78 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 365. 



garden, and taken up and housed in the fall when there is 

 danger of frost. 



Peristrophe speciosa. — This old favorite is very easy to grow, 

 and brightens up the warm greenhouse during the dullest part 

 of winter. It makes a thick, bushy, but somewhat upright, 

 plant, and its bright purple blossoms are very attractive. Its 

 flowers are not good for cutting, but a group of the plants 

 serves to make a fine display at this time. 



Botanic Garden, Hai'vard UniversUy. 



Robert Cameron. 



Correspondence. 



California Orange Groves. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — The January freeze in Florida, which so severely 

 injured the Orange-trees, has shown that orange-growing in 

 that state is a precarious business. It is, perhaps, not gen- 

 erally known, but is none the less true, that the orange 

 growers of California are exposed to the same risks that have 

 this year resulted so disastrously to their Florida rivals. 

 During the past four years many oranges have been frozen in 

 southern California, in some sections from twenty to sixty per 

 cent, of'the crop having been lost each season. Every year the 

 thermometer has hovered, for a fevi' hours, on a few nights, at 

 a point below the freezing-mark. A temperature of twenty- 

 four degrees above zero for three or four hours means death 

 to the crop. Should it be a few degrees lower, the trees as 

 well as the fruit would be injured. This is a contingency that 

 hangs over the grower every year, and adds greatly to the haz- 

 ards of the business. 



In addition to the danger of frost, the California grower 

 must contend with high freight charges, on account of his dis- 

 tance from market, and with the constantly increasing. compe- 

 tition of his ovi'n neighbors and of growers in other localities, 

 such as Arizona, where the industry is yet undeveloped, but 

 which may possibly become an active rival in the future. For 

 several years he also ran the risk of robbery by dishonest mid- 

 dlemen. This last risk has been reduced to a minimum by 

 the formatioa of fruit exchanges, which sell all the fruit of 

 certain localities, ship only to known dealers, and demand a 

 certain stated price, delivered on the train, before the oranges 

 are forwarded. Furthermore, the California grower must 

 make a market for his fruit in the large cities of the east. The 

 taste of consumers must be educated to appreciate the Cali- 

 fornia Navel orange, since most people prefer the sweeter 

 Indian River orange. But California experts claim that con- 

 noisseurs and gourmets appreciate more highly the subacid, 

 nutty flavor of the Washington Navel, and that they reject the 

 Florida oranges as too sweet, and, therefore, insipid. If this 

 assertion is true, it is also true that the tastes of the multitude 

 have not yet been highly educated. This is partly the fault of 

 an injudicious handling of the product. Just as California 

 wines are adulterated and inutated to the detriment of the 

 genuine, so the sale of the genuine California Navel orange 

 has been hindered by dishonest growers and dealers, who have 

 shipped unripe, inferior fruit, and sold it as the best. This 

 year, owing to the unexpected demand following the Florida 

 freeze, not a little of this fruit was sent to market before it was 

 at its prime. An additional reason for haste was the fear of a 

 freeze in California. 



The estimated crop in California is two and a half million 

 boxes, about half the amount of the Florida crop, had there 

 been no frost in tliat state. At the start the net price to tiie 

 grower, for the best Navels, was two dollars a box. California 

 growers anticipate that the frost in Florida will check orange- 

 growing in that state for several years to come and so give 

 their own product a better chance than heretofore to gain 

 favor in eastern markets. 



Very few new Orange orchards are being planted in Califor- 

 nia, as compared with the plantings of former years, but the 

 price of the best orange land has not been materially reduced. 

 The best orchards nov/ in bearing cost their owners fully one 

 thousand dollars an acre before returns are received from the 

 investment. Except in isolated instances, good orchards are 

 not being sold, unless at figures based upon that cost to the 

 holders. Tourists who have expected to secure bargains on 

 account of the general depression in business have, as a rule, 

 been disappointed. The conditions of the present year, unless 

 the California fruit should also be frozen, will encourage 

 owners to maintain fancy prices. 



It is an open question whether these orchards are worth 

 fancy prices. Their owners no longer liold out to intending 

 buyers the profuse promises of boom days, but claim only that 

 these orchards will pay a good return for labor and for the 



capital invested. A moderate estimate of an average yield 

 from a good, well-cared-for, mature orchard of Washington 

 Navels is three boxes to the tree, or from two hundred and forty 

 to two hundred and seventy boxes to the acre. This would 

 seem to offer satisfactory returns, even at one dollar a box, 

 net. But, on the other hand, taxes, labor and freight rates are 

 all high. In some places the water-supply is uncertain, and 

 the orange-growing communities, like all communities which 

 depend for prosperity upon one resource, are liable to com- 

 plete ruin from a single cause. This danger may be remote, 

 but its existence, however remote, is a constant menace. Such 

 ruin was formerly threatened the Orange groves by their par- 

 asite pests. These have been largely subdued, although the 

 scale insects, particularly the red scale, are still troublesome. 

 There remains that insidious enemy, frost, against which no 

 vigilance can guard, and which is as voracious as fire. Al- 

 though no frost has yet been severe enough to injure the trees 

 in California, it is not impossible that Florida's experience this 

 year may be that of California next year. Altogether, an Orange 

 grove seems to be very like a mine — an excellent thing when 

 producing, but liable to a disappointing pinching of the vein. 



Redlands, Calif. Wm. F. Tisdale. 



A Venturesome Hepatica. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — Several years ago I began to carry home with me from 

 walks in fields and woodlands the roots o£ v/ild plants and set 

 them in a suitable part of the garden. Many of these are still 

 thriving, though some, like the Trailing Arbutus and Fringed 

 Gentian, have resented the change and died out. Foam- 

 ttovirers, Tiarella, from the Catskills, are well established here, 

 and Harebells from the Adirondacks, Cardinal Flowers from 

 Long Island, Blood-root from Staten Island, and a wide range 

 of wild flowers from other near-by places. Besides the flow- 

 ers provided in season, these wild plants afford occasional 

 surprises, as when on the 26th of December last I found under 

 a winter covering of leaves in a clump of Hepaticas, brought 

 from Staten Island seven years ago, a sturdy flower which did 

 not seem to know that it was braving the cold of the shortest 

 days of the year. A few days before a Blood-root ventured to 

 unfold its wdiite petals, and on January nth of this year, when 

 for a few hours spring seemed in th.e air, two more Hepatica 

 flowers ventured out. There were I)uds which promised to 

 open soon, and, no doubt, they are awaiting the melting of the 

 snow and will expand with the first genial weather. The place 

 where these Ifowers appeared is sheltered from the west winds 

 and from the east, but fully exposed to the north and south. 

 Shall we call them belated autumn flowers or precocious har- 

 bingers of spring ? r/ <v c 



Layonne, I'J.J. ^- J* .->. 



A Search for Gold Thread. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — It is now almost a year since inquiries in a local news- 

 paper as to where several plants, among them Gold Thread, 

 Coptis trifolia, and Wild Ginger might be found, led to the 

 formation of a society bearing the rather ambitious title of the 

 "Natural Science Association of Harrisburg." Although the 

 society numbers among its members an ornithologist of dis- 

 tinction, and several amateur students of entomology and 

 geology, its chief interest has been from the beginning botani- 

 cal. The club meetings are held once a month, when plants 

 are brought in for examination and exchange, or papers are 

 read and discussed. When the vi'eather permits, weekly walks 

 are taken to or from points within a ten-mile radius of Har- 

 risburg. These walks, or explorations rather, as they are gen- 

 erally across country, some of it very rough, are a revelation 

 to many of the members of the inexhaustible supply of sub- 

 jects for investigation close to a city. 



Out of a population of fifty thousand people, it is doubtful if 

 a hundred l<now of the existence of the Iris meadows on the 

 Conodoguinet ; of the Rose Mallows in the swamp running 

 f lom Harrisburg to the foothills of the North Mountain, five 

 miles distant; of the Hepatica-covered bluffs on the eastern 

 side of the swamp, or of the great belt of Red-bud that lies 

 at the edge of the woods on the mountain itself. Gold Thread 

 is yet to be found, but we know now where to look for Wild 

 Ginger in the ravines of the York hills, the blue bells of the 

 Mertensia Virginica in the meadows at their base, and the 

 one meadow lying in a fold of the hills where Castilleia 

 coccinea is found. 



Another plant, so far found in only one place, is Lithosper- 

 mum canescens, on a limestone bluff overhanging the Swa- 

 tara Creek. Quantities of herbaceous plants have been located 



