January i6, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



23 



Populus tremuloides, P. Fremontii. Cupressus Arizonica, 

 Juniperus pachyphlcea, J. occidentalis monosperma, J. Vir- 

 giniana, Pinus reflexa, P. ceinbroides, P. Arizonica, P. 

 ponderosa, P. latifolia, P. Chihuahuana, Pseudotsuga taxi- 

 folia, Abies concolor, Yucca elata, Y. macrocarpa. 



Tucson, Arizona. J, \V. ToumCy. 



An Indian on Indian Corn. 



THE Penobscot tribe of Indians, on the Penobscot 

 River, some three or four miles above the city of 

 Bangor, Maine, has a considerable "reserve," consisting 

 chiefly of some large islands. Some of these Indians are 

 farmers, though most of the men are engaged in lumber- 

 ing, which is extensively carried on at that point. They 

 have very good schools, and as I have several times taken 

 the up-river train in the morning from Bangor, I have been 

 pleased in observing the well-dressed and intelligent-looking 

 Indian girls and boys who avail themselves of the same 

 train on their way to school. They do not seem in any 

 way inferior to their white companions on the same train, 

 either in the neatness of their apparel or in general good 

 looks. 



I have also had an opportunity of becoming personally 

 acquainted with a few of the leading men of the tribe, and 

 with one of these, Mr. Peol Susup, I have corresponded on 

 a number of subjects, one of which was Indian Corn. I 

 had been trying to develop and improve the dwarf and 

 early varieties which are alone suited to the elevated north- 

 eastern portion of Vermont, and in reply to my inquiries 

 Mr. Susup wrote to me as follows : 



Indian Corn is called by the Indians Weachin, and it is 

 believed to have originated in Mexico. When white men 

 arrived in America they found it in cultivation from latitude 

 forty degrees south to the island of Orleans, in the St. Law- 

 rence River. That was probably its extreme limit in the north- 

 east. How it could have been propagated and ripened so far 

 north of its native tropical home has been a suliject of curious 

 speculation. Every cultivator has doubtless noted iiow diffi- 

 cult it is to perfect the pkint from seed obtained at any consid- 

 erable distance south of the region in which lie endeavors to 

 raise it. Seed procured from New York will seldom or never 

 perfect itself in Maine, and it is deemed unsafe to plant that 

 brought from Massachusetts. How, then, did tlie Indian, 

 without other agricultural education than that derived from his 

 own unrecorded and imperfect observations, push its produc- 

 tion from the Gulf of Mexico to the St. Lawrence ? He cer- 

 tainly accomplished this result ages before the white man vis- 

 ited him ; and it was to the natives that the early white settlers 

 of New England were indebted for their seed corn of the varie- 

 ties now in use. 



An annual plant may extend itself east, or west, along iso- 

 thermal lines, by accidental causes ; but it could not have 

 moved into a colder climate, requiring cultivation and care, 

 without great attention, and the application of more than or.li- 

 nary skill. It must have required ages to have been accli- 

 mated in that country now constituting Canada and the New 

 England states. 



The Indian has a tradition regarding the method by which 

 the northern varieties of Corn were obtained and perfected. 

 Like all the grasses, and many other annual plants. Corn grows 

 upward by joints or sections. The Indians observed that the 

 time required to produce and p'^rfect a joint was one change 

 of the moon ; and as the ear of corn starts only from a joint 

 there was necessarily about seven davs between the form- 

 ing of the ears "on successive joints. Now, if an ear can be 

 made to start at the second joint, it would mature some five 

 weeks in advance of that which should be formed on the 

 seventh joint. By constantly selecting for seed the lowest 

 ears, he finally obtained varieties that produced from joints 

 lower than the original plant, and very much earlier. Thus, 

 in time, corn was produced, small in stalk and ear, and adapted 

 to the short summers of the north. Slowly, but permanently, 

 it passed into the eight-rowed corn, producing constantly on 

 the lower joints, and ripening in three months from the day of 

 planting. 



I may add to Mr. Susup's account an early memory of my 

 boyhood. My grandfather was, in 1792, an emigrant from 

 the valley of the lower Connecticut River, near Windsor, 

 Vermont, to Kennebeck County, IMaine. He fomid it diffi- 



cult to obtain at that time any variety of Corn that was safe 

 to grow, even in south-western Maine ; but later he sup- 

 plied himself with a sure-ripening variety called the Canada 

 Creeper, which produced its ears very near the ground. In 

 the elevated region of north-eastern Vermont, where I have 

 now lived for nearly thirty years, I found the same trouble, 

 and surmounted it m the same way ; but by careful selec- 

 tion I have greatly increased the length of the ears, and the 

 consequent productiveness, without lessening the earliness 

 of the crop. My annual yield of this corn, when dry and 

 shelled, is rarely as low as fifty bushels an acre. 



Newport, Vt. - T. H. HoskJUS. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



Arundinaria macrosperma (A. tecta) is a North American 

 Bamboo, which is very much wanted by growers of hardy 

 Bamboos in this country, but at present it cannot be 

 obtained for love or money. None of the American nur- 

 serymen catalogue it, and none of the many likely people 

 in America who have been asked to send plants of it have 

 so far responded, until it has been questioned whether this 

 Bamboo is to be found in the United States after all. We 

 have all read of "cane-breaks," and have been informed 

 that they are formed of big stretches of A. macrosperma. 

 Is it possible that they have all disappeared.' If not, and 

 there are plenty of plants of it to be got for the digging, I 

 would recommend some enterprising nurseryman to adver- 

 tise the plant at so much per hundred in some English hor- 

 ticultural paper, and, unless I am much mistaken, he will 

 have reason to be glad for this suggestion. We have a 

 clump of it at Kew, where it is perfectly hardy and ever- 

 green, and, consequently, is much coveted by the majority 

 of those who see it here. 



Rhododendron Keiskei. — This species v\'as described by 

 ]\Iaximowicz in 1870 m a paper published in the Memoirs 

 of the Academy 0/ Sciences, of St. Petersburg. Plants of it 

 are in cultivation at Kew, and one of them has lately flow- 

 ered. In the form and color of the flowers it most resem- 

 bles Rhododendron Dahuricum, which flowers in winter, 

 but there is a marked difference between the two in habit 

 and foliage. R. Keiskei is dwarf in habit, with trailing 

 branches, biennial, elliptic, ovate, leathery leaves three 

 inches long, green above, clothed with reddish lepidote 

 spots below. The flowers are in loose corymbs of from 

 three to five ; calyx lobes nearly obsolete ; corolla cam- 

 panulate, an inch across, colored rose-purple ; stamens ten, 

 declinate, the filaments slightly hairy at the base. The plant is 

 quite hardy at Kew, and, judging from Maximovvicz's de- 

 scription and figure, it is likely to prove at least as useful as 

 R. Dahuricum. It is a native of Kyushu and of Hondo, 

 where it is sometimes cultivated in the gardens of Tokyo. 



Kniphofia Natalensis. — This species was first described 

 some eight years ago from specimens sent to Kew by Mr. 

 Medley Wood, of Natal. A plant of it from the same source 

 flowered in a cold greenhouse at Kew in June, 1S89, the 

 scape in this case beuig two and a half feet long, bearing 

 a loose spike of drooping orange-yellow flowers an inch 

 long. A short time agoHerr Ma.x Leichtlin sent to Kew 

 a plant which he thought would prove to be a new species. 

 He had received it from Natal. With him it flowered in 

 vi'inter. and had leaves four feet long. It is now in flower 

 at Kew, and while it does not specifically differ from 

 Kniphofia Natalensis, it is superior to the type in having 

 the flowers much denser on the spike, and in their color 

 being a uniform citron-yellow. If it should prove to be 

 constant in floweriiYg in midwinter it will prove a useful 

 plant for the conservatory. There are now about thirty 

 species of Kniphofia, or double the number known in 1S70, 

 when Mr. Baker monographed the genus. The extremes 

 of the genus are represented by the gigantic K. Noithite 

 and K. aloides on the one side, and the tiny K. pallidillora 

 and K. pauciflora on the other. They are all worth a place 

 in the earden. 



