September ii, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



435 



near bridges across the stream, and, behind liis residence were 

 large fruit orchards and vineyards stretcliing down the valley. 

 At present, after more than thirty years of uninterrupted 

 growth, under most favorable conditions, the trees that sur- 

 round the lawns and " opens " of the place are notable for size 

 and beauty, even in California, and they attract many visitors. 

 Mr. Juan Gallegos, the present owner, is a wealthy Spanish 

 gentleman from Costa Rica, educated in England, and now 

 one of the largest and best known of viticulturists in the state. 

 He has greatly extended the ornamental grounds, and especi- 

 ally delights in plantations of Palms of various sorts, particu- 

 larly the Date Palm, so that the estate is becoming more and 

 more tropical in its appearance.. He is passionately devoted 

 to the old trees, planted by his predecessors, and to the still 

 older Pear and Olive trees planted by the Spanish padres. 

 The Orange-groves are now in heavy bearing condition ; the 

 Olives begin to yield well, and the vineyards are so extensive 

 that he has sometimes carried a stock of one million gallons 

 of wine in his cellars. 



An interesting fact in reference to the Olive in this region 

 deserves record. The trees of the old avenue of which I have 

 spoken are of the Mission variety, so-called, the kind brought 

 to this coast by the padres, and variously identified since with 

 sorts still cultivated in Spain. The trees- planted by the 

 padres here, however, differ much in growth, and are prob- 

 ably seedlings of the Mission variety. Some ripen early, 

 others are very late, and some are much better bearers than 

 others. The old Pear trees were of two sorts, a small, early 

 pear of russet color, ripening about with the Madeleine, and a 

 large, bronze-colored, late, coarse pear. The grapes were all 

 of the old Mission sort, the same grape that grows to-day in 

 the vineyards of the lower Rio Grande, and is so famous in 

 the southwest as the " El Paso Grape." lam told by an old 

 pioneer who knew the Mission San Jos6, before the conquest 

 of California, that the quaint old Spanish garden contamed in 

 its exact centre a seedling Apricot tree, which was an object 

 of superstitious fear to the Indian neophytes, for they were 

 taught that its fruit was the fruit of " The Forbidden Tree." 

 They always went hy it with bowed heads, and crossing them- 

 selves. On three sides of the old garden towered an immense 

 wall of Nopal, or Mexican Prickly-Pear, with adobe buildings, 

 walls, and the church on the other side. 

 Niles, Cal. Charles Howard Shinn. 



Notes Upon Some North American Trees. — IX. 



Lyonothamnus asplenifolius, Greene. — This interesting 

 tree was discovered by Mr. Barclay Hazard on Santa Cruz 

 Island, one of the Santa Barbara group, in 1885, and was 

 described by Mr. Edward L. Greene in the Bnlletin of the 

 California Academy of Science (i., 187, and ii., 149, /. 6). 

 Mr. Greene visited the island a year later, and found that 

 " this tree is no rarity on its native shore. There are a 

 hundred fine groves of it distributed up and down the 

 thirty miles of the island's northward slope, individual 

 specimens often as high as thirty-five or forty feet. The 

 wood, close-grained and hard, is called iron-wood by tlie 

 men of the island. No other small tree of our coast equals 

 this in grace of form and beauty of foliage. The flowers, 

 too, are quite showy in their season, the larger corymbs 

 often measuring a foot in diameter." Mr. Brandegee found 

 Lyonothamnus last year on Santa Rosa, where "the trees 

 are small and often distorted by the wind. This species 

 always forms small groves of a hundred, more or less, 

 trees. It sends vip several trunks from one cone, and the 

 whole grove probably is connected underground by its 

 roots" (Brandegee in Proc. Cal. Acad., 2 ser , i. 2, 210). 



The genus Lyonothamnus was established by Professor 

 Gray {Proc. Am. Acad., 2 ser., xii., 291) for a shrubby 

 plant, discovered by Mr. W. S. Lyon, on the island of 

 Santa Catalina, in 1884 — Lyonolhavimis floribmidus. 



Lyonothamnus is the first representative of the Saxifrage 

 family among the trees of North America. 



Terminalia Buceras, Hemsley. — This tree was detected 

 by Mr. A. H. Curtiss, on Elliot's Key, at the time of our 

 visit to southern Florida in the spring of 1886; and a few 

 specimens, forty or fifty feet high, were found in full 

 bloom on the 19th of April. It is the Bucida Buceras of 

 Linnaeus, but the genus Bucida having been merged into 

 Terminalia, the plant becomes Terminalia Buceras, and 



the author who first used this combination of names is the 

 authority for it. The author in this case, unless some earlier 

 application has escaped me, is Mr. Hemsley, in " Bot. Am. 

 Cent.," i. 402. We have never been able to find a good 

 seed of this tree in any of the herbaria of this country or of 

 Europe, or to procure one from any of the West Indian or 

 Central American botanists, although it is a common and 

 widely-distributed littoral species. The plate, therefore, for 

 the North American Silva lacks the figure of the embryo, 

 an omission which may still be rectified could a single 

 perfect seed be sent to me. 



147. Eugenia longipes. Berg. — This species, as it grows 

 on No Name Key, in Florida, the only station known for 

 it in the United States, is a slender, spreading bush with 

 stems six or eight feet high, and with no tendency to 

 assume arborescent habit. I propose, therefore, unless I 

 can learn that it becomes under more favorable conditions 

 really a tree, to omit this species entirely from the Silva. 



Aralia spinosa, L. — This species must find a place in the 

 Silva. I have seen it on the western slopes of the Big 

 Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, growing to a height of 

 thirty or thirty-five feet, with a straight, clear trunk, eight 

 inches in diameter, and stout, wide-spreading branches. 



148. Eugenia procera, Poir. — Two Florida trees have 

 been confounded under this species. The larger of these, 

 a tall tree, almost entirely confined, within the United 

 States, to a single hummock on the shores of Bay Biscayne, 

 east of the mouth of the Miami River, with scaly red 

 bark, narrowly-acuminate, coriaceous, shining leaves, 

 which are contracted into a long, blunt point, small flow- 

 ers in axillary clusters, and small, pea-shaped scarlet 

 fruit, has already been described in Garden and Forest 

 (vol. 2, f. 87) under the name of Eugenia Garberi, a name 

 bestowed upon it in memory of its discoverer. 



E. procera is a much smaller and a much more com- 

 mon and more widely-distributed tree in Florida, occur- 

 ring on nearly all the Keys. It is rarely more than twenty 

 feet high, with a perfectly smooth, ashy-gray bark, broader, 

 much thinner and duller leaves than the last, larger flow- 

 ers, and larger fruit, which is first yellow and red, finally 

 becoming black when fully ripe. 



Euge?iia Garberi should stand in the catalogue immedi- 

 ately after the last species. 



153. Nyssa CAPiTATA, Walt — An older name for this spec- 

 ies is that of Marshall (Arbustum Americanum) — Nyssa 

 Ogeche, published in 1785, or three years earlier than that 

 of Walter. The orthography of Marshall's name, although 

 it is not that now used for the river Ogeechee, had best 

 be retained. 



154. Nyssa sylvatica, Marshall. The A'^arious forms of 

 Nyssa with clustered, fertile flowers borne on a long pe- 

 duncle, were all united in the Census Catalogue under the 

 name of Nyssa sylvatica, the Linnsean species N'. aquatica 

 being held to include both a form of this plant and the 

 very distinct N. unijlora. It may, however, be convenient 

 to retain as a variety the Water Gum of the south Atlantic 

 States, which would then become N. sylvatica var. aquatica. 

 This, owing to the fact, probably, that it grows in shallow 

 ponds where the trunk is surrounded with water during a 

 large part of the year, is generally a smaller tree ; and these 

 conditions would account also for the enlarged base of 

 the trunk, as the stems of aquatic trees display generally 

 this peculiarity. The leaves are often lanceolate or orbic- 

 ular rather than oval or obovate, the form they generally 

 assume on upland trees, and the peduncles are inclined to 

 be rather shorter. These characters are not constant, 

 however, and it is the manner of growth and the general 

 appearance of the \\'ater Gum rather than any characters 

 apparent in the herbarium which must be relied on to sep- 

 arate it from the Tupelo of the New England coast and the 

 Black Gum of the Alleghany Mountains and the Valley of 

 the Mississippi, as these three distinct-looking trees are 

 connected together by innumerable intermediate forms. 



