June ig, 1889. 1 



Garden and Forest. 



295 



I 



already been thorouo-hly sprayed with London Purple. The 

 orchard has always been a profitable one. The varieties are 

 various, but the best are the AngoulSmes. r u n -i 



Cornell University. -1' L. H. Bailey. 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum. 



'X'HE Moonseed {Menispermiim Canadense) is one of the 

 -*■ most graceful of our native vines. The long-, slender, 

 twining stems and ample and abundant, delicately thin leaves, 

 adapt this plant for covering small arbors and other struc- 

 tures orfor clamberingovertreesandamong shrubs. The flow- 

 ers, which are white and borne in short axillary clusters, are 

 not in themselves particularly conspicuous, and are quite hid- 

 den by the leaves, which conceal also the i)lack grape-like fruit, 

 which ripens in September. Menispernium is dioecious, so 

 that plants of the two sexes must be planted if fruit is expected. 



The cosmopolitan Viburnum Opulus, the so-called Cran- 

 berry-tree, with its showy, neutral ray-flowers, which are now 

 expanded, is one of the most beautiful of hardy shrubs of large 

 growth, although now less commonly planted than the variety 

 in which all the flowers are neutral — the " Snowball," or than 

 its Japanese relative. Viburnum plicatum. The wild form of 

 V. Opulus is not only more graceful and far more attrac- 

 tive than any of the abnormal forms of Viburnum, but it 

 seems to escape the visits of plant-lice, which so disfigure the 

 leaves of the "Snowball," and sometimes almost exterminate 

 it. There are growing in the Arboretimi, side by side, Vibur- 

 num Opulus, from our northern woods, the European plant, 

 and others raised from seed gathered by Dr. Bretschneider on 

 the mountains near Pekin. The last is a distinct and very or- 

 namental plant, with striking, narrowly acuminate leaves, 

 sharply wedge-shaped at the base, and often almost destitute 



Fig;. 115, — Syringa Japonica. — See page 291. 



M. Canadense is a common plant in the central portions of the 

 country east of the Mississippi River, where it is found grow- 

 ing in deep rich soil along the banks of streams and in other 

 moist situations. There is a second species in this collection, 

 M. Dauricum, a native of Siberia, Manchuria and northern 

 China, whence it has been introduced into the Arboretum by 

 Dr. Bretschneider. It may be distinguished from the North 

 American species by its rather larger leaves, which are here 

 quite glabrous on the lower surface, and more broadly and 

 conspicuously lobed ; by the larger flowers, which expand 

 here nearly a week earlier, and by its larger fruit. It is a per- 

 fectly hardy plant, and grows easily and rapidly, but from a 

 garden point of view it does not seem in any way superior to 

 our native species. The name, Menispermum, is composed 

 of two Greek words, meaning moon and seed, having refer- 

 ence to the laterally flattened stone of the fruit, which assumes 

 the form of a crescent from the ovary being incurved in its 

 growth after the flower has fallen. 



of the broad lateral lobes usually found on those of this spe- 

 cies. The cymes of flowers are rather broader than those on 

 the American plant. There is in the collection a curious 

 dwarf variety of V. Opulus, which has never been known to 

 flower before here. It forms a perfectly compact little round 

 bush a foot and a half high and more than two feet and a half 

 across. The leaves, inflorescence and flowers are all smaller 

 than those of the ordinary plant, from which it does not other- 

 wise differ. The variety is not without interest as a curiosity, and 

 it might, perhaps, find its place in a collection of dwarf shrubs. 

 Its compact habit and stiff and formal outline, however, do 

 not make it a desirable object when planted on the margins of 

 shrubberies composed of more graceful plants, while the rarity 

 of its flowers detracts also from its value as a garden plant. It 

 should not be forgotten in comparing the Cranberry-tree with 

 the " Snowballs," that the former is one of the most ornamen- 

 tal of all shrubs in fruit, which hangs bright and scarlet on the 

 naked branches almost until the return of spring, while the 



