192 



Garden and Forest 



[April 17, 1889. 



It has been decided by the Park Commissioners of Brook- 

 lyn to devote from $200,000 to $250,000 in preserving and 

 beautifying certain portions of tlie city lands which lie to the 

 eastward of its streets. About seventy-five acres, eleven 

 acres of which are occupied by the reservoir, will be laid 

 out with walks, drives and play-grounds, and, including the 

 slopes of the reservoir, will be suitably tiu^fed and planted. 

 Ultimately, it is thought that portions of the ground may be 

 devoted to the erection of public buildings, but meanwhile 

 they will be made as useful and attractive to the people as 

 possible. 



Thousands of acres have this year been planted with fruit- 

 trees in those districts of southern California where the " land- 

 boomer" recently set all the world mad with speculation. In 

 the San Joaquin valley large numbers of new settlers have 

 lately established themselves in colonies for the purpose of 

 fruit-growing, dividing their land into twenty and forty-acre 

 tracts. In San Diego county the acreage devoted to this in- 

 (.lustry is five times as great as it was a year ago, and in Los 

 Angeles and many other counties it is one-third greater. And, 

 moreover, the old "placer-mining" counties are rapidly trans- 

 ferring their attention to fruit, and it is now the richest crop of 

 Tuolumne, for example, once a conspicuous centre of gold 

 production. 



For many years the prizes offered by the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society have been open to all competitors, whether 

 they were members of the Society or inhabitants of Massa- 

 chusetts or not. Several months ago a few members, who are 

 in the habit of exhibiting strawberries, finding that outsiders 

 living in a neighboring state were carrying off the prizes from 

 the home talent, quietly went to work and secured the adop- 

 tion of an amendment of the constitution, restricting competi- 

 tion to members of the Society. The movement and the 

 method by which it was carried out have been considered un- 

 fortunate by many members of the Society, and at its last 

 meeting the matter was reconsidered, and the prizes, by a 

 large vote, are again opened to the whole world. 



At the Massachusetts Experiment Station the black knot on 

 Plum trees has been treated with linseed oil, turpentine and 

 kerosene. These remedies were applied with a brush as soon 

 as the warts began to appear, and as they do not all come at 

 once, applications were made three times during the summer, 

 all the warts being painted over each time. In the autumn, 

 microscopic examinations found no spores- in the warts, in fact, 

 none of the sacks (perithecia) were developed enough to pro- 

 duce spores before the warts were destroyed by the remedies. 

 Where kerosene and turpentine were applied so liberally as to 

 spread about on the branch and run down over it, the branch 

 was killed. No such injury came from using the linseed oil. 

 The warts should be saturated in every case. The treatment 

 of black knot hitherto i"ecommended was cutting off the dis- 

 eased branch and burning it. If this dangerous fungus can be 

 controlled by any less heroic treatment it will be a great gain 

 to plum growers. 



At the late exhibition in Ocala, Florida, a scale of 100 

 points was used for judging oranges. Ten points were given 

 each of the following characters, the first five being 

 grouped as "physical " and the second five as "juice " char- 

 acters : (i) size, (2) appearance, (3) thickness of peel, (4) 

 absence of tissue or " rag," (5) absence of seed, (6) juiciness, 

 (7) sweetness, (8) sub-acidity, (9) vinous flavor or bouquet, (10) 

 absence of free acid. The standard of perfection for thickness 

 of peel, absence of seed, and absence of tissue, was a full one- 

 sixteenth inch peel on a 200-size, seedless orange, with a one- 

 fourth inch core. An orange which sank in water scored ten 

 for weight, that is, for juiciness. Every seed shown counted 

 half a point off, and two rudimentary seeds counted for one. 

 The imanimity of the tasters was remarkable, showing that the 

 four different elements in estimating the quality of the juice 

 were not fanciful distinctions. Several individual oranges 

 under this rigorous test scored ninety-seven and a half. 



Pinus Jeffreyi is well figured in the number of the Garden- 

 ers' Chronicle published on March 23d ; the male flowers for 

 the first time. It is one of the few California Conifers which 

 grows satisfactorily in the eastern States, and those persons 

 who have seen the handsome group of this tree in the park at 

 Buffalo will hardly endorse the opinion expressed in our Eng- 

 lish contemporary " that a well-grown Pinus ponderosa is a very 

 handsome object, the best P. Jeffreyi that I have seen is 

 scarcely an ornament." As the two trees are seen here the 

 latter is in every way the more satisfactory. As it appears on 

 the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where this species 

 abounds, and on Scott's Mountain, in northern California, 

 where it was first discovered by the collector whose 



name it commemorates, Pinus Jeffreyi is certainly one of 

 the handsomest of the family, as it is one of the largest, being 

 surpassed in size only by Pinus Lambertiana and by occa- 

 sional specimens of P. ponderosa, grown in favorable situa- 

 tions on the west or moist side of the California inountains. 



A large picture of the conservatory at Castle Ashby, in 

 Northamptonshire, the seat of the Marquis of Northampton, 

 was recently published in the Gardeners' Chronicle (London). 

 It is interesting to American horticulturists as showing a con- 

 servatory of a kind which has few examples in this coun- 

 try. It is a so-called "architect's conservatory," built for 

 architectural effect rather than for practical efficiency. "It is 

 a place of handsome proportions and good workmanship, and 

 an ornament to the grounds, but the gardener abominates it, 

 for do not his best plants lose their leaves and lower branches 

 and become attenuated objects of no decorative value, often 

 falling a prey to insect enemies?" It was designed by Sir 

 Digby Wyatt, and is 140 feet in length by thirty feet in width. 

 The roof is of glass, sloping up to a ridge in the middle, and 

 in the centre of the house it rises into a dome forty feet in 

 height. But the lofty walls are solid, and a double row of 

 columns, supporting iron girders, runs the entire length of the 

 house. These columns are monoUths of Bath-stone, with rich 

 capitals in the Composite style ; and however great the practi- 

 cal disadvantages of such an interior may be, it has great 

 beauty of effect, the columns composing admirably with the 

 tall Palms and Bananas that are most conspicuous among the 

 plants. 



A correspondent of a German horticultural journal recently 

 called attention to the fact that the current love for Orchids 

 and ornamental foliage-plants has led to the neglect of those 

 great collections of Orange-trees which were once so highly 

 esteemed in the Fatherland. Fifty years ago every royal and 

 princely establishment had its Orangery — a large building 

 of fine architectural aspect, filled in winter with a mass of 

 Orange and Lemon trees, which in summer were set out in 

 ornamental boxes in the pleasure-garden, and at all seasons 

 could be transferred to the palace itself if an occasion of cere- 

 mony required its adornment. These trees were often of great 

 age and enormous size, and to keep tfiem in proper shape and 

 bring them into profuse bearing was the chief task of the 

 gardener. Now, however, they have fallen out of favor to 

 such a degree that an Orangery most often presents but a 

 forlorn and neglected appearance. One can well imderstand 

 why the writer from whom we quote should protest against 

 such a state of things and should ask whether it might not be 

 possible, by means of some " congress or exhibition " to excite 

 renewed interest in these historical collections. There are, in- 

 deed, few green-house plants which can vie in beauty with 

 well-grown Orange-trees in full bloom or fruit, and their pres- 

 ence is almost essential to the right effect of a garden designed 

 in the old architectural way. 



The sales of plants at auction began a fortnight ago at the 

 rooms of Young & Elliot, in this city, and will be held every 

 Tuesday and Friday until the ist of June or later. Fair prices 

 have thus far been realized, although the demand for bedding- 

 plants will be more brisk later in the season, when as many 

 as 50,000 are often disposed of in a day. They are offered 

 in lots of 100 or 50, ready packed for transportation, and 

 are bought largely by country florists, wfio grow them on and 

 sell them at retail. Small plants of Verbena, Lobelia and the 

 like are often disposed of for a dollar or so a hundred. But, 

 besides this cheap material, more expensive plants, like Palms, 

 Dracaenas and Crotons, some of them fine specimens, are 

 often sold. Large importations of Roses and ornamental trees, 

 shrubs and vines have already been disposed of. The latter are 

 often in assorted lots, each containing five varieties. In a lot of 

 twenty bundles, for example, each bundle will contain a 

 Golden-leaved Elder, a Red-flowering Horse-chestnut, a Chi- 

 nese Lilac, a double pink Deutzia and a purple Hazel. In 

 each of a dozen other lots the selection will be entirely dif- 

 ferent. Finely-grown specimens of Tree-box, four or five feet 

 high, with many Ghent Azaleas, Rhododendrons and the 

 rarer Conifers, were on the list last Friday. Besides dealers in 

 plants, many persons with large places find it profitable to 

 make purchases here. Altogether, these auction-rooms, on 

 sale-days, are never without their attractions, and visitors to 

 the city who take an interest in plants should not fail to look in. 



Catalogues Received. 



HuLBERT Fence AND Wire Co., 904 Olive Street, St. Louis, Mo.; — 

 Fencing, Wire-work, etc. — Fred. W. KLelsey, 208 Broadway, N. Y. ; — 

 Hardy Trees, Shrubs, Roses and Plants. — Wm. Paul & Sons, Waltham 

 Cross, Herts, England ; — Roses, etc. 



