October 2j, 1S95.] 



Garden and Forest. 



423 



cultivation has now largely destroyed it. It is the largest of 

 the Habenarias, being sometimes four feet high, and blooms 

 from the last of June till August. H.blephariglottis, the White- 

 fringed Orchis, is a plant of the peat-swamps or open bor- 

 ders of wet woods, and is our rarest species. The white 

 flowers are very beautiful, being similar to those of H. 

 ciliaris, but with a lip less abundantly and more irregularly 

 fringed. It is a lower plant than most of the other fringed 

 Orchids, rarely more than a foot high. 



Goodyera pubescens, one of the Rattlesnake Plantains, 

 is sparingly found in the Pine district. The dense spike of 

 greenish white, glandular pubescent flowers appears in 

 July and August. Its chief attraction is the tuft of thick 

 and spotted or white reticulated leaves at the base of the 

 flower-stalk. Their texture is rich, and their variegation 

 makes it one of our most beautiful-leaved plants. Closely 

 allied to this in floral structure are two species of Spiranthes, 

 or Ladies' Tresses. S. gracilis comes into bloom about the 

 first of July, and lasts well along into September. Its floral 

 season is, therefore, longer than that of any of our Orchids. 

 It is a pretty little plant with its spike of small white flow- 

 ers winding spirally around the slender stem. It is a fre- 

 quent plant of the Pine woods as well as of ravines and 

 wooded slopes. S. cernua is a stouter and much more 

 abundant plant of wet grassy lands l^oth of the Pine-bar- 

 rens and the prairies, blooming in September and October. 

 The white waxy flowers are very sweet-scented. It has a 

 tendency to persist in the meadows after they have been 

 subjected to cultivation. 



This plant closes with the frosts of autumn the Orchid 

 season, which began with Orchis spectabilis in late April. 

 At no time after the appearance of the Showy Orchis will 

 the woods and fields be without flowers of some of these 

 charming plants, most of which are handsome and all of 

 them curiously constructed. Their contrivances for cross- 

 fertilization and their insect visitors are not the least of 

 their entertaining features, and provide a constant source of 

 enjoyment and instruction for those interested in this phase 



of plant and insect life. 

 Chicago, 111. -c.. / HiU. 



Notes on some Arborescent Willows of North 

 America. — III. 



Salix alba X LUCiDA (sce fig. 57, page 424). — Leaves 

 lanceolate, narrowed at base, tapering to a cuspidate- 

 acuminate point, closely and sharply glandular serrate, 

 firm in texture, dark green, but not glossy above, glaucous 

 beneath, clothed at first with silky, ferruginous hairs, 

 which are more or less persistent beneath ; petioles glandu- 

 lar ; stipules (present only on vigorous sterile shoots) lan- 

 ceolate, half the length of the petiole ; aments leafy, 

 peduncled, gracefully cylindrical, usually flexuose ; scales 

 villous at base, naked above, erose dentate ; stamens 

 three to five ; capsule taper-pointed from an ovate base ; 

 pedicel two to three times the length of the gland ; style 

 short, but distinct; stigmas bifid.— Exsicc, Bebb, Herb. 

 Salicum, No. 41. 



Salix ALBA(subspec.) Pameachiana, Andersson, Sal. Mo7tog., 

 48 (1864); De Candolle, Prod., xvi., part ii., 242 (non S. 

 Pameachiana, Barratt!) 



Habit of growth vacillating between that of the two 

 parents ; sometimes a large, branching shrub, as in Salix 

 lucida, at others a small tree twenty-five to thirty feet in 

 height, with a distinct trunk, as in 8. alba ; year-old twigs 

 yellow or bronzed, stained with crimson in the sun, some- 

 times brownish. Near Amherst, Massachusetts, where, 

 during the summers of 1872-73-74, Professor H. G. Jesup 

 collected numerous forms of this hybrid ; Westville, Con- 

 necticut, Mr. J. A. Allen, a form with staminate aments 

 more like S. lucida, but stamens only two to three ; Provi- 

 dence, Rhode Island, Mr. S. T. Olney. The same tree 

 from which specimens were taken for Mr. Carey, which 

 served as the type of Andersson's S. alba Pameachiana. 



Ithaca, New York, Professor W. R. Dudley ; Newark, 

 Wayne County, New York, Mr. E. L. Hankenson.* 



Distinguished from Salix lucida by the narrower leaves ; 

 narrower and pointed stipules, more slender aments and 

 fewer stamens ; from S. alba by the leaves darker green 

 above, often rusty pubescent beneath, and more sharply 

 serrate ; more tapering capsules, longer pedicel and style, 

 and especially by the dentate scale, which is a distinctive 

 derivation from S. lucida. 



Salix nigra x alba (see fig. 58, page 425). — Briefly de- 

 scribed, this has the foliage of nigra and the aments of alba. 

 The leaves, however, bear a still closer resemblance to some 

 forms of S. nigra x amygdaloides, being pale or glaucous 

 beneath, with a long, tapering, cuspidate point. The peti- 

 oles are shorter, more glandular and downy. The con- 

 spicuous and persistent stipules are acute or acuminate, 

 with a mucronate point. Fertile aments scarcely distin- 

 guishable from S. alba, the capsules greenish and sessile. 

 Staminate aments cylindrical, erect, densely flowered, 

 wanting altogether the loose arrangement of the flowers 

 on the rachis common to both parents ; stamens usually 

 three, less frequently four or five. 



Found near Newark, Wayne County, New York, by Mr. 

 E. L. Hankenson, who has, for many years, assiduously 

 studied the Willows of his locality. Mr. Hankenson writes 

 of this hybrid as follows : "The two large trees which first 

 attracted my attention were forty feet or more in height, with 

 trunks one to tv^'o feet in diameter. These were cut down in 

 1882. The trees now standing, four in number, grow on 

 the bank of a brook in the same immedate locality, only a 

 few rods apart, and are about thirty feet high. Salix nigra 

 grows with them, and only a few rods above, where the 

 road crosses the brook, are several old trees of S. alba vitel- 

 lina. In general appearance this hybrid resembles S. 

 amygdaloides ; the leaves are much the same, but firmer in 

 texture, darker and more glossy above and more distinctly 

 and uniformly glaucous beneath. The large branches, too, 

 have the same smoothness and greenish hue." 



The possibility of this cross being demonstrated, it seems 

 remarkable that it has not been more frequently repeated, 

 for in the older settled portions of the country it is very 

 common to find the two parent species growing together 

 on the banks of streams. It would seem, however, that 

 the fertilization of Salix alba by S. nigra is not favored by 

 nature, and this view may find some correlative support in 

 the fact that in Europe, where S. triandra is the geographi- 

 cal equivalent of S. nigra, and a species which has entered 

 into some of the most remarkable crosses on record, no 

 hybrid between S. triandra and S. alba is mentioned by 

 Andersson. 



Rocklord. 111. M. ^. BeOO. 



Plant Notes. 



Sassafras sassafras. — Few of the forest-trees of eastern 

 North America are more beautiful at this season than this 

 member of the Laurel family when its large variously 

 formed leaves have turned to delicate shades of yellow and 

 orange, sometimes tinged with red. The fruit, which, as 

 a rule, is sparingly produced, is abundant in some years, 

 and as it ripens in September and October it adds much to 

 the beauty of the tree at this season, being dark blue and 

 surrounded at the base with a bright scarlet calyx-tube and 

 raised on a thick scarlet stalk. The birds relish its aromatic 

 flavor, however, and they usually eat it as soon as it begins 

 to color. The beauty of the Sassafras is not confined to 

 autumn. Its shining green branches in the winter, its 

 drooping clusters of pale yellow flowers in early spring. 



♦Professor Porter finds near Easton, Pennsylvania, a sinijular form so different 

 from all that have entered into the above description that I have hesitated to include 

 it amon^ the rest, and yet it can scarcelv be other than a hybrid Salix albaX lucida. 

 The young leaves accompanying the full-grown, but not overripe, capsules are fully 

 one inch broad even wlien not more than three inches long, covered with silky white 

 hairs wlien just expanding, soon smooth. The fertile aments are not disringuishable 

 from S. alba. The staminate are rather thinly llowered, but the individual flowers are 

 so conspicuous as to give the ament an appearance unlike either that of S. alba orS. 

 lucida. The scales are pale, i>^mm. wide by 3mm. long, and even more distinctly 

 dentate than in genuine lucida; stamens mostly four. 



