448 



Garden and Forest. 



[September i8, iS 



199. FoRESTiERA ACUMINATA, Poir.^ — This plant, which I 

 have seen growing with great vigor and kixuriance in dif- 

 ferent places in western Louisiana and in eastern Texas, 

 hardly merits the title of tree, which was given to it in the 

 Census Catalogue. It is rather a tall, broad shrub, with 

 slender, spreading and recurving branches. It may be 

 properly dropped from the Silva of North America. 



Forcstiera reliculaia. Torn, is reported by Dr. V. Harvard 

 to grow as a small tree on the rocky slopes of the great 

 canon near the mouth of the Pecos River. 



216. Nectandra WiLLDENOviANA, Nees. The oldest name 

 of this plant seems to be Lauriis Cateshyana, Michaux (Fl. 

 Bor. Am., i., 244), for the Laiinis sanguinea of Swartz (Fl. 

 Ind. Occ, ii., 707) includes, according to Meisner (Prod., 

 xvi., 165), two different plants ; and it does not appear that 

 Z. cyathifera, Vahl. (Meisner, /. c), has been published. 

 Nectandra Cateshyana would seem, therefore, unless some 

 older specific name can be found, to be the one to adopt. 



219. Drypetes crocea, van latifolia, Mullen This is a 

 very different plant from D. crocea, with snow-white bark, 

 larger, thicker, and more lustrous leaves rounded at the 

 apex, flowers with a single stigma, and oval, large white 

 fruit an inch long, so that the original name of Vahl. (Eclog. 

 Amen 2, 119) Drypetes glaiica, to which it was correctly 

 referred by Nuttall (Sylva ii., 68) must be restored to it. 



220. Sebastiana lucida, Mullen The perianth of the male 

 flowers is rudimentary in our plant, so that it must be re- 

 stored to Gymnanthes, and so becomes Gymnanthes lucida 

 of Swartz, the first name under which it was described. 



223. Ulmus FULVA, Michx. Walter's &7m?^s />«6escews has 

 been considered to be this species. The name is much 

 older than that of Michaux, but Walter's characters leave 

 it uncertain what plant he had before him, and his name 

 cannot safely be taken up. 



229. Ficus AUREA, Nutt. A specimen in the Kew herba- 

 rium collected by Brace (No. 356) in New Providence in 

 1879 shows that this common south Florida tree is also, as 

 was to be expected, an inhabitant of the Bahamas. 



230. Ficus brevifolia, Nutt. There appear to be only 

 two indigenous Fig-trees upon the Florida Keys, F, aurea, 

 with leaves pointed at both ends, and sessile, or nearly ses- 

 sile, fruit, and a plant with cordate leaves and small, flat- 

 tened pedunculate fruit, which is first yellow, but becoming 

 scarlet at maturity. The peduncles vary considerably in 

 length on the same plants. It is represented with yellow 

 fruit in Nuttall's Sylva as F. peduncidata {t. 41), and with 

 red fruit on shorter peduncles as F. brevifolia {t. 42). But 

 the F. pedunculata of Nuttall is not the F. pedunculata of 

 Alton, but the F. popidnea of Willdenow (vide Herb. Kew), 

 the name which, unless some older one can be found for 

 Willdenow's plant, must include Ficus peduncidata and F. 

 hrevifolia of the Census Catalogue and of Chapman's "Flora 

 of the Southern United States. " 



232. MoRus rubra. — The variety of the Red Mulberry, 

 first described by Rafinesque (Flora Ludoviciana, 113), 

 with the under surface of the brighter green leaves covered 

 with white tomentum (although the fruit is certainly not 

 white, as Rafinesque described it), — the van tomentosa, 

 Bureau in DeCandoUe's " Prodromus," xvii., 246, is com- 

 mon in western Texas. This is the large Mulberry-tree 

 which abounds on the banks of the San Antonio River near 

 its source ; and I have collected it at Boerne, on the Guad- 

 aloupe. The large Mulberry-tree (probably planted) in the 

 Public Square at Laredo, on the Rio Grande, is of this form. 



233. MoRus microphylla, Buckley. — This Texas plant is 

 not distinguishable from the common Mulberry-tree of 

 Mexico and Central America, Morus celtidifolia, HBK, 

 which is very common in the valley of the lower Rio 

 Grande south of the river; and Buckley's name should dis- 

 appear except as a synonym, although the Texas plants, as 

 is natural, have generally smaller leaves than those on 

 trees growing in the moister and more fertile Mexican 

 valleys. C. S. Sargent. 



New or Little Known Plants. 



Aster Lindleyanus. 



THE handsome Aster which is figured for the first time 

 upon page 449 of this issue is one of the latest addi- 

 tions to the flora of New England, having been first detected 

 within its borders three years ago by Mr. Faxon, at Shel- 

 burne and Franconia, in the White Mountain region, and 

 last year by Mr. E. L. Rand on the Island of Mount Desert, 

 off the coast of Maine. 



Aster Lindleyanus^ is a showy species, with stout stems 

 ten to twenty inches high, the lower leaves ovate and ob- 

 scurely cordate, with winged petioles, the upper oblong- 

 lanceolate, the uppermost sessile and acuminate at both 

 ends. The flowers, with pale violet ra3's a quarter to nearly 

 half an inch long, are large and comparatively few, in loose 

 panicles terminating the stems. This species is found 

 from Labrador to the northern shores of Lake Superior, the 

 Saskatchewan and the borders of British Columbia. It 

 was first made known many years ago, from plants raised 

 in England from seeds gathered in Labrador, but it has 

 probably long ago disappeared from gardens. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



The Lindens for City-Planting. 



'T^HIS is the first warm summer we have had for many years. 

 -'- Grapes ripened before the month of August, and rye was 

 harvested before the end of June ; and, in places where the 

 rains have not failed, vegetation is extraordinarily rich and 

 luxuriant. I have never seen the Ash and the Oak more bril- 

 liantly decked with green. But there is a reverse to the 

 medal. In the streets and public squares of Berlin, the Lin- 

 dens, one of their chief attractions, present the sombre spec- 

 tacle of a premature autumn. Their foliage, browned and 

 witheredby the heatof thesun.isalreadyfalling. The tree which 

 has proved itself best adapted for city-cultivation — the tree so 

 delightful for the richness of its verdure and its bloom in spring 

 and early summer, seems no longer able to play its part in 

 great centres of population. Yet, is it wise to banish the Lin- 

 den from our cities and substitute everywhere the Elm, as 

 some suggest ? Let us consider the question a little. 



Many people — I may say most people — know of but one 

 Linden. Among us, the most common and most widely cul- 

 tivated is Tilia intermedia, DC, commonly known as the 

 Dutch Linden, since the Holland nurseries supply it in abun- 

 dance. It possesses every good quality of the genus, but is 

 extremely susceptible to heat. Even artificial watering fails 

 to preserve its greenness. The same is true of Tilia platy- 

 phylla, Scop. Each of these species has a period of extreme 

 beauty, lasting some months, which is followed by one of 

 melancholy decadence. This again, toward the autumn, gives 

 place to a partial re-leafing, never, however, as in the case of 

 the Horse-chestnut, carried to the point of a second blossom- 

 ing within the year. 



For its ornamental qualities T. ulmifolia, so common in its 

 wild state in the north of Germany, is superior to its congeners. 

 It has not their fine flowers and foliage, and it falls behind 

 them in growth, but it better resists heat and drought. To be 

 convinced of this I have only to look out of my window upon 

 Leipzig Square, where stand the noblest Lindens of Berlin. 

 The leaves of this species are of a bluish tint. Looking at a 

 single specimen, almost lost among the crowd of its neighbors, 

 I am forced to concede to it a superiority in some respects. 

 This particular specimen has also lost some of its leaves, but 

 it is not an eyesore like most of the others around it, which, 

 besides their suffering from drought, have been preyed upon 

 for two years by voracious caterpillars {Bombyx dispar, Das- 

 chyra pudibunda, and a third species, whose name I do not 

 know). I remember having noticed similar ravages among 

 the trees in 1883, when, as early as the beginning of July, a 

 long drought caused the blossoms of the Dutch Linden to fall 

 in such quantities that they were swept away in heaps. The 

 proper remedy for this trouble is not found in the substitution 

 of anothertree for the Linden, but in the employment in future 

 plantations of a Linden different from the species now gener- 

 ally planted. 



The species I recommend is the Crimean Linden (7! dasy- 

 styla^ T. euchlora, K. Koch). Litfle known as a wild tree, it 



* Aster Lindleyanus, Torr & Gray, Flora N. Am., ii, 122— Gray, Syn. Flora, i. 2, 182. 



