January 6, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by- 



Professor C. S. Sakgknt. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articihs :— While Pines. (Wilh figures) i 



Unsatisfactory Tree-planting 2 



Crosses and Crossing of Plants Professor L. H. Bailey. 2 



New OR Little-known Plants : — New Orchids R, A. Rolfc. 4 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson. 4 



Cultural Department: — A Remodeled Plant-iiouse. (Witii figure.) 



J. N. Gerard. 6 



Cultivation of the Hellebores M. Barker. 8 



Auriculas E. O. Orfet. g 



The Thrifts J. Woodward Manning. 9 



The Whorl-flower, Morina longifolia J. W. iti. g 



Correspondence ; — In the Shore Towns of Massachusetts. — V. ..J.B. Harrison. g 



Rare Varieties of Apples E. Wiliiams, H. E. Vajt Deman. 11 



Meetings of Societies :— American Forestry Association 11 



Notes 12 



Illustrations : — Pinus Monticola on the Californian Sierras, Fig. i 5 



Pinus Monticola on the Californian Sierras, Fig. z 7 



Diagram of Plant-house, Fig. 3 8 



White Pines. 



OF the true White Pines, a natural group, so called 

 probably from the color of the wood the different 

 species yield, and always easily recognized by the arrange- 

 ment of their leaves in clusters of fives, surrounded by 

 loose deciduous sheaths and by their thin cone-scales, six 

 of the eleven or twelve species inhabit the territory of the 

 United States, where, indeed, so rich is the composition of 

 our forests, are found fully one-half of all the different 

 Pines now known to exist. The type of the White Pines 

 is the tree universally known in all the eastern and north- 

 ern states by that name. It is the most valuable timber- 

 tree of the region it inhabits, and no other tree, perhaps, 

 has ever played such an important part in the material de- 

 velopment of a country. It has brought cities and railroads 

 and great fleets into existence, and far and wide over this 

 broad land has furnished employment to tens of thousands 

 of laborers and supplied material with which countless 

 homes have been built. 



Europe possesses a single White Pine, a rather un- 

 important tree confined to the mountain regions of 

 Albania and Macedonia, and botanically not unlike the 

 White Pine of the Himalayas, Pinus excelsa, a noble tree, 

 attaining sometimes the height of a hundred and fifty feet, 

 and an important element in the coniferous forests of 

 Butan and the upper valley of the Indus. The forests of 

 Japan and the other islands of the north Pacific contain two 

 or three White Pines, but these are small trees of no great 

 economic importance, although the picturesque Pinus parvi- 

 flora is one of the handsomest and most satisfactory of the 

 smaller exotic Pines which can be grown in our northern 

 gardens. 



But the centre of distribution of the White Pines is west- 

 ern America, where they occur in half a dozen different 

 forms from British Columbia to central Mexico. The great- 

 est of them all, and the noblest of all the Pine race, Pinus 

 Lambertiana, or, as it is popularly called, the Sugar Pine, 



disputes with the Sequoias the honor of being the largest 

 of American trees, and on the seaward slopes of the Sierras 

 rises not infrequently to the prodigious height of three 

 hundred feet, spreading far and wide its great branches, in 

 autumn pendulous under the weight of its superb cones. The 

 Sugar Pine, which does not range far above the northern 

 borders of California, is a southern tree, and at the north is 

 replaced by a species of less stately habit, but of tougher 

 constitution and wider range. This is the White Pine of 

 Montana and Idaho, where this tree, the Pinus Monticola of 

 botanists, seems most at home, although it reaches the 

 coast of British Columbia and ranges south along the Cas- 

 cade and Sierra ranges to central California, where it 

 reaches an elevation of io,oao feet. At the north, in shel- 

 tered caiions and near the margins of streams, Pinus Mon- 

 ticola becomes a noble and stately tree, sending up a tall 

 stout shaft five or six feet in diameter, and more than 

 a hundred feet in height. In less-favored situations it 

 grows less vigorously, and in California, on the summits of 

 the wind-swept Sierras, it is low, gnarled and contorted, 

 and never very abundant, but, like most alpine trees, grows 

 in isolated situations, as shelter has made it possible for 

 seedlings to struggle slowly to old age. 



The appearance of the mountain White Pine as it grows 

 at great elevations in California almost at the southern 

 limits of its range, and the general appearance of the veg- 

 etation on the summits of the high mountains of California, 

 are shown in the two illustrations which appear in this 

 issue, pages 5 and 7. They are from photographs made by 

 Dr. W. H. Rollins, of Boston, on the slopes above the 

 Yosemite Valley, and we are indebted to his courtesy for 

 permission to reproduce them. 



In general appearance the western White Pine has a 

 strong resemblance to its eastern relative, although the 

 branches are stouter and are inclined to grow in an upright 

 direction, giving the young trees a narrow pyramidal habit. 

 The color of the foliage and the character of the bark of 

 the two trees are very much alike, although the western 

 species can always be distinguished from the eastern by 

 its much larger cones, sometimes eight or nine inches long, 

 and by its more rigid and less serrulate leaves. Of the 

 conifers of western America none is more hardy or grows 

 more satisfactorily in the eastern states, with the exception 

 always of three or four species of Colorado, and of the 

 western Pines it is the only one which up to this time has 

 really succeeded in this part of the country, where several 

 fair specimens large enough to produce their cones every 

 year can now be seen — ^interesting objects to the student 

 of trees, but hardly distinct enough from our own White 

 Pine to fix the attention of the casual observer. 



As a timber-tree in some parts of Montana and in the 

 Coeur d'Alene and Bitter Root regions of [Idaho | Pinus 

 Monticola is of great value, furnishing as it does the only 

 high-grade soft lumber produced there, although, unfortu- 

 nately, the rapidly growing population of the north-west is 

 fast exterminating all the accessible and all the large trees, 

 which are manufactured into lumber but little inferior to the 

 ■best eastern white pine. 



Of the other White Pines which inhabit the territory of 

 the United States Pinus flexilis is scattered on high moun- 

 tain-slopes from western Texas to northern Montana, and 

 to Arizona, Utah, Nevada and south-eastern California. 

 It is usually a small stunted alpine tree comparatively rare 

 at the south but forming open forests on the eastern slopes 

 of the Rocky Mountains of Montana, where it is low and 

 round-topped and the prevailing tree; and on some of the 

 mountain-ranges of central Nevada, growing tall and 

 shapely and furnishing the best lumber of the region ; 

 although, perhaps, it would be more correct to say that 

 twenty years ago it furnished the best lumber found in the 

 Great Basin ; for the mining camps and the railroads have 

 already exterminated the Nevada Pine-forests as sources of 

 lumber-supply. 



On the high mountains of the north-west Pinus flexilis is 

 replaced by another White Pine which much resembles it 



