3^4 



Garden and Forest. 



[July 31, 1889. 



make it popular and desirable wherever known, it is recog- 

 nized and prized by a comparatively small number of the 

 people, and there may be otlicr reasons why it would not be 

 suitable. In the same swamp with it grows Kabida latifolla, 

 which cannot be surpassed in beauty, which has a much more 

 extended geographical range, and whose merits for distinc- 

 tion as the national Horal emblem are so well set forth by 

 Mrs. Van Rensselaer in a recent number of Garden and 

 Forest. <v /- <v 7 



Jamaica Plain, Mass. J- Lr- jClCri. 



Notes Upon Some North American Trees. — III. 



Rhamnus. — Rhamnus crocea, Nutt, must find a place 

 among North American trees. It is a widely-distributed 

 Pacific-coast species from the valley of the upper Sacra- 

 mento to Arizona. It most frequently occurs and has 

 been described as a low spreading bush, five to ten feet 

 high, but Mrs. T. S. Brandegee, the botanical curator of 

 the California Academy of Science, calls my attention to 

 the fact that this species is sometimes truly arborescent in 

 the neighborhood of Antioch, where it grows with a stout 

 trunk ten inches in diameter. This is the form named R. 

 ilicifolius by Kellogg {Proc. Cal. Acad., {{., 37), a name 

 which can hardly be retained even for a variety, as in his 

 locality (Lake County) this species passes from a low, ■ 

 nearly prostrate shrub, with matted branches and minute, 

 nearly acute leaves, into the arborescent specimens, with 

 the large, nearly round. Holly-like leaves of Dr. Kellogg's 

 plant. 



Rhamnus insularis, Greene {Bull. Cal. Acad., ii., 392), 

 {not R.msuliis of Kellogg, Proc. Cal. Acad., ii., 20, which, 

 according to Mrs. Brandegee, in lift, is one of the Mexican 

 species, with black bilocular fruit, related to R. terniflora) 

 inhabits the Santa Barbara group of Islands and Cedros 

 Island off the California coast, and is not rare, apparently, 

 on the mainland (Santa Cruz Mountains, Brandegee). 

 This, although a much larger plant in every way, and quite 

 distinct in the form and serratures of the leaves, I cannot 

 separate specifically from R. crocea, and should therefore 

 propose to call it Rhamnus crocea, var. insularis.'^ 



It is a tree attaining a height of twenty or twenty-five 

 feet, with a straight, naked trunk, five or six inches in 

 diameter, covered with smooth, light-gray bark. The 

 leaves are about three inches long and nearly two inches 

 wide, but not distinguishable in texture and in the peculiar 

 yellow color of the lower surface from those of R. crocea. 

 The fruit of the insular form is much larger, but not other- 

 wise distinct, and according to Mr. Brandegee, the variety 

 flowers about the ist of May, while R. crocea in the same 

 regions flowers in March. The variety ascends to rather 

 higher elevations in the Santa Cruz Mountains, although the 

 two are found together on the foot-hills and in the gulches, 

 nearly to the sea-level. 



More information than now exists based upon field ob- 

 servation upon the different Cahfornia species of Rhamnus 

 is very desirable. Proper limitations of the different species 

 and varieties are still doubtful, and really nothing is known 

 of the life histories of these plants. 



Ceanothus velutinus, Dougl. Mrs. Brandegee reports that 

 this widely-distributed shrubby species sometimes occurs as 

 a tree in Lake County, California ; and I should propose to 

 consider as a variety f of the same species Mr. Greene's 

 C. arboreus {Bull. Cal. Acad., ii. 144), which I cannot dis- 

 tinguish from it except by its arborescent habit, its rather 

 stouter and softly pubescent young shoots, the more con- 

 stant pubescence covering the under surface of the leaves, 

 and by the pale blue (not white) color of the flowers. 



This interesting and very handsome plant is common on 

 the northern slopes of the Island of Santa Cruz, the largest 



"Rhamnus crocea, var. insularis, arbor, foliis petiolatls, oblongis-ovatis basi obfu- 

 sis, apice mucronatis, minute glanduloso-serratis. 



t Ceanothus velutinus, Dougl., var. aeborhus, arbor, ramulis hornotinis 

 villosis; foUis ovatis, acutis, serratis vel plus minus crenulatis, subtus discolorl- 

 bus dense pubescentibus; floribus ceeruleis. 



C. arboreus, Greene, /. c— Trelease in Proc. Cal. Acad., 2 ser., i.— Brandegee, 

 Flora of the Santa Barbara Islands in Proc. Cal. Acad., 2 ser., i. 208. — Parry in Proc. 

 Davenport Acad., v. 169. 



C. sordiatus, Lyon in Botanical Gazette, xx. 204, 333 (not of Hoot & Arn.). 



of the Santa Barbara group, where it forms at the highest 

 elevations a small round-headed tree twenty to twenty-five 

 feet high, with a clean, straight trunk six to ten inches in 

 diameter (Greene) ; it is less coinmon and of much smaller 

 size on Santa Rosa (Brandegee). It is the largest and most 

 truly arborescent of all the Ceanothus. It was first de- 

 tected by Nuttall, whose specimen is preserved in the 

 herbarium of the Philadelphia Academy, and who noted 

 its large size and arborescent habit (Trelease in Trans. St. 

 Louis. Acad., v., 365). 



51. i^scuLus FLAVA, Aiton. — The oldest name for this 

 species would seem to be .^. octandra, of Marshall (Ar- 

 bustum Americanum, published in 1785). yE. lutea, Wan- 

 genheim, in "Schrift Gesell. Natuf. Fr. z. Berl," viii., 133 

 (1788), is also older than that of Aiton published in 1789. 

 The yEsculus octandra of Miller's Dictionary is the yE. 

 Pavia of Linnaeus. 



65. Acer dasycarpum, Ehrhart. — This is really the Acer 

 saccharmum of Linnaeus (Species, ist ed., 1055), but 

 although this has long been known, the change of names 

 was never made, that the confusion which would naturally 

 arise if the name Acer saccharinum was used to designate 

 another tree than the true Sugar Maple might be avoided. 

 The Linnaean name, according to the strict rules of botan- 

 ical nomenclature, should be adopted ; and, after all, it 

 is not a very bad one, as sugar has always been made in 

 small quantities from the Silver Maple. If the name sac- 

 charinum is transferred, another name must be found for 

 the real Sugar Maple. The oldest for this tree is that of 

 Marshall (1785), antedating by two years that of Wangen- 

 heim, who first (Amer. 36, /. w, /. 26) called \\ A. sac- 

 charinum, confounding the real Sugar Maple with the plant 

 described by Linnaeus as A. saccharinum, and starting all 

 this confusion. But Marshall's name is A. saccharum, and 

 if the Silver Maple is to be called A. saccharinum, a name 

 so nearly identical with it as A. saccharum for another 

 species could only lead to hopeless confusion, and 

 Michaux's A. barbaium (Fl. Bor. Am., ii., 253) would have 

 to be taken up. An older name for the Silver Maple than 

 Ehrhart's (1789) is that of Marshall (1785), A. glaucum, 

 which should be used if the Linnaean name is discarded. 



68. Negundo Californicum, Torrey and Gray. — I cannot 

 distinguish specifically this plant from the common eastern 

 N. aceroides. The characters relied upon to separate the 

 two species — the number and cutting of the leaflets, the 

 pubescence on their lower surface, and on the shoots and 

 fruit — cannot always be depended on, and the eastern spe- 

 cies in the dry Texano-Mexican region approaches too 

 closely to the California plant which I should propose to 

 consider a variety and call N. aceroides, var. Califor^iicum. 



C. S. Sargent. 



New or Little Known Plants. 



Vaccinium hirsutum. 



THE men who are now the editors of this journal made 

 a horseback journey through the mountains of west- 

 ern North Carolina in the autumn of 1886. Starting from 

 Caesar's Head, an outlying spur of the Blue Ridge, in South 

 Carolina, early in September, they explored the wild and 

 picturesque region where the Horsepasture and the Toxa- 

 way unite their precipitous torrents and form the Keowee, 

 the great eastern fork of the Savannah River, being re- 

 warded here by the rediscovery of Shortia,* probably on the 

 very spot where Michaux discovered it ninety-eight years 

 before. They then crossed the Blue Ridge, and afterwards 

 the Little Tennessee River at Franklin, and continued 

 westward into Graham County, their object being to redis- 

 cover, if possible, a peculiar Blueberry found in "the 

 mountains of Cherokee County " half a century before by 

 Mr. B. S. Buckley, but not seen again. Their only way of 

 conveying to the few inhabitants of this remote region, with 

 whom they fell in as they rode along, an idea of the plant 



* See Garden and ForesI, i., p. soS- 



