6o2 



Garden and Forest. 



[December i8, 1889. 



care of dried specimens is not enough to make a good gar- 

 dener ; but it is one means of developing a love for plants, 

 of increasing a knowledge of them, and of inculcating 

 lessons of orderliness and accuracy which will prove of 

 lasting value to every one who expects to be a gardener or 

 florist. 



There appears in the " Annals" of New York city for the 

 year 1786, compiled from the newspapers of the day, 

 joined to the reprint of the New York Directory for 1786, 

 recently issued by the Trow Directory Co., the following 

 item : 



April I4tli, 1786. 



" Mr. Michaux, botanist to his most Christian Majesty, hav- 

 ing purchased a lot of ground at Wehocken, near the Three 

 Pigeons, is erecting a garden there which for magnificence, 

 etc., will exceed anything of the kind in America. In it will be 

 introduced many exotic and domestic botanical curiosities." 



This Mr. Michaux is the distinguished French botanist, 

 Andre Michaux, who resided in America from 1785 to 1796 

 as an agent of the French Government for exploring the 

 natural resources of this country, and for the introduction 

 of useful trees and other plants into France. An account 

 of this garden, from the pen of Mr. H. H. Rushby, was 

 published in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, in 

 August, 1884, from which it appears that when Michaux 

 finally left America it was transferred to a Mr. Saunier, and 

 later to a son of the latter, who continued to send plants to 

 France for many years. Michaux's garden now forms a 

 part of the Hoboken Cemetery, and all traces of the plants 

 brought here by Michaux from his long journeys in remote 

 parts of the country have now entirely disappeared. 



when the recent photograph from which our illustration 

 is made was taken. We are indebted for this photograph 

 to Mr. Francis Skinner, of Boston. 



Abraham's Oak. 



THE old Oak at Mamre in Syria, or, as it is known 

 everywhere, "Abraham's Oak," is one of the most 

 famous and venerable trees in the world. It is reverenced 

 alike by Jew, Christian and Mahommedan, for it is sup- 

 posed to mark the spot where the patriarch pitched his tent 

 in the desert. ■ There is a superstition in Jerusalem, and in 

 all the country about, that whoever shall cut or injure this 

 tree will lose his first-born son. So for centuries it has 

 been allowed to toss its gnarled and contorted limbs in the 

 gales which sweep frqm the Mediterranean over the Syrian 

 plains. 



This tree was visited by Sir Joseph Hooker in the autumn 

 of i860; and in his paper upon Syrian Oaks, read the fol- 

 lowing year before the Linnsean Society {Transactions, 

 xxiii.), he gave a description of it and a portrait drawn by 

 his own hand. 



Abraham's Oak was found to belong to Quercus pseudo- 

 cocci/era, which, to quote from Sir Joseph's paper, "is by 

 far the most abundant tree throughout Syria, covering the 

 rocky hills, of Palestine especially, with a dense brushwood 

 of trees eight to twelve feet high, branching from the base, 

 thickly covered with small evergreen rigid leaves, and 

 bearing acorns copiously. On Mt. Carmel it forms nine- 

 tenths of the shrubby vegetation, and it is almost equally 

 abundant on the west flanks of the Antilebanon and many 

 slopes and valleys of Lebanon. Owing to the indiscrim- 

 inate destruction of the forests in Syria, this oak rarely 

 attains its full size." The circumference of the trunk of 

 "Abraham's Oak" is given as twenty-three feet, and the 

 diameter of the spread of the branches as ninety feet. 



Quercus pseudo-cocci/era is an evergreen species with the 

 general appearance of the Ilex of southern Europe, and 

 closely related, botanically, to Q. cocci/era, a common and 

 widely distributed scrub Oak of southern Europe, and of 

 Algeria ; indeed, Hooker was of the opinion that the two 

 plants were merely geographical varieties of the same 

 species. 



Our illustration of "Abraham's Oak," upon page 607, rep- 

 resents the tree with much less foliage than appeared in 

 Hooker's picture taken nearly thirty years ago, when it was 

 apparently in a more vigorous condition than at the time 



The Art of Gardening — An Historical Sketch. 

 XV.— Rome. 



(Concluded.) 



T N his catalogue of trees, the elder Pliny names many varie- 

 •*■ ties — eighteen kinds of Chestnut, for instance, eleven 

 kinds of Myrtle, thirteen Laurels, four EUns, three kinds of 

 Box, twenty-nine Figs and forty-one Pears. But even if such 

 numbers represent garden varieties which we should now call 

 distinct, they are not, in most cases, very imposing compared 

 with the riches of to-day; indeed when we consider the number 

 of distinct kinds, it is very apparent that in trees and shrubs 

 as well as in flowers the wealthiest Romans could not com- 

 mand a hundredth part of the material that is easily procured 

 to-day. Yet many of them were passionate horticulturists and 

 such exotic plants as could be procured were highly prized. 

 The Plane, according to Pliny, was among the first trees to 

 be introduced, simply, as he is careful to explain, for its orna- 

 mental value. It came from the Levant by way of Sicily, and 

 the Cypress and Cedar were likewise foreigners, though they 

 now grow apparently wild in many parts of Italy. The Bal- 

 samum, " a plant that has been bestowed by Nature only upon 

 the land of Judea," where " in former times it was cultivated 

 in two gardens only, both of which belonged to the kings of 

 that country," was "exhibited in Rome" by Vespasian and 

 Titus ; and its cuttings were so valuable that " the fifth year 

 after the conquest of Judea these cuttings, with their suckers, 

 sold for the price of 800,000 sesterces." The Balsam um got 

 this extraordinary value as the source of a favorite kind of 

 incense,* but many other shrubs " were introduced for orna- 

 mental gardening," and after the time of Pompey it was the 

 custom to carry foreign trees in the triumphal processions. 

 On the walls of the villa of Livia, the Laurel, the Pomegranate, 

 the Stone Pine, the Ilex, the Plane, the Myrtle, the Cypress, a 

 species of Cherry and three different kinds of Firs are accu- 

 rately portrayed. Ivy and other evergreen vines, as well as the 

 Acanthus and the Grape, were everywhere trained upon walls 

 and trees in the most ingenious ways, and Grapes, Gherkins 

 and Watermelons are named among the fruits forced under 

 glass. Olive-trees, of course, were everywhere, and Plums 

 and Apples, as well as Pears, were cultivated in nianifold 

 varieties. Pliny asks us to believe that there stood at Tibur a 

 tree which bore every known kind of fruit, and it is certain 

 that grafting was constantly and skillfully practiced. The 

 Peach had been introduced from Persia, as is shown by its 

 name — Persicum. Vitellius, who had been legate in Syria, in- 

 troduced many Syrian varieties of the Fig into his country- 

 seat at Alba. The Ash, the Oak, the Mulberry, the Quince, 

 the Walnut and the Almond were other familiar trees, and the 

 Palm was planted here and there, but as a rule seems 

 to have been imported from Syria and Egypt and grown 

 in pots. I may say again that neither in Greece nor in Italy 

 M^as a distinction made between ornamental and useful trees. 

 Any tree of pleasing aspect was thought appropriate to the 

 pleasure-ground, and was but the more highly valued if it 

 served utility as well as beauty. 



An amusing anecdote told by Pliny the Elder shows the 

 estimation in which exceptionally fine trees were held. 

 Cneius Domitius publicly rebuked Crassus for living in a 

 house so magnificent that he himself would be willing to pay 

 ten million sesterces for it. Crassus replied that, deducting 

 six trees only, he would accept the offer. Domitius declared 

 that on those terms he would not give a single denarius, 

 whereupon Crassus exclaimed : " Well, then, which of us sets a 

 bad example and deserves the reproof of the censors — I, who 

 live like a plain man in a house which has come to me by in- 

 heritance, or you, who estimate six trees at a value of ten mil- 

 lion sesterces ? " 



These trees, adds Pliny, " were of a Lotus kind, and by the 

 exuberance of their branches afforded a' most delightful 

 shade, "f They must have stood in an urban garden, for 

 " they were in all the freshness of youth when Nero burned 

 them." 



* Unguents, says Pliny, were not known in the West until Alexander captured 

 the perfume chest of Darius. But in imperial times their use was so common that 

 a score of spots on the Mediterranean coast and islands were famous for their 

 manufacture, and the love for them gave a great impulse in Italy to the cultivation 

 of plants witii sweet-scented leaves. 



tit was this Lotus-tree and not the aquatic plant called by the same name which 

 furnished the lotophagi with the food which obliterated memory. Some writers 

 have thought it the Celtis, but modern authorities identify it with the Rhamnus 

 Lotus of Linnaeus, now known as Zizyphus Lotus, 



