Jui.Y 3, 1889.1 



Garden and Forest 



319 



A Meadow on Moiiiit Rainier. — See page 314. 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum. 



Lo7iicera Iberica, or the species which is known l)y that 

 name in gardens, is tiie latest of the bush Honeysuckles in 

 the collection to tlovver. It is a stout shrub, wfth upright 

 branches covered with light gray bark, which separates read- 

 ily into thin scales. The leaves are small, barely more than 

 an inch long, short-petioled, ovate-cordate, or sub-rotund, 

 contracted at the apex into a short point. They are dark, dull 

 green, with a few scattered hairs on the upper, and pale on 

 the lower, surface, which is densely covered, as are the shoots 

 of tiie year, with a short pubescence. The flowers are brig-ht 

 yellow, an inch long, the corolla covered on the exterior with 

 scattered hairs. The fruit is scarlet and conspicuous. This is 

 a perfectly hardy plant, which, owing to the lateness of its 

 time of blooming principally, has considerable value for the 



decoration of the garden. It is a native of 

 the Trans-Caucasian coimtry. 



A number of the so-called Chinese Honey- 

 suckles are now in flower. They all belong 

 to one species, however, and are all — that is, 

 all the plants found in our gardens — Japan- 

 ese, and not Chinese. These plants have 

 long been cultivated and are familiar in 

 some form or other to all persons who have 

 ever had anything to do with a garden. The 

 true name of this plant is Lonicera Japon- 

 ica, and it was discovered a century ago by 

 Thunbergat the time of his journey in Japan. 

 The most familiar form of this plant, or 

 rather the form which was until the last few 

 years most frequently met with in gardens, 

 is a slender climbing plant, with pubescent, 

 reddish stems, dark green leaves, with rather 

 conspicuous red veins, and long tuljular, 

 slender corollas, pale red on the outside, yel- 

 low on the interior, and always fading yellow. 

 This is the Lo9iicera flexicanlis of many old 

 gardens. There is an excellent colored figure 

 of this form in the " Dench^ologia Britanica," 

 t. 117, under the name of Lonicera Chitiensis. 

 Another form of this plant differs from the 

 first in the color of the flowers only, which 

 are white, fading to yellow, and in the ab- 

 sence of the red tinge on the stems and the 

 veins of the leaves. This is sometimes 

 known as Lonicera brachypoda. The showy 

 yellow-leaved Honeysuckle which has ap- 

 peared so generally of late years in gardens 

 and which is known as Lonicera brachypoda, 

 var. reticulata and as L. brachypoda, var. 

 foliis aureo-reticulatis , is a variety, merely, 

 of this same species. Another form which 

 has been quite generally distributed of late 

 in American gardens as Lonicera Hallii, so 

 named because it was first sent to this 

 country from Japan by Dr. Hall, is perhaps 

 the most beautiful of them all. It flowers 

 about ten days later than the other varieties; 

 the leaves are broader, rather paler, and 

 more densely covered with pubescence. It 

 is a strong-growing plant, and will cover a 

 large space in a single year with its flexible, 

 twining stems. These various plants look 

 quite different as they are seen growing side 

 by side, but they all have characters which 

 unite them. The flowers are in pairs at the 

 end of a long (or sometimes quite short) 

 common peduncle, upon which just below 

 the flowers are two large leafy bracts, which 

 are almost identical in shape with the true 

 leaves, although they are much smaller, and 

 generally not more than half an inch long. 

 The corollas have slender hairs of the same 

 character upon their exterior surface. The 

 fruit is black and the same in all; the Howers 

 all fade yellow, and all possess the same de- 

 licious fragrance, which is most powerful 

 in the evening; and upon all these forms, 

 although rather more commonly upon the 

 golden-leaved variety, a few leaves grow near 

 the base of the stem, with the margins deeply 

 cut and lobed like those of a White Oak. 

 Lonicera J aponica has escaped from gardens 

 to the woods in some parts of the southern 

 States, and has become well established, and practically nat- 

 uralized. It is very largely planted in the middle States, where 

 it is certainly one of the very best vines for covering buildings 

 or rocky banks, or any rough waste spots over which it is de- 

 sirable to spread a thick mantle of brilliant foliage and fragrant 

 rtowers. Here in New England this plant is not quite hardy, 

 and is often killed l)ack during severe winters, but as it 

 flowers on the brandies of the year, this killing back only 

 serves to develop the growth of stronger shoots, and to retard, 

 a little, the flowering time. Here the leaves fall in January 

 generally, after having remained perfectly fresh and green 

 during the autumn and early winter ; further south the plant 

 is evergreen, the old leaves remaining upon the branches un- 

 til the appearance of the new crop in the spring. The branches 

 keep on growing until stopi)ed by frost, and, as flowers are pro- 

 duced upon these new growths, the plants are generally in 



