460 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 403. 



do not seem to be attractive to growers or to the general 

 public, although many of them are very interesting. Of 

 the new seedlings probably the best was Mrs. Perrin, shown 

 bv E. G. Hill, of Richmond, Indiana, which is a counterpart 

 of Ivory in form and texture, but of a bright rose-pink, re- 

 markable for its decided color and freedom from any shading. 

 Besides the exhibitors named, Mrs. B. P. Cheney, Joseph H. 

 White and J. W. Howard took many of the prizes in the dif- 

 ferent classes. 



Individual flowers on single-stemmed plants were here in 

 their usual profusion, variety and size, but, marvelous as is 

 the skill which succeeds in growing one flower of monstrous 

 proportions upon ayoungClirysanthemum plant, it is a question 

 which many people of taste would answer in the negative if 

 they were asked whether these enormous blooms are really 

 as beautiful as those produced in a more natural and normal 

 way. They indicate what a skillful gardener can do, and they 

 are effective in large decorations, but they are not only expen- 

 sive to raise, they are distinctly coarse. Such specimen plants 

 as are often shown in our exhibitions now are certainly mar- 

 velous examples of cultural skill. To produce a dozen such 

 plants, however, as those which win first prizes at our best 

 exhibitions, requires the constant labor for months of a skilled 

 gardener and the exclusive use of a large greenhouse. The 

 plants remain in flower for two or three weeks, and that is the 

 end of them. They are then thrown away, and the operation 

 has to be gone through with again the next year. The same 

 amount of care and labor devoted to hard-wooded plants 

 would, in a few years, produce great results in plants that 

 would go on increasing in beauty and value for half a century, 

 and would be, of course, of real permanent value. Chrysan- 

 themums are easily raised, and they bloom at a season when 

 flowers are scarce and in demand. They have attained in this 

 country a greater and more widespread popularity than that 

 enjoyed by any other class of plants. It is questionable, how- 

 ever, whether their popularity, at least in their present form, 

 will continue, and no one would be surprised if the overgrown 

 specimens, which are now so much admired in flower-shows 

 and florists' shops, do not give way to more artistic and less 

 expensive flowers. 



Notes. 



An interesting variety of the common Elder is described in 

 Meehans Motithly. It is simply a sport from Sambucus Cana- 

 densis, in which the berries, instead of being deep wine color 

 or almost black, as usual, are white. 



Dr. Chapman's herljarium of southern plants, upon which is 

 based his Flora of the Southern States, has been purchased 

 by Mr. George W. Vanderbilt, and will serve as a nucleus of 

 the scientific collections which he is establishing on his estate 

 at Biltmore, in North Carolina, in connection with an arbore- 

 tum and systematically managed forest. 



Saintpaulia ionantha, referred to in a previous number of this 

 journal, was awarded a first-class certificate during the recent 

 exhibition in Orange, arranged by the New Jersey Floricultural 

 Society. It is now very floriferous, and will, no doubt, become 

 very popular. For the last two months it has flowered with- 

 out interruption and is still improving ; new buds and flowers 

 constantly take the place of the old ones. The flowers vary 

 from a pale lavender to a very deep purplish blue. 



The young Dutchess County Horticultural Society lield its 

 first Chrysanthemum show at Poughkeepsie last week, and it 

 was exceptionally good. The competition for cut flowers in 

 lots of twelve and twenty-four, both on their stems and on 

 boards, brought out as fine a display of good Howers as is ever 

 seen in the larger city exhibitions. James Blair, gardener to 

 Ogden Mills, Esq.; W. Gomersall, gardener to Winthrop Sar- 

 gent, Esq.; Thomas Harrison, gardener to Governor Morton, 

 and J. H. Powell, gardener to Samuel Thome, Esq., took the 

 leading prizes. The special competition for twelve blooms 

 of Golden Wedding brought out another remarkable lot of 

 flowers. There was a display of Orchids by C. Dumper, gar- 

 dener to F. Newbold, Esq., and an abundance of well-grown 

 Roses from many of the large private places in the vicinity. 

 Poughkeepsie is noted for its production of Violets, and the 

 prize which was offered for the best hundred flowers of 

 Marie Louise was won, after close competition, by J. Sloan 

 & Sons. The society's prize for violets was taken by C. W. 

 Bahret. 



During the warm damp days of last week the supply of field 

 mushrooms was so abundant that they could be bought for as 



little as forty cents a pound even in the fancy-fruit stores. 

 During much of the year mushrooms command prices that 

 are proliibitive to many housekeepers, and this warm autumn 

 weather makes what is usually a luxury available for every 

 table. Summer squashes from the south cost seven cents 

 each. The season for Kalamazoo celery will be ended in 

 another fortnight. The Michigan crop is always cleared up 

 during early winter, since the boggy soil freezes early. Later 

 on supphes will come from Rochester, in this state, where the 

 warmer soil makes late banking up possible. Hot-house 

 tomatoes are coming from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and 

 Long Island, and sell for fifty cents a pound. Hot-house rad- 

 ishes bring ten cents for three bunches. Artichokes from 

 France cost twenty-five cents each, and Brussels sprouts from 

 the same country twenty cents a pound ; the heads of this 

 imported vegetable are more solid than those from near-by 

 farms, the best of which cost eighteen cents a quart. 



The showiest apples now noticed in the retail stores are deep 

 red Wine-saps, the brighter-colored Spitzenbergs and striped 

 Gravensteins ; Lady apples cost twenty cents a quart. Richly 

 colored, smooth quinces from California are offered at reasona- 

 ble prices, and persimmons from that state can be bought for 

 thirty cents a dozen. Grapes from California are still plentiful, 

 of the largest size and rich coloring. Flame Tokays, Red 

 Emperors, Black Cornichons, White Malagas and the more 

 recently arrived Verdels make a striking show in the whole- 

 sale warehouses set out in large numbers of double boxes. 

 The Verdel grapes come in short heavily shouldered bunches, 

 the berries slightly oblong, yellowish green, covered with 

 bloom, and these are as showy in a way as the more bril- 

 liantly colored grapes. Hot-house grapes are arriving from 

 Liverpool twice a week. This fruit has been unusually hand- 

 some, and the importers have quicklysold out to retail dealers 

 at $1.50 to $2.00 a pound. Sugar-loaf pineapples from Havana 

 cost fifteen cents each. Tangerines from Jamaica now bring 

 fifty cen's a dozen, oranges thirty-five cents, and grape-fruit 

 fifteen cents each. Jamaica oranges brought comparatively 

 low prices recently owing to poor quality, $3.00 a barrel being 

 the average last week. Receipts of oranges from the West 

 Indies thus far this season are said to amount to 60,000 barrels 

 and 18,000 boxes. The sliipments during the corresponding 

 term last year were merely nominal, owing to the large Florida 

 crop. This year that state will produce but 100,000 boxes, 

 against 5,000,000 last season, and hardly any of this fruit 

 will be sent north, since the Florida hotels can use all 

 of it. 



Mr. J. H. Hale writes to The Rural Neiv-Yorker of an inter- 

 esting experiment now in progress at Meriden. Connecticut, 

 where Mr. Andrew J. Coe has been grafling different varieties 

 of the Japan Chestnut on American stock. To satisfy himself 

 of the hardiness of these exotic Chestnuts he grafted several 

 of them four years ago on native seedlings in low ground, 

 where the frosts of early autumn and winter are the most 

 dangerous. Grafts put into three-inch stock eight feet from 

 the ground have now formed a strong bushy head ten feet 

 across, which bore freely this season, in spite of a severe win- 

 ter, when Snyder Blackberries, the most hardy variety that is 

 grown in New England, were killed to the ground. Mr. Coe 

 has bought the best of Mr. Luther Burbank's Japanese seed- 

 lings, and on the wooded hillsides above the city of Meriden 

 he bas grafted an eighteen-acre block of native Chestnut 

 sprouts with these improved varieties. Grafts were set both 

 by the cleft and the crown methods, mostly on stocks two 

 inches in diameter and four feet from the ground. Part of the 

 work last spring was completed by the middle of April just as 

 the sprouts were beginning to start, and the remainder was 

 done later in May, when the leaves were well developed. Not 

 more than one out of four of the early-set cions grew, but 

 seventy-five percent, of the later grafts have lived, although 

 they are not growing as strongly as the few of the earlier ones 

 which survived. The nuts of one variety called the Early, 

 while not so sweet as the Burbank nuts, are beautiful in ap- 

 pearance and quite as rich as the average of American chest- 

 nuts, and since they mature fully three weelcs earlier than our 

 native nuts, they will probably prove of great value for the 

 market. The nuts are of medium .=.ize, and so early that they 

 are all gone before the American, the Spanish or the average 

 Japan chestnuts ripen. The tree yields a large crop, which 

 ripens all at once. Mr. Coe planted a nut of another variety 

 received from Mr. Burbank which came into fruiting eighteen 

 months after the seed was planted. The seedling is a profuse 

 bearer of large fine-looking nuts and of better quality than any 

 of the European nuts or their crosses. It is later than the 

 earliest variety, but earlier than our native Chestnuts. 



