 of Horticulture of France, branches of Pruttus Davidiana, 

 Pyrus baccata, Forsythia suspetisa, Deutzia gracilis and other 

 shrubs, in full flower fully two months earlier than these 

 plants bloom at Paris naturally. These early flowers were ob- 

 tained by inserting branches, cut from plants growing in the 

 open ground, in moist sand in a green-house where the tem- 

 perature was maintained between 50° and 60°. 



At Ribston Hall, Wethersby, a severe gale recently destroyed 

 the beautiful Abies Pinsapo, which was one of the earliest 

 specimens planted in England. It was thought to be about 

 forty-five years old, was over forty-four feet in height, and at 

 one foot from the ground girthed nearly twelve feet. Ribston 

 Hall is the estate which gave us a well-known Apple', the Rib- 

 ston Pippin. The seed of the original specimen is said to have 

 come from Rouen in 1787, and this parent tree stood until a 

 few years ago, while a sucker which sprang from its roots is 

 still in existence. 



The demand for Sycamore lumber, as the wood of Platanus 

 occidentalis is called, is increasing very rapidly wherever to- 

 bacco is packed. This wood, which does not split readily, is 

 now almost exclusively used in the United States for tobacco- 

 boxes, and immense quantities are shipped to Richmond, St. 

 Louis and other tobacco-packing centres. One mill on the 

 Embarras River, in southern Illinois, has within a few months 

 received orders for eleven million feet of this lumber ; and 



mills through that part of the country are busy sawing up the 

 great Sycamores, which once were the crowning feature of the 

 country of the Illinois. 



Mr. E. S. Goff reports, in Agricultural Science, some inves- 

 tigations upon the distribution of starch in the Potato tuber. 

 The study was undertaken partly to ascertain whether any 

 clue to a rational method of cutting Potatoes for seed could 

 be discovered in this way. The test showed that the part 

 richest in starch lies within the cambium-layer and adjacent 

 to it, and that the portion lying nearest the so-called seed- 

 end is richer in starch than that of the opposite end. Experi- 

 ments have shown that cuttings from the seed-end yielded 

 more than cuttings from the stem-end, but the greater vigor 

 of the eyes at the seed-end as compared with those at the op- 

 posite end can hardly be accounted for by the slightly greater 

 amount of starch in that part of the tuber. The only conclu- 

 sion as to the method of cutting for seed seems to be that it 

 is probably better to cut the tuber longitudinally, since trans- 

 verse cutting would unequally divide the nutriment of the 

 young plant. 



A correspondent of a French botanical journal recently 

 gave several recipes for preserving the color and form of dried 

 flowers. One method is to immerse the stem of the fresh 

 specimen in a solution of thirty-one parts by weight of alum, 

 four of nitre and 186 of water for two or three days, until the 

 liquid is thoroughly absorbed, and then to press in the ordi- 

 nary way, except that dry sand is sifted over the specimen and 

 the packet submitted to the action of gentle heat for twenty- 

 four hours. Another method is to make a varnish composed 

 of twenty parts of powdered copal and 500 parts of ether, pow- 

 dered glass or sand being used to make the copal dissolve 

 more readily. Into this solution the plants are carefully 

 dipped ; then they are allowed to dry for ten minutes, and the 

 same process is repeated four or five times in succession. 

 Plants may also be plunged, in a boiling solution of one part of 

 salicylic acid and 600 of alcohol, and then dried in bibulous 

 paper. But this act should be very rapidly done, violet flow- 

 ers especially being decolorized by more than an instantaneous 

 immersion. Red fiowers which have changed to a purplish 

 tint in drying may have their color restored by laying them on 

 a piece of paper moistened with dilute nitric acid (one part to 

 ten or twelve parts of water), and then submitting them to 

 moderate pressure for a few seconds. But this solution should 

 never be allowed to touch the green leaves, as they would be 

 decolorized by it. 



An article on Danny Park, Sussex, the residence of Mr. W. 

 H. Campion, which was recently published in the Garden 

 (London), includes an illustration of a most remarkable tree. 

 It is a specimen of our Cottonwood {Popuhis monolifera). and 

 stands near the house, isolated on one side of a wide lawn. 

 " It is probably," says the Garde?!, " one of the quaintest forms 

 of tree-growth " that exists in England. There is no record to 

 show when it was planted, but it must be at least a century 

 old, for " the stem at two feet from the ground girths thirteen 

 feet, the first branch starting about nine feet up the stem, 

 while most of the others are found about two feet higher up," 

 and the greatest spread of the branches being 150 feet. But 

 the most remarkable thing about the tree is not its size, but 

 the curious form it has assumed. Not only do all the lower 

 branches droop so that they lie upon the ground, " but some 

 of them have rooted, and the new roots, infusing fresh vigor 

 into the branches, have caused rival leaders to shoot up, some 

 of which have now attained a height almost equal to that of 

 the parent tree. If these upstarts put out branches like the 

 parent there will be some day a forest of stems, like those of 

 the Banyan tree, which spreads and covers acres. But the 

 Banyan supports its head upon straight stems, which are like 

 a great array of pillars upholding some mighty dome, the 

 ground being left free and scarcely obstructed. The Poplar 

 does otherwise. Its branches form a confused labyrinth of 

 stems, crossing and recrossing one another, entirely impeding 

 the progress of anyone who would walk beneath its shade. . . . 

 If, instead of winding in and out, the branches had all grown 

 out straight from the stem, much more ground would have 

 been covered, for the longest branch, though confusedly inter- 

 woven with the others, is forty-five yards in length, that being 

 only five yards less than the greatest diameter of the branch 

 spread. The tree also makes a large mass of distinct and 

 noble-looking leafage, for the broad ovate leaves are nearly 

 all about the size of one's hand." The picture shows the tree 

 in winter, when its singular development of course appears 

 most clearly. It is protected by a railing, but a winding path 

 leads to the central space near the trunk, which in summer 

 must be a thickly over-shadowed bower of considerable size. 



