290 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 386. 



Notes. 



Large quantities of the dark red fruits of Prunus Simoni 

 reached the eastern market in excellent condition during the 

 first weeks of July from California, and have appeared on the 

 fruit-stands as apple plums, an appropriate name, as they 

 reseml:)le in shape and color some of the small autumn apples, 

 while the flavor also suggests an apple. The fruit of this 

 curious Chinese tree, which is intermediate between the Plum 

 and the Apricot in its characters, apparently travels well, and 

 as it ripens early promises to be a good addition to our early 

 summer stone fruits. 



A Pennsylvania farmers' club has been testing the amount 

 of shrinkage by weight of Indian corn which is kept over the 

 winter. The results coincide generally with what has already 

 been reported from tests made at the experiment stations. 

 Between husking-time and the first of June corn will lose 

 about one-sixth of its weight, and allowing for other losses and 

 expenses it was agreed that it would be as profitable to accept 

 fortv cents for a bushel of corn in the ear at husking-time, as 

 it would be to receive fifty cents for the same amount on the 

 first of June or thereabouts. 



Growers of English walnuts in California are complaining 

 of a disease which appears as a black spot at the apex of the 

 nut. Some fungus or insect seems to destroy the tissues of 

 the nut-hull, and after this rind is penetrated it is supposed that 

 a bacillus enters and disorganizes the tissue next to the nut 

 proper. An agent of the Department of Agriculture has been 

 studying the disease and recommends the winter spraying of 

 the affected trees with Bordeaux mixture, although he con- 

 fesses that this treatment is suggested only as an experiment, 

 for the cause of the disease has not yet been satisfactorily 

 worked out. 



The Butterfly-weed, Asclepias tuberosa, may well stand as a 

 representative plant of our hot dry midsummers. In sterile 

 sand or the open gravel of thirsty uplands, where other plants 

 can hardly exist, its flowers are resplendent with a vivid orange 

 which approaches red in some individuals, and pales toward 

 yellow in others, those which chance to become established in 

 rich or moist ground showing usually the most red. There 

 are places in the garden border where these brilliant flowers 

 can be effectively used, but, after all, they never make so 

 strong an appeal to the eye or to the imagination elsewhere as 

 they do when glowing on some parched and lonely hillside. 



The Wisconsin red oak has for several years taken high rank 

 in furniture and finishing factories on account of its softness, 

 adaptability to shop work, its lively color and figure. When 

 plain-sawed it commands higher prices than any oak, although 

 quarter-sawed white oak is more expensive. According to 

 The North-ivestern Lumberman, this Red Oak belt in Wiscon- 

 sin is not wide, and at the rate tlie timber is being cut off it 

 probably will not last more than six or seven years. In the 

 north-west part of the state, which is not yet opened up by 

 railroads, there is a heavily timbered area which may contain 

 much Red Oak, but it will soon be traversed by a railway 

 from Duluth. 



The latest issue of the Revue Horticole to reach us contains 

 a colored plate of the curious and beautiful Lotus peliorhyn- 

 chus, an exceedingly rare plant of the Canary Islands, where it 

 grows exclusively on Teneriffe on rocky cliffs of the ravine of 

 Tamadava. The curious bright red flowers, hooked like the 

 beak of a parrot, recall in general aspect those of an Ery- 

 thrina or a Dianthus, rather than the flowers of a Lotus. Like 

 many other plants of dry regions, it does not adapt itself par- 

 ticularly well to greenhouse cultivafion, but will doubtless 

 prove to be an admirable plant for southern California, where 

 it may be expected to find the conditions necessary to develop 

 its long, slender, graceful branches and brilliant flowers. 



An enterprising farmer in Simsbury, Connecticut, turned 

 the course of a brook on his place through a canal six feet 

 wide along the slope of a hill, and placing a hydraulic ram 

 seven or eight feet below the extremity of the canal he forced 

 the water sixty-five feet upward through a three-inch pipe into 

 a pond which held 300,000 gallons. This pond he made by 

 throwing up an embankment in a well-selected spot on the 

 hillside. Having bought three hundred and fifty feet of dam- 

 aged fire-hose at fifteen cents a foot and adjusting a large 

 sprinkler at the end he was ready to irrigate his Strawberry 

 patch. According to the Rural New Yorker, a student from 

 the Storrs Agricultural School was detailed to watch this irri- 

 gating scheme, and the result was that plants in the watered 

 rows yielded considerably more than twice as many pounds 

 of berries, which were larger, brighter and more attractive 

 than the fruit on unwatered rows, and they were in great de- 



mand at high prices when ordinary berries could hardly be 

 disposed of at all. 



Bulletin No. 4 of the South Dakota Agricultural College and 

 Experiment Station contains a list of the native trees and 

 shrubs of South Dakota, by Professor Thomas A. Williams, 

 botanist and entomologist of the station. One hundred and 

 seventeen species of woody plants are included in this report ; 

 of these thirty-seven are trees, seventy-four are shrubs and six 

 are woody climbers. The region is interesting from the fact 

 that it is the meeting-ground of representatives of the eastern 

 and western floras, the eastern Hop Hornbeam, for example, 

 Ostrya Virginiana, being abundant in the Black Hills and in 

 the north-eastern part ot the state, while the Yellow Pine, Pinus 

 ponderosa, of the west, is the common and only species in 

 the same region. The arborescent vegetation, however, is 

 rather eastern than western, as among the thirty-seven trees, 

 in addition to the Pine, we find only the following inhabitants 

 of the Pacific forests : Populus angustifolia, the Narrow- 

 leaved Poplar of the Rocky Mountains ; Salix flavescens, a 

 species widely scattered all over western America and found in 

 the Black Hills in a shrubby form ; Betula occidentalis, Cerco- 

 carpus parvifolius and Acer glabrum. The other species be- 

 long either exclusively to the eastern flora, or, like Juniperus 

 Virginiana, Betula papyracea and Picea Canadensis, range 

 across the continent. 



In the July issue of The Botanical Magazine, Sir Joseph 

 Hooker describes Pyrus crat^egifolia, a small bushy tree which 

 grows spontaneously in woods near Florence, Bologna and 

 Lucca, and in a few other localities in northern Italy. Its 

 nearest ally appears to be P. terminalis, from which it differs 

 in the more cordate base of the leaves, which are incisely ser- 

 rate and tomentose on the lower surface, and in its simple 

 terminal corymbs of long-stalked flowers and in the small ellip- 

 soidal red fruit. It is the P. Florentina, Mespilus Florentina 

 and the Crataegus Florentina of some authors, and appears to 

 be an exceedingly rare plant, both in its native country and in 

 cultivation. So far as we know, this pretty and graceful species 

 has not yet been introduced into the United States. Among 

 other plants of horticultural interest figured in this issue are 

 Rubus lasiostylus, a Chinese Raspberry, from central China, 

 where it was discovered in 1888 by Dr. Augustine Henry, and 

 Senecio Hualtata, one of the group of gigantic herbaceous 

 Ragworts, natives of extra-tropical South America. It is a tall 

 stout herb with a towering stem five feet high and great radicle 

 leaves, sometimes eighteen inches long and from tour to six 

 inches Itroad, and a pyramidal panicle of crowded clusters of 

 pale primrose-colored flov/ers. At Kew, where this plant was 

 raised in 1890, it proved perfectly hardy and flowers profusely. 



Some thirty car-loads of California fruits, other than oranges, 

 were disposed of in this city during last week. Among pears 

 were Bartletts, Clapp's Favorite and Bloodgood. These are 

 not yet fully grown and so are undersized and lacking in color. 

 St. John, the earliest yellow peach to come from the western 

 coast, now brings the highest prices paid for this fruit, $2.15 a 

 box, at wholesale. Twenty car-loads of California oranges 

 were sold at auction during the same time. The fruit was of 

 good quality and the best brought $3 00 to $3.50 a box. Not- 

 withstanding the arrival of about 165,000 packages of Medi- 

 terranean lemons within the past fortnight, the demand from 

 western cities has made ready sales and prices have been 

 high. Sicily lemons of the grade known as extra fancy com- 

 mand $4.50 for a box containing 300 fruits, and those known 

 as fancy, from Majori, bring $6.50. Plums of contrasting 

 colors, give variety to the fruit-stands, as the large, roundish- 

 oval Washington, a yellow isti-green ; the large flat Simoni, 

 bright orange and red ; the Satsuma or Blood Plum, intro- 

 duced from Japan by Luther Burbank, its common name sug- 

 gesting the color of skin and flesh. These sell for forty to 

 fifty cents a dozen, the popular Tragedy prune costing twenty- 

 five cents. Other varieties offered are Royal Hative, Peach, 

 Duane Purple and German Prune. Bananas continue to arrive 

 by the steamer load, one importer alone having twenty- one 

 chartered vessels in this service. This fruit has recently been 

 exceptionally good and prices last week advanced on an aver- 

 age of twenty cents, bunches of the largest size from Jamaica, 

 Aspinwall, Sama, Banes and Port Limon selling for $1.25 to 

 $1.50 by the truck load. A few boxes of Chasselas de Fon- 

 tainbleau grapes are herefrom California. Crates of the Russian 

 Alexander apples and the more showy white-fleshed Red As- 

 trachan, from the same state, sell for $3.00 in the wholesale 

 markets. Large, showy nectarines, from New England hot 

 houses, are shown in the fancy fruit-stores and cost forty cents 

 apiece, and grapes grown under glass in the same section 

 sell for $1.75 a pound. 



