July 17, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



339 



destitute of spray, generally crooked, and covered with a 

 dense velvety-pubescence — a character which has gained for 

 this plant its popular name, from the supposed resemblance 

 of the branchlets to the young horns of the stag. The leaves 

 are two to three feet long and are composed of from eleven 

 to thirty-one pairs of lanceolate, serrate, sharply pointed, 

 sessile leaflets, dark green on the upper and pale on the lower 

 surface. This species flowers in New England during the third 

 week of June ; the fruit begins in August to assume the scar- 

 let color, which it retains throughout the autumn and long 

 after the leaves have fallen. 



The Staghorn Sumach is found from New Brunswick to 

 Minnesota; it is very common through the northern States, 

 and extends southward along the Alleghany Mountains to 

 upper Georgia and to central Alabama and Mississippi. It is 

 found growing in nearly all soils, but requires a deep, rich and 

 rather moist loam, in order to develop its full beauty and best 

 size. The wood of the Staghorn Sumach is light, britde and 

 coarse grained, of a yellow color streaked with green; the l;ark 

 and leaves are rich in tannin and are somewhat used in 

 dressing leather and, domestically, for dyeing cloth yellow; and 

 the whole plant contains a copious resinous, milky juice. 

 Our illustration upon page 343 will give an idea of the value of 

 the Staghorn Sumach in ornamental planting. It is from a 

 photograph of a broad mass — about eighteen feet high and fifty 

 feet long — of these plants, growing upon the borders of one of 

 the most carefully planted lawns in the United States, where itis 

 by no means, the least attractive object among the plants 

 gathered from all the temperate parts of the world associated 

 with it. The Staghorn Sumach is valuable in ornamental 

 planting when grown in a mass and kept compact by occa- 

 sional shortening-inof the vigorous upright branches, as in the 

 group which serves as the subject for our illustration. It can 

 be planted, too, with admirable effect, as a single specimen 

 upon the lawn; and from the habit, common to all the 

 Sumachs, of spreading rapidly from underground shoots, it is 

 one of the best plants for clothing rocky banks, railroad-cuts, 

 and other rough places, where it is desirable to hold the soil 

 from washing and to shade the ground. Tlie Staghorn 

 Sumach can be increased from seed; but a supply of young- 

 plants, and this is true of all the species, can be obtained 

 more quickly by cutting up pieces of the stout roots into 

 lengths of two or three inches and planting them in rich soil 

 in nursery rows. Vigorous young plants, of a size suitable for 

 permanent planting, can be attamed by this method in a year. 



Rhus glabra, the Smooth Sumach, is a smaller plant than 

 the Staghorn Sumach, never reaching to the size and habit of 

 a tree, and rarely exceeding a heiglit of ten or twelve feet. It 

 is a broad, spreading, handsome bush with irregular branches, 

 which are smooth and often somewhat glaucous. The leaves 

 are composed of tliirteen to thirty-one pairs of lanceolate- 

 oblong, sharply pointed, serrate, sessile leaflets, which are 

 glaucous on the lower surface. The greenish-white flowers are 

 borne in broad, thyrsoid panicles, eight to ten inches long, and 

 are not open until the middle of July, or two or three weeks later 

 than the last species. The fruit resembles that of the Stag- 

 horn Sumach. Rhus glabra x^iiowndi'com. eastern Canada to 

 Washington Territory, extending south to Georgia, Texas and 

 New Mexico. It is a common and generally distributed 

 plant, being commonly seen along the borders of woods and 

 farm inclosures, or covering dry and barren fields and rocky 

 hills, sometimes almost to the exclusion of other plants. As 

 an ornamental plant itis as valuable as the Staghorn Sumach, 

 except that it never attains the size of that plant; and it can 

 be propagated and used in the same way. There is a variety 

 with deeply incised leaflets (var. laciniata), discovered many 

 years ago in Chester County, Pennsylvania, which is often 

 seen in gardens. 



Rhus copallma, sometimes, at the north, called the Dwarf 

 Sumach, is the last of the tin-ee species popularly called 

 Sumach in the United States. The name of Dwarf Sumach 

 is appropriate enough in the northern States, where this 

 species is only found upon dry and, generally, barren soil, and 

 where it grows to a height of only a few feet. In the southern 

 States, however, especially in the neighborhood of streams in 

 the valleys situated about the base of the high mountains of 

 Tennessee and Carolina and along the borders of the rich 

 bottom-lands of southern Arkansas and western Louisiana, it 

 becomes a round-headed tree, sometimes forty feet high, 

 witii a tall, straight trunk, ten or twelve inches in diameter at 

 the base, and is the largest of all the North American Rhus, 

 with the exception of the south Florida and West Indian R. 

 Me f opium. 



The branches and leaf-stalks of Rhus copallina are downy, 

 and the leaves, which are composed of nine to twenty-one 



pairs of oblong or ovate-lanceolate, serrate, or of the entire 

 leaflets oblique or unequal at the base, may be readily dis- 

 tinguished from those of the other species Ijy the broad wings 

 which occur on the petiole between the leaHets, and by their 

 lustrous upper surface. It is the latest of the species to 

 flower. They do not appear in New England until the mitldle 

 of August, and the fruit is ripe a month later. 



The panicle of the male or sterile flowers is twelve to 

 eighteen inches long, its stem and branches quite downy; while 

 that of the female flowers is shorter, three to six inches long, 

 with less downy stem and branches. The fruit is somewhat 

 compressed, ovoid, dark, vinous-red, with scattered gray dots 

 when ripe, the clusters not upright as in the other species, but 

 more or less pendulous from the ends of the more slender 

 jjranches. The leaves, although smaller than in the other 

 species, are beautifully bright and lustrous, and iii the autumn 

 turn, not scarlet, but to a deep, rich claret color. Although 

 less often planted than the Staghorn Sumach, this is, perhaps, 

 the most ornainental of the Sumachs, and few shrubs orsmall 

 trees can be used upon the lawn or in great masses on 

 rocky hill-sides with better effect. The fact that it will thrive 

 and spread rapidly in dry and sterile soil increases its value. 



The genus Rhus, of which more than a hundred species 

 are now recognized by botanists, is widely distributed through 

 the extra-tropical portion of the northern hemisphere, espe- 

 cially in eastern Asia and in eastern North America. In 

 Europe this genus is confined to the southern and south-east 

 portions of the continent, where four species occur ; it is 

 found in the Andean region of South America, in the East In- 

 dies, and abundantly in tropical Africa, south of the equator, 

 and in the Cape region. Eight or nine species in addition to the 

 true Sumachs are found within the limits of the United States, 

 over which the genus is widely and very generally distributed. 

 Four of these species — the so-called Poison Ivy and the Poison 

 Dogwood of the East, the Poison Sumach of semi-tropical 

 Florida, and the Poison Oak of the Pacific States — contain 

 a milky juice, which is exceedingly poisonous to most per- 

 sons touching these plants. S. 



A New Zealand Forest Scene. 



TDERSONS familiar only with the dwarf Ferns of the tem- 

 -*- perate parts of the earth, have but a faint idea of the 

 magnificence of the arborescent forms of these plants, which 

 are often conspicuous features in the tropics, and which out- 

 side of the tropics are found only in some parts of Australia, 

 in Van Dieman's Land and in New Zealand. Tree Ferns are 

 often inhabitants of conservatories, but they must be seen in 

 their native forests, clothing the forest-floor with a gigantic 

 undergrowth, and producingan effect of vegetable richness and 

 grace which no pen can describe, before all the effects of beauty 

 they are capable of displaying can be realized. The illustra- 

 tion upon page 343 of a New Zealand foi'est scene, with one of 

 the large Dicksonias in the foreground, serves to give an idea 

 of the peculiar vegetation of that region. Tree Ferns are 

 pretty generally distributed through the warmer parts of the 

 tropics of the two worlds. Some of the species attain a height 

 of trunk of more than sixty feet, with a crown of fronds twenty 

 or thirty feet across. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



'HPHE chief event in the London horticultural world this week 

 -*• was the great summer exhibition of the Royal Botanic 

 Society in their Regent's Park Garden. There is much reason 

 for the popularity of these shows, as they are delightful displays 

 of flowers and fruit in a delightful garden, which I have always 

 looked upon as Robert Marnock's masterpiece in his half a cen- 

 tiu'y's work of landscape gardening. It is, in a great measure, 

 due to Marnock's original arrangement of the permanent exhi- 

 bition ground in these gardens that the shows are so popular. 

 In no other place that I have seen is the possible arrangement 

 of exiiibition plants so far removed from primness and for- 

 mality. The ground surface under the great tent is undulated 

 in such a graceful and natural way that it wears a totall}^ dif- 

 ferent aspect when bedecked with plants and flowers from the 

 matter-of-fact arrangement of breast-high benches generally 

 seen at flower-shows. The plants look better, too, on grass)- 

 n-ioin-ids than on anything else, so that the whole scene is 

 fresh and natural. This grassy-mound arrangenicnt can ob- 

 viously only be carried out where the exhibition site is pcrn-ia- 

 nent, but in all public gardens where shows are held there 

 should be a fixed spot, and, if laid, out in a tastefvd way, it might 



