72 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 365. 



are subjected to enough dangers, at the best, from threat- 

 ened invasion and confiscation. But where the people 

 stand by and see well-planned and beautiful parks turned 

 into desolation, and property of unspeakable value to rich 

 and poor laid waste, without any attempt to arrest the 

 injurer, and even without protest or indignation, the case 

 seems almost desperate. When parks become utterly 

 abandoned and left a prey to trespassers, it would be a 

 wise policy to run streets across them, cut them up into 

 building lots, sell them off and put the money in the city 

 treasury. 



We have received a chart of life-size pictures of the 

 leaves of some of our. native Oaks, and the drawings give 

 proof of accurate observation of the subjects in all stages 

 of their growth. This tree-leaf chart is printed on good 

 paper, and a prospectus gives the information that others 

 are to follovi^, containing the leaves of other families, and 

 including the most valuable deciduous shade, nut and 

 timber trees, native and foreign, which are adapted to our 

 northern and middle Atlantic states. If these charts could 

 be hung up in the school-room they would be an admira- 

 ble help to pupils who wish to identify the various species 

 and varieties of trees about them, and a skillful teacher 

 could make a great use of them in encouraging habits of 

 observation among the young. They would not only be 

 useful in the school-room, but in the family circle, and 

 they would familiarize children with the various forms of 

 leaves and help to interest them in the study of our native 

 trees. The drawings are made by Grace Anna Lewis, of 

 Media, Pennsylvania, and the charts are sold at the mod- 

 erate price of fifty cents each. 



Botanical Notes from Texas. — XXIV. 



CHEROKEE COUNTY lies in the central portion of 

 eastern Texas, and a few years ago it was prophesied 

 that its capital town, Rusk, was to become the chief iron- 

 manufacturing city of the south, if not of the United States. 

 Much money was spent in erecting furnaces, hotels and 

 long brick blocks, and streets were laid out for long dis- 

 tances through the surrounding country, but the fires have 

 gone out in the furnaces, while hotels, business houses and 

 many dwellings are deserted. Valuable ore of iron is here 

 in great abundance, it is true, and later on it will be brought 

 into use, but the markets of the world do not need it yet. 



This county and the adjoining ones are, perhaps, the best 

 peach-growing region in Texas. A hundred car-loads of 

 this fruit were shipped from Jacksonville alone last year, 

 besides supplying the canning factories there. This is a 

 small amount, it is true, but the industry is young yet. The 

 best fruit-lands here are on the sandy tops of the iron hills ; 

 there the young fruit escapes injury from early frost, while 

 in the valleys it may wholly be destroyed. This branch of 

 horticulture is capable of indefinite profitable e.xtension 

 throughout eastern Texas. The practice of raising Peach- 

 trees, largely from seeds, has developed many varieties of 

 excellence hardly anywhere surpassed. The latent ener- 

 gies of the Peach, even after so many centuries of cultiva- 

 tion, is not easily to be overestimated. A species, that by 

 a bold and successful effort "at bud-variation, could de- 

 velop so remarkable a variety as the Nectarine, is liable to 

 perform still greater wonders in the future. 



As the tourist goes over Texas he is surprised to see to 

 how great an extent Cotton is still the field-crop of the state. 

 The season of cotton-picking extends over the last six 

 months of the year. The entire cotton product of Texas 

 aggregates an immense sum of money for the state ; that 

 amount, divided among the owners of four millions of acres 

 of land and the renters of it, the laborers, the pickers, the 

 ginners, the oil men, the weighers, the buyers, the commis- 

 sion men, the railways, the storers and the shippers, does 

 not leave a large sum for any of them. Those who fare 

 the best seem to be the landowners, who are generally 

 inerchants, bankers or men of other professions living in 



the cities, and those who handle the crop after it is raised. 

 Profitable or not, the present condition of affairs will only 

 slowly change. Cotton is the surest money-crop of the 

 south, and, therefore, many farmers are obliged to raise it, 

 even though they buy the necessaries of living, which they 

 might otherwise raise for themselves. 



Witch Hazel, Hamamelis, is not so distinctively a fall- 

 flowering shrub, as some botanists have written it. Differ- 

 ences of climate and soil may change the living ways of 

 plants, as they change the living ways of animals and of 

 men. A long residence in Texas has taught the Witch- 

 hazel that it need not blossom in the fall, that it will have 

 time enough to effect fertilization and to ripen fruits and 

 seeds in the same year, and therefore the flowering is put 

 off until February, and even later, and then have time to 

 perfect seed before the year closes. That peculiar Sun- 

 flower, Helianthus angustifolius, abounds in eastern Texas 

 from the Gulf to Red River. An interesting feature of the 

 woods of this section in the early fall is the handsome fruit 

 of French Mulberry, Callicarpa. A wine, or more properly 

 a cordial of successful intoxicating quality, has been made 

 from it. 



One day as I was walking along one of the railways 

 leading out from Jacksonville, I recognized the fragrance 

 of the Sweetbrier, and soon saw a lusty plant of Rosa rubigi- 

 nosa by the wayside. It was the only individual of the 

 species that I had seen in Texas. It is rarely found wild 

 in Kansas. In New York it is common along roadsides. 

 Lobelia puberula is common here in damp places. It re- 

 sembles L. siphilitica more than any species of the genus, 

 but it is taller and slimmer than its congener. 



The handsome Pink, Spigelia, is frequently seen in this 

 county. It is the Pink of the medicinal firm of Pink and 

 Senna, and the species, for its beauty, is worthy of a place 

 in the wild corner of any garden. 



Solidago odora is the commonest as well as the hand- 

 somest Golden-rod of eastern Texas, and often three to five 

 feet tall. It is handsome enough for any garden, and 

 pleasantly and so strongly odorous as to fill the air with its 

 fragrance. Of our native species of Solidago, S. tortifolia 

 resembles it most closely. 



I met Flydrolea affinis near Jefferson, for the first time 

 in Texas. H. ovata is much more abundant. They are 

 rather handsome plants with spiny stems and bright blue 

 flowers. The last-named species has a very downy calyx, 

 a character which its congener does not possess. The 

 Wild Turnip, Arissema, Jack-in-the-pulpit, grows in this 

 vicinity by the side of its homelier but commoner con- 

 gener, A. Dracunculus. The family garden has no longer 

 a corner for medicinal herbs, and strings of wild turnips 

 no longer adorn the chimney-corner, for, though we are 

 told that those bulbs lose all their virtue in drying, yet 

 grated and mixed with hone}' or maple-molasses they were 

 once thought to be a sovereign remedy for colds and 

 coughs, especially in the case of children. In those earlier 

 days, too, when the tea-canister was empty and the supply 

 of coffee had been exhausted, the same closet contained 

 dried roots of Water-avens, Geum rivale, a decoction of 

 which, drank with milk and sugar, was no mean or un- 

 pleasant substitute for the costlier drinks. 



Among many distinguished tree foreigners who have 

 taken out naturalization papers in the United States, some 

 of v^'hom are living in eastern Texas, is Paulownia imperi- 

 alis. That species has been largely planted for ornament, 

 and has quickly run wild. Foreign plants as well as 

 foreign people are rapidly taking possession of many parts 

 of the country. We are loath to admit the Chinaman, but 

 we freely admit the China tree to naturalization, and not 

 only Melia, but also Paulownia, Ailanthus, Sterculia, Stil- 

 lingia, Albizzia and others. The new forests of the south 

 are likely to be largely of Mongolian extraction. It is 

 strange that so unique and handsome a foreigner as 

 Gingko biloba is seldom, if ever, seen on Texas lawns. 



Two humble Asiatic plants, that probably came to the 

 United States uninvited, are working a silent but important 



