5o8 



Garden and Forest. 



[October 23, 1889. 



New or Little Known Plants. 



Spiraea Millefolivim. 



THIS remarkable plant, tigured on page 509, was discov- 

 ered in the valley of the Bill Williams Fork of the 

 Colorado River of the West, in the Territory of Arizona, in 

 the autumn of 1853, ^7 Dr. J. M. Bigelow, the naturalist of 

 Lieutenant Whipples' explorations along the thirty-fifth 

 parallel for a railroad to the Pacific. It is now known to 

 occur very sparingly at high elevations from Wyoming to 

 northern California and along some of the mountain ranges 

 of the Great Basin, and on the eastern slopes of the Sierra 

 Nevada to the neighborhood of Owen's Lake, in south-east- 

 ern California, as well as in northern Arizona. 



Spircpa Millefolium'^ is a glandular-pubescent, spread- 

 ing shrub with a loose habit, growing sometimes to a 

 height of five or six feet- It has stout branches cov- 

 ered with thin reddish bark, separating readily into thin 

 deciduous scales and narrowly lanceolate leaves, which 

 resemble those of Chamaebatia, fascicled or sometimes 

 scattered near the extremiiies of the branches. They 

 are pale gray-green, one to three inches long, twice pin- 

 nate, with numerous pinnae and minute oblong-obtuse 

 leaflets. The flowers are produced in slender terminal 

 panicles six or eight inches long. The calyx is top-shaped, 

 with acute erect divisions rather longer than the tubes, but 

 shorter than the orbicular-obovate white petals, which are 

 about an eighth of an inch long. The stamens are 

 included. The five carpels are nearly pubescent or 

 glabrous at maturity, and two-valved to the base, with 

 seeds the twelfth of an inch long, somewhat attenuated at 

 the two extremities. 



I found this plant growing in considerable abundance in 

 the autumn of 1878 on the dry and arid foot-hills of the 

 Monitor Range, above the elevated Fish Spring Valley, 

 south of Eureka, in central Nevada; and was fortunate in 

 securing a quantity of the seeds, which germinated in the 

 Arboretum, where this plant has quite unexpectedly proved 

 entirely hardy, and has produced flowers and fruit for sev- 

 eral years. It may now, I believe, be seen also in sev- 

 eral European collections. The whole plant, like many 

 others of the Great Basin and other arid western regions, is 

 strongly impregnated with the odor of creosote. Spircea 

 Millefoliu7n will interest probably the botanist more than it 

 will the cultivator of purely ornamental plants, although 

 the foliage is not without beauty. 



Maximowicz proposes the genus Chamsebatiaria| for this 

 plant, adopting the sectional name in Spiraea, first used by 

 Professor J. C. Porter — a view which will not probably be 

 adopted by all American botanists. C. S. S. 



Plant Notes. 



Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea. 



AMONG the many varieties of edible berries that aboiuid 

 throughout Canada, none occupy a higher place in the 

 economy of nature than tlie northern Cranberry, better known 

 in the south as the Cowberry. Deemed of no value in the 

 warmer parts of Canada, and pronounced by Gray to be 

 "acrid, and rather bitter, mealy, barely edible," it seems, 

 when in its own home in the cold, rocky woods of the north, 

 or along the shores of Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean, 

 to derive size and flavor from the very conditions that dwarf 

 and kill its less hardy competitors. For there it is not "acrid 

 and rather bitter," but simply acid, and far from being 

 "mealy." It is firm and juicy, and, when cooked, is pro- 

 nounced by those who eat it to be equal, if not superior, in 

 flavor to the fruit of the true Cranberry, Vaccinium macrocar- 

 pon. Along the Gaspe coast and the north shore of the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence, the fishermen's families gather this fruit in 

 large quantides for their own use or for sale, calling it the 

 " Low bush Cranberry;" and, throughout the whole of northern 

 Canada, hunters and trappers, as well as the native hidians, 

 have frequently to depend upon it for food when game and 

 fish are scarce. 



* Spir/e A Millefolium, Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep., iv., 83, t. 5.— Brewer and Watson, 

 Bot. California, i., 179. 

 t " Adnotationes de Spirseaceis," in Act. Hurt, Petro, vi., 225. 



But it is not to man that this useful berry is of the greatest 

 service. It forms the most important, and, in some places, 

 with the fruit of Empetruni nigrum, the sole food of the 

 larger migratory birds, as they return from the south in early 

 spring; and the islands in some of the large lakes of the north 

 and in Hudson Bay are at times covered with geese of several 

 species that have stopped to rest and feed. It is in the spring, 

 immediately after the snow disappears, that this berry seems 

 to be most sought after by birds and animals, partly, perhaps, 

 because it is then soft and sweet, but principall)', no doubt, on 

 account of the scarcity of other food, although grouse, par- 

 tridge and ptarmigan eat it at all seasons, even when only half 

 ripe. In the spring, in suitable localities in the wooded coun- 

 try, it forms the favorite food of the black bear, and on the 

 islands in Hudson Bay and along the Arctic coasts the polar 

 bear spends much of his time in tearing up the low evergreen 

 plants, in order to get at the fruit more easily ; for it is on the 

 under side, and almost touching the earth, that the berries are 

 to be found in the greatest numbers. Immense patches of 

 ground covered with the dead plants may often be found, tell- 

 ing where bruin has been at work. All summer long the last 

 season's fruit may be found mixed with the flowers or with the 

 green berries, and is then eaten by many birds in preference to 

 anything else. ^ ,, ,, 



Ottawa. J- M. Macoun. 



Holiday Notes in Southern France and Northern 

 Italy.— II. 



MUCH of interest to the gardener is to be seen in and about 

 Turin, the principal city of Piedmont and once capital 

 of Italy. There are many long, broad, straight streets planted 

 with various species of trees, several gardens and pleasant 

 squares. The most noteworthy features observed by us I 

 shall try to condense into the present paper ; many places 

 were, however, visited which lack of space prevents me from 

 mentioning. One of the favorite promenades of the Turin 

 people is the Giardino Valentino, on the left bank of the P© ; 

 this is easily reached by tram, and is well worth a visit. The 

 royal chateau, " II Valentino," a turreted building of the seven- 

 teenth century (now used as an engineering college), gives its 

 name to the garden. The ground seems to have been well laid 

 out, and is riot broken up by paltry beds, as is so often the case in 

 similar places. Groups of Planes, Pines, etc., and a few fine 

 single specimens of Arbor-vitse, Red Cedar, etc., stand out 

 well on the broad stretch of grass, which, however, had a 

 coarse and neglected look in comparison with a well kept En- 

 glish lawn. Rock-work, apparently constructed on false prin- 

 ciples, bordered the steps and slopes leading from one level 

 to another, but no plants relieved the bare, even forbidding, 

 aspect of what surely might have been made a pleasingfeature. 

 The Botanic Garden is, like so many continental establish- 

 ments of a similar character, not open to the public, but visit- 

 ors desirous of seeing it can obtain admission on application 

 to tfie doorkeeper. Many very fine trees exist in the by no 

 means extensive grounds, and, among them, the following 

 struck us most : Zelkowa crenata (grafted on Elm), planted 

 quite small forty-one years ago by the present curator, and now 

 a huge tree four feet through at the base ; this is the biggest 

 specimen I have yet seen of this interesting Caucasian tree. 

 Fagus ferruginea seems to be quite at home in Turin ; in 

 Britain, as far as my experience goes, it makes hardly any 

 headway at all, and is inferior in every respect to the European 

 Beech. The Kentucky Coffee {Gymnocladus dioictis) was 

 represented by a splendid tree, laden with pods. The most re- 

 markable of the other American trees were a White Oak {Quer- 

 cus a/^fl), about seventy feet high, with a trunk more than three 

 feet through, and a Bur Oak {Q. macrocarpa), about the same 

 height, with a trunk two feet in diameter ; in Britain and in 

 other countries of northern Europe none of the American White 

 Oaks thrive ; on the other hand, the Red Oak (g. rubra) and the 

 Scarlet Oak {Q. coccinea) make huge trees, and grow much 

 more rapidly than our European species. A tree of the Bitter 

 Nut {Gary a amara), with a trunk two feet through, had attained 

 a height of about seventy feet. The first Locust {Robinia 

 Pseudacacia) introduced into Piedmont is also to be seen in 

 the Turin Botanic Garden ; it is still a fine, vigorous tree. No 

 one familiar with the Sweet Gum of the Levant {Liquidam- 

 bar Orientalis) in British gardens only can form any idea 

 of the beauty of the species under conditions suitable to its 

 development ; at Turin it is a graceful tree, from forty to fifty 

 feet high, and it flowers and ripens fruit, though not every 

 year ; in England it only makes a dense dwarf' bush — speci- 

 mens at Kew do not seem to have increased in size to any ap- 

 preciable extent during the last fifteen years or more. For- 

 tunea Sinensis, an interesting ally of the Hickories and Walnuts, 



