July 31, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



301 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — The Tree Yuccas in the Un-ted States. (With figure.) 301 



Japanese Vegetation in Calitornia Charles Hmvard Shtnn. 302 



Oil of Ilirch Professor Henry Trimble. 303 



Notes tVoin a Botanic Garden — I Professor IV. f. Beal. 303 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter IV. Watson. 30.^ 



Plant Note,s 305 



Cultural Department: — Air Drainage in Orchards T. H. Hos/dus, M.D. 306 



Cupheas A". Cameron. 307 



The Flower Garden IK N. Crai^. 307 



The Roclv Garden T. D. Hatfielil. 30S 



The Tussock Moth, Orgvia leucostigma Dr. E. B. Sotitlnuick. 30S 



Correspondence : — The Good Worlc of an Improvement Association at Narra- 



gansett Pier M. (r. Wan Rensselaer. 30S 



Recent Publications 30S 



Notes 310 



Illustration : — Yucca macrocarpa, Fig. 42 305 



The Tree Yuccas in the United States. 



PERSONS, whose only acquaintance with Yuccas 

 is with the little Bear Grass, or Yucca filifera, so 

 common in northern gardens, whether they are old-fash- 

 ioned or new-fashioned, will not easily forget the fii'st 

 sight of a tree Yucca growing on its native desert. The 

 Yucca is an exclusively New World plant, and is dis- 

 tributed from the shores of Virginia and the plains of Col- 

 orado to Central America. There are probably si.xteen or 

 eighteen species of these plants, although many more have 

 been described — often in Europe from cultivated individuals. 

 Yuccas are difficult plants for the botanist to manage, 

 owing to their size and nature ; and it is almost impossible 

 to preserve in herbaria specimens that adequately ihustrate 

 the species. Individuals of the same species vary widely 

 in the length and width of their leaves and in the size of 

 their flowers and fruit, so that the seedlings of one plant, 

 scattered through the gardens of different countries, might 

 be given different names by botanists familiar only with a 

 few individuals. The difficulty of knowing these plants, 

 too, is much increased by the fact that Yuccas very rarely 

 produce fruit in cultivation, insects which only live in the 

 regions inhabited by the different species being essential 

 to secure the fertilization of the flowers. It is not surpris- 

 ing, therefore, that there is hardly a group of garden-plants 

 about which there is so much confusion in books, and this 

 confusion will never be cleared up until the different species 

 are studied extensively in the field, and then gathered to- 

 gether in some California or Mexican garden where their 

 development under normal conditions can be patiently 

 watched. 



The territory of the United States is inhabited by twelve 

 or thirteen species. Of the distribution and character of 

 these species much, fortunately, is already known from the 

 careful studies of Engelmann and Trelease, although there 

 is still plenty to learn about them. Seven of the species, 

 ranging from the shores of the south Atlantic states, along 

 the southern boundary of the United States to the coast of 

 southern California, grow up from the ground with single 

 stems, which usually branches in old age, and, there- 

 fore, must be considered trees— but strange-looking ti'ees — 

 with long rigid dagger or bayonet-like leaves and enor- 



mous clusters of creamy-white flowers, and with very little in 

 common with the Birches, Pines and Willows of the north- 

 ern forest. 



The distribution, at least, of these seven tree Yuccas of 

 the United States is at last fairly well known. Beginning 

 in the east. Yucca aloifolia occupies a narrow coast belt 

 from the neighborhood of the mouth of the Cape Fear 

 River, in North Carolina, to Louisiana, growing in sandy 

 Pine-barrens, and often on the sandy beaches of bays and 

 salt-water lagoons. It is a sparingly branched tree, some- 

 times twenty feet high, growing with a single stem or with 

 a cluster of spreading stems, and short dark green narrow, 

 rigid leaves. This is the most common of all the tree Yuc- 

 cas in cultivation, and is found under a number of names 

 in gardens all over the world. It is to this species that the 

 commonly cultivated variegated Yuccas belong. 



Traveling from east to west, the next species encoun- 

 tered is Yucca Treculiana, the Spanish Dagger or Spanish 

 Bayonet of western Texas, a tree sometimes thirty feet in 

 height, with a comparatively slender trunk, numerous wide-' 

 spreading branches and long, sword-like, concave, blue- 

 green leaves. This plant is common in south- eastern Texas, 

 forming near the mouth of the Rio Grande, just back of the 

 sand dunes of the coast, straggling stunted forests, and 

 further inland low impenetrable thickets. Southward it 

 ranges over the plains of north-eastern Mexico, and west- 

 ward up the Rio Grande valley to the high plateau in the 

 south-western part of the state. It is this species which is 

 now such a common and splendid ornament of the gar- 

 dens of Austin, San Antonio and other cities and towns of 

 western Texas. The portrait of one of these cultivated 

 plants was published in the first volume of this journal 

 (f 10). 



On the plateau of south-western Texas another arbores- 

 cent species is very abundant and by far the most conspic- 

 uous feature of the vegetation in this part of the country. 

 This is the Yucca baccata macrocarpa of Torrey, who 

 united it with the stemless Yucca baccata of the Colorado 

 plains, the Yucca baccata australis of Engelmann, the 

 Yucca australis of Trelease, and the largest of the Yuccas 

 that grow naturally within the territory of the United States. 

 The distribution of this noble plant, which is occasionally 

 forty feet high, is not yet satisfactorily determined. It 

 ranges westward across the Rio Grande into New Mexico, 

 but how far is not yet known ; and it is probably this spe- 

 cies which is seen by the traveler on the Mexican Central 

 Railroad in Chihuahua. It may be distinguished from 

 Yucca Treculiana, with which it grows near Sierra Blanca, 

 in south-western Texas, by its deep green flat leaves, by 

 the longer pendulous branches of the flower-cluster, by the 

 larger and narrower flowers which hang gracefully on long 

 slender pedicels and by the slender hooked beak of the fruit. 

 A young tree of this Yucca was cut last April at Sierra Blanca 

 and sent to New York to represent the species in the Jesup 

 Collection of North American Woods in the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History. After its long journey to New 

 York by rail and ocean the rootless plant developed its 

 flower-cluster in the Museum, where it was photographed 

 by Mn De L. C. Laudy, of the Museum. A reproduction of 

 this photograph appears on page 305 of this issue and gives 

 some idea of the habit of a small plant of this species, and 

 of the form and character of its magnificent cluster of 

 flowers, which well distinguish it from Yucca baccata. 



From the plains of western Texas another species ranges 

 over those of southern New Mexico and Arizona and the 

 adjacent borders of Mexico. This is Yucca elata, a plant 

 of entirely different aspect, with a slender stem ten or 

 twelve feet tall, branched and clothed at the top with short, 

 narrow, rigid leaves, each branch being surmounted in 

 early summer with a branched panicle of flowers often five 

 feet long, and raised on a slender stalk from seven to ten 

 feet high. At Deming, in New Mexico, at the junction of 

 the Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 

 Railroads, this plant begins to be abundant, and a little 

 farther west it dots in countless thousands the desert which 



