222 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 3S0. 



the commissioners have in Washington, who grow the trees 

 which they plant, and can arrange to have them in suitable 

 quantities and of the proper form and size at the time when 

 they are needed. An expert commission would take care 

 to plant the trees in a sufficient quantity of good, well-settled 

 soil. They would set them far enough apart to give each 

 tree an opportunity for its best development ; they would 

 water them and mulch them until firmly rooted ; they 

 would prune them properly and guard them carefully from 

 all injury by man and beast, realizing that a healthy and 

 vigorous tree is less liable to suffer from insects and disease 

 than one which has been mutilated and enfeebled in any 

 way. If we compare a street properly planted with 

 another, along whose curb a row of spindling saplings 

 from the woods have been carelessly set, we shall realize 

 that the greater portion of the money which has been spent 

 in planting street trees in this country has been worse than 

 wasted. 



Among the new tenement-house laws for this city, re- 

 cently passed at Albany as a consequence of the work of 

 the Tenement-house Investigating Committee, of which 

 Mr. R. W. Gilder was the chairman, none are more impor- 

 tant than those which relate to the speedy establishment of 

 small parks in the most crowded districts of New York. 

 One bill decrees that the Mulberry Bend Park, the East 

 River Extension, and St. John's Cemetery Park, the forma- 

 tion of which was determined upon some years ago, shall at 

 once be carried to completion. Another bill provides for 

 the expenditure of $3,000,000 for new small parks in the 

 East Side district lying south of Fourth Street and east of 

 Catherine Street and the Bowery — the most densely popu- 

 lated region in the known world, and at present wholly 

 devoid of open areas or green leaves. A part of each park 

 here established must be finished as a playground ; and 

 the law permits school-houses with playgrounds, as well as 

 public baths, to be erected within the opened areas. A third 

 bill provides that "hereafter no school-house shall be con- 

 structed in New York without an open-air playground at- 

 tached to or used in connection vi'ith the same." Consequent- 

 ly, the Board of Education, in purchasing grounds for new 

 schools, has begun to buv additional strips of land for play- 

 ground purposes, while the Board of Education, the Health 

 Board and the Park Commissioners are already in consul- 

 tation in regard to the best sites for the East Side parks. 



These laws show a wholesome advance in public senti- 

 ment, and they indicate that the people who direct the 

 thought and action of the city have come to believe that 

 public parks are quite as essential to the health and com- 

 fort and morals of the city as a pure water-supply or a 

 good system of sewage, and that a civilized community 

 can no more flourish without them than without hospitals, 

 libraries, museums, colleges and churches. 



Some Unusual Androgynous Flower-clusters. 



IN the last volume of Garden and Forest some notice 

 was taken of the occasional monoecious or polygamous 

 character of the flowering of Poplars and Willows. An- 

 drogyny, or the occurrence of both staminate or pistillate 

 flowers together on the same spike, when normally they 

 are separate, is much more common among Willows than 

 is generally supposed, and there are numerous references 

 to it in botanical literature dating back very many years. 



It may be worth while to record several observations of 

 variations from the normal habit of flowering among sev- 

 eral other kinds of trees. Records of such cases are by no 

 means new, and some occurrences of this nature are given 

 in Dr. Maxwell T. Masters' celebrated work. Vegetable 

 Teratology , published by the Ray Society, of London, in 

 1869. Among monoecious plants it is a common thing to 

 find young trees bearing only male or female flowers, but 

 both kinds of flowers are generally produced as the trees 

 grovsr older. Abnormal development of the flowers is. un- 

 doubtedly sometimes brought about by peculiar and unusual 



conditions in the situation and surroundings of the plant or 

 in circumstances which affect some portion of it. Often, 

 however, no cause is apparent for any unusual develop- 

 ment in blossoming. 



PiNus HETEROPHYLLA (CuBENSis). — The Piucs are monoecious, 

 the clusters of pollen-bearing flowers being commonly pro- 

 duced at the end of the growths of the previous season or about 

 the bases of the new shoots, while the pistillate flowers or 

 young cones are usually borne at or near the extremities of 

 the young growths of the season on the longer more vig- 

 orous branches and higher up on the tree. Dr. J. H. Melli-- 

 champ, a careful observer, at Bluffton. South Carolina, has 

 found large numbers of androgynous flowers on Pinus hete- 

 rophylla. The male flowers or catkins are ordinarily from 

 an inch to an inch and a half in length when fully devel- 

 oped, and the female flowers or cones are from about three- 

 eighths to half an inch long when in condition for fertiliza- 

 tion. In the androgynous specimens male catkins or 

 flowers of normal proportions bear on their tips well- 

 developed female flowers or cones of about the ordinary 

 size. There is a marked constriction at the point of con- 

 nection. In the phyllotaxy or arrangement of the scales, 

 and in every other feature, the flowers of each kind appear 

 perfectly normal. The female flowers probably become ■ 

 properly fertilized, but they wither and dry off with the 

 male portion, and none have been known to develop into 

 mature cones. Regarding this peculiarity in P. heterophylla. 

 Dr. Mellichamp writes : " I first noticed this peculiar con- 

 dition in February, 1893, again in 1S94, and now again in 

 1895, all on the same tree. The tree is a small one, but of 

 good girth, growing on an exposed point of land on May 

 River. It is about twenty-five or thirty feet high, and has 

 been exposed to fire and the submerging of the surround- 

 ing land by salt-water in the last great storms, but this was 

 after I first noticed the bisexual flowers in 1893. The tree 

 stands alone, and seems quite vigorous. The abnormal 

 flowers are found chiefly on the lower and middle branches 

 in the proportion of, perhaps, one-tenth of the abnormal to 

 the normal flowers." Since writing the foregoing, Dr. 

 Mellichamp has sent word that he has found another tree 

 of P. heterophylla bearing androgynous flowers, this tree 

 being larger than the one first noticed. Since this 

 note of androgynous flovv-ers on Pinus Cubensis was 

 written, we have received from Dr. H. Christ a notice of 

 the same thing, based upon Dr. Mellichamp's observations 

 and specimens. It was published by Dr. Christ in Le Bulletin 

 de la Sociiii' Royale de Dotanique de Belgique, xxxiii., deu- 

 xieme partie, pp. 88 92. 



PrcEA Canadensis (alba). — During several seasons two White 

 Spruce-trees, growing on rather poor gravelly soil, have been 

 observed to bear a number of androgynous flowers among 

 innumerable normal ones of both kinds. These androgy- 

 nous flowers are about of the normal size, and the apical 

 portions of the spikes are occupied by the female flowers 

 or little cones, while the male organs are on the lower or 

 basal ends. In some specimens the male flowers take up 

 fully two-thirds, or even three-fourths, of the spike, leaving 

 only a short few-scaled female flower at the tip ; in other 

 specimens the length of the catkin is divided pretty evenly 

 between the two sexes. There is no noticeable constric- 

 tion or dividing line where the two sexes adjoin. In a 

 flower collected from a third tree this season the male 

 scales extend up among the female scales much more on 

 one side than the other, and the two kinds of scales appear 

 spirally continuous. None of these androgynous flowers 

 have Iseen known to develop mature cones. Somewhat 

 similar cases have been recorded by other observers as 

 noticed on Picea Canadensis, P. excelsa and Larix larcina 

 (under the synonym of L. microcarpa), and are referred to 

 in Dr. Masters' work already mentioned. On the trees 

 under notice the androgynous flowers are borne on low 

 branches within easy reach, and these branches are some- 

 what affected by the cone-like galls of chermes. 



Betula papyrifera. — Our Birches are monoecious, the 

 male flowers, as partiall)' developed catkins, being con- 



