324 



Garden and Forest. 



[July 3, iS 



The flowers are pure white and solitary, on short, slender axillary 

 peduncles. The sepals and petals are two to three inches long, 

 narrow and pendulous, and the lip is broad, quadrate, with 

 rounded angles, and an inch across, the anterior margin sud- 

 denly contracted in the middle into a subulate filiform, 

 recurved tail an inch long. This is one of the handsomest of 

 recent Orchid introductions. 



SOL.'\NUiM PENSILE, t. 7,062, a native of Guiana and of Brazil, 

 and, although long known to botanists, a recent introduction 

 into gardens, having been sent to Europe first in 1887. It is a 

 tall, slender, unarmed, climbing plant with purple fiowers very 

 much like those of 5. Dulcamara, except that they are pro- 

 duced in loose, spreading-, terminal panicles. It requires the 

 temperature of the tropical stove-house. 



Notes. 



The California Florist and Gardener has been merged into 

 the Pacific Rural Press. 



Mr. John Taylor, the well-known Rose-grower of Bayside, 

 Long Island, cut 60,000 buds of the Madame Cusin Rose from 

 200 running feet of glass between July ist, 1888, and February 

 ist, 1889. 



A competent observer writes of the land which has been 

 acquii-ed by the City of Wilmington, Delaware, for a park, that 

 it is "a most refreshing place." It is in the main a piece of 

 rocky woodland, through which the Brandywine flows. 



Eighteen thousand Japanese Orange-trees have been 

 planted in one orchard in the southern part of Monterey 

 County, California, and native gardeners have been imported 

 to care for them. They are now in their second year, and the 

 experiment promises to be successful. 



The Pennsylvania Horticultui'al Society has accepted the 

 offer of Messrs. Strauss & Co., of Washington, D. C, to bestow 

 a prize of $300 for the best twelve cut blooms of the new 

 Souvenir de Wooton Rose, and will award the prize at a meet- 

 ing of the Society in January or February next. 



Over 3,000 different species of plants have been grown in 

 the rock-garden of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. 

 A list of 1,408 was published by the curator of the Gardens in 

 the transactions of the Botanical Society for i887-'88, as having 

 flowered during 1887 and being not mere botanical curiosities 

 but well selected species of plants suitable for rock-gardens 

 and such as intending planters would do well to inspect. 



It has been stated in this journal that the pamphlet entitled 

 " Observations on the Treatment of Public Plantations " was 

 prepared by Messrs. Olmsted and Harrison at the suggesdon 

 of a land-improvement association, the Park Commissioners 

 of this city and the Torrey Botanical Club. We have received, 

 however, authentic information that the Torrey Botanical 

 Club offered no suggestion, and took no acdon whatever in 

 relation to the questions discussed in the report. 



Mr. T. S. Brandegee has recently returned to San Francisco 

 from a long botanical journey in Lower California, devoted 

 principally to the neighborhood of Magdalena and Marguerita 

 Island and Comonder, where he collected about 400 species. 

 Latercollections in the centre of the peninsular, and near Sa'n 

 Quintin, bring the number up to 800 or 1,000 species. Mr. 

 Brandegee on his arrival at San Diego was married to Mrs. 

 Curran, the accomplished botanical curator of the California 

 Academy of Sciences. 



Dr. F. S. Gould, of Montecito, near Santa Barbara, Cali- 

 fornia, has recently received from Italy 600 young Olive-trees 

 of the best Italian varieties for the production of oil. They are 

 the Cucco, Correggiolo, Frantoio, Morinello, Morchiajo and 

 Palazzuolo. The plants are budded on seedling stock, and are 

 two to four years old from the bud. The plants arrived in 

 California after the three-months' journey in excellent condi- 

 tion, having been carefully packed, the roots of each plant 

 separately, in a straw jacket. 



Arrangements have been made under which persons who 

 desire to attend the Convention of the Society of American 

 Florists, in Buffalo, next month, can procure return tickets for 

 one fare and a third. Delegates will pay full fare to Buffalo, 

 and receive a certificate to this effect from the station-agent 

 where the ticket is purchased, and this certificate, when signed 

 by the Secretary of the Society, will be good for a ticket at one- 

 third of a full fare. All the railroads east of the Missouri have 

 practically entered into this agreement. Tickets will be good 

 for three days before the Convention and the return tickets 

 for three days after its close. 



There is an Ash-tree standing in the little village of Cuanti- 

 lan, north of the City of Mexico, which is believed to have 

 been planted there not long after the conquest. The trunk 

 measures at the ground thirty-three and a half feet in circum- 

 ference, and the shade cast by its branches at mid-day, when 

 the sun is just over it, covers a circumference of 335 feet. This 

 great tree, and the other large Ash-trees, which are a conspicu- 

 ous feature of the vegetation of the Valley of Mexico, are 

 probably all Fraxiniis pistacicefolia. 



At the Arnold Arboretum, a new insect, a species of Coccid, 

 has become quite noticeable and abundant on the trunks and 

 branches of certain Elms during the past two or three years. It 

 is doing considerable injury to young trees, and seems to be a 

 very difficult insect to exterminate. A full record of its habits 

 and origin has not been published yet, but it is supposed to be 

 an importation from Europe and to be known to European 

 entomologists. A further account of the insect and its injuries 

 will be given in a future number of Garden and Forest. 



The English Government is helping in the work of estab- 

 lishing a system of botanical stations throughout the smaller 

 West Indian Islands. The first station established was at 

 Grenada, and it has grown into an attractive, as well as useful, 

 botanic garden. The station at Dodds, in the island of Bar- 

 badoes, has distinguished itself by first succeeding in raising 

 Sugar-canes from seed, and has done other valuable work 

 with regard to the sugar industry. At Santa Lucia is another 

 station which distributes useful plants among the islanders. 

 Other posts are to be established by order of the Secretary of 

 State for the Colonies at St. Kitts, Nevis, Dominica and Anti- 

 gua, and they will receive assistance from the Botanical De- 

 partment at Jamaica. One great point in the extension of 

 these stations is that through the Jamaica establishment the 

 resources of Kew can be made available in the remoter parts 

 of the Archipelago. 



In an address on "The Dahlia," recently delivered before a 

 horticultural club, and reported in the Garden, Mr. T. W. 

 Girdlestone says the plant was originally found growing in 

 sandy meadows in Mexico, 5,000 feet above the sea, by Her- 

 nandez, a physician to Philip II., of Spain. It made its first 

 appearance in Europe at Madrid, where Dahlia variabilis ^■^^ 

 flowered from seed in 1789, the grower naming the plant after 

 Andreas Dahl, a Swedish pupil of Linnaeus. Lord Bute was 

 then Ambassador at Madrid, and in the same year — just a cen- 

 tury ago — Lady Bute sent seeds to the Royal Gardens at Kew, 

 and thus first introduced the plant into England. Lady Hol- 

 land also sent home seed from Spain in 1804, and among the 

 plants raised at Holland House were the first two seedling 

 double varieties seen in Europe. It was long supposed 

 that these were literally the first double Dahlias, but it appears 

 that figures of both single and double flowers had been pub- 

 lished in an old work on the natural history of Mexico, printed 

 in Rome in 165 1. One of the double varieties with a yellow 

 disk and violet ray-flowers there bore the name Cocoxochitl. 

 Perhaps we, too, have the same flower, but fortunately under 

 another name. About the year 1800 serious attempts were 

 made in France to introduce the tubers of the Dahlia as an 

 article of food, but the public seemed to prefer to consider it 

 a purely ornamentabplant. 



The largest tree in Great Britain, and one of the most 

 famous, is the Cowthorpe Oak, in Yorkshire, which is believed 

 to be some 1,500 years old. When Evelyn wrote his "Sylva," 

 in the seventeenth century, its circumference at the ground 

 was seventy-eight feet, but later, earth was banked up around 

 it, which covered some considerable projections and reduced 

 its girth. At the beginning of the last century its branches 

 overshadowed an area of half an acre of ground. . The top or 

 leading branch fell at some unrecorded date, curiouslyslipping 

 down into the hollow trunk where it remained. In the last 

 century one of the main branches which was blown down 

 proved to be ninety feet in length, and yielded five tons of 

 timber. When carefully measured by Dr. Jessop in 1829 the 

 girth of the tree at the ground was sixty feet, and at a yard 

 above forty-five feet; the chief remaining limb was fifty feet 

 long and its circumference eight feet, and the height of the 

 tree was forty-five feet. It was then hollow to the top. For 

 many years saplings raised from this tree were sold in pots by 

 the villagers for as much as a guinea apiece. It is now a ven- 

 erable ruin, but most picturesque in its decay. It stands in a 

 green paddock, carefully protected from injury, with its an- 

 cient limbs supported by props. An idea of its size may be 

 gathered from the statement that at least forty persons can 

 stand within its cavity, and that its circumference is greater 

 than that of the Eddystone Lighthouse, which was confessedly 

 designed on the model of an Oak. 



