February 17, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



83 



quite slowly. It is in very poor sandy soil, and lias had little 

 or no care. This tree may not be properly classed with broad- 

 leaved trees, but it bears very little resemblance to ordinary 

 coniferous evergreens, and in fact has about as much the ap- 

 pearance of a Cactus. It is always of a dark rich green, and a 

 very interesting tree. 



Lonicera fragrantissima is very nearly evergreen here, and I 

 think would be so a little farther south ; it is a very desira- 

 ble plant, producing its very sweet-scented flowers all through 

 the spring months, and often having both flowers and ripe 

 berries in May. The Japanese Privet is yet full of leaves, and 

 although it makes a very regular upright growth, which is 

 rather stiff and formal, it is desirable in some positions. We 

 have growing wild in the wet swamps near the Mullica River a 

 vine which is greatly superior to the Bitter Sweet as an orna- 

 mental berry-plant. I allude to Smilax Walteri. It grows, so 

 far as I have observed, invariably where the ground is fully 

 saturated with water, and usually among dense thickets of 

 Alder, Andromeda, Azalea, etc., and its slender stems attach 

 themselves by tendrils to these shrubs, and produce in great 

 profusion very compact small clusters of brilliant light scarlet 

 berries about the size of those of Ilex verticillata, which remain 

 on all winter. I have never seen this in cultivation, and it 

 might not be hardy so far north if removed from the water. 

 It would be almost impossible to dig the plants from the 

 thickets where they occur, but seeds sown in pots or boxes at 

 this season and placed under the greenhouse benches come up 

 freely in spring. It is one of those plants which have been 

 neglected quite too long, and most certainly would succeed 

 wherever even a narrow strip of low marshy land lies along 

 slow-running streams, if not on upland. It is not nearly as 

 thorny as some other varieties of Smilax. It is not evergreen, 

 but if it was desirable to plant ah evergreen vine with it 

 Smilax laurifolia, which also grows in similar situations, or a 

 little nearer to the upland, would serve the purpose. 

 Hammonton, N.J. William F. Basse tt. 



Recent Publications. 



The Silva of North America, a Description of the Trees 

 which grow naturally in North America, exclusive of Mexico, 

 by Charles Sprague Sargent, illustrated with figures and 

 analyses drawn from nature by Charles Edward Faxon, and 

 engraved by Philihert and Eugene Picart. Volume III. Ana- 

 cardiacece — Legnmitiosce. Large 4to, pp. 141 ; 50 plates. Hough- 

 ton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. 



The third volume of Professor Sargent's Silva of North 

 America, which has recently appeared, is devoted to the illus- 

 tration of the trees which belong to the families of Anacardi- 

 aceje and Leguminosse, and completes, we should imagine, a 

 quarter of the whole work. So far as trees are concerned, 

 North America is not rich in representatives of either of the 

 families treated of in this volume, as compared with some 

 other parts of the world, where, especially in the tropics and 

 in Australia, arborescent Leguminosas abound, while in the 

 smaller and less-interesting family of the Rliuses are many 

 exotic genera with arborescent representatives. Of the trees 

 of this family which are included in our silva, none are espe- 

 cially valuable to man, although among the American 

 Sumachs will be found some of the most ornamental of the 

 smaller trees. This volume begins with a description of the 

 American Smoke-tree (Cotinus Americanus), the genus Coti- 

 nus first established by Linnseus and afterward united with 

 Rhus being here, contrary to the custom of most American 

 authors, maintained principally, no doubt, on account of the 

 remarkable growth of the pedicels of the sterile flowers, which 

 lengthen after the flowering period, and turning bright-colored 

 give the peculiar aspect to the plants of the genus which has 

 made the Old World Cotinus so prized in gardens. The 

 American Smoke-tree is one of the rarest of all our trees, 

 growing only in two or three isolated situations from the 

 mountains of northern Alabama to western Texas. The dis- 

 tribution of the genus is interesting and rather unusual ; two 

 species only are known ; one of these, the Venetian Sumach, 

 or Smoke-tree, is a common plant of southern Europe, rang- 

 ing east throtigh some parts of India to northern China, with- 

 out, however, reaching Japan, while the second, barely distin- 

 guished from its Old World prototype, has only just succeeded 

 in maintaining itself in the New World, from which it seems 

 destined to disappear at no very distant day. 



Of the true Rhuses five species are here considered to be- 

 come North American trees, four belonging to the Atlantic, 

 and one to the Pacific flora. Rhus Metopium, a handsome, 

 although exceedingly poisonous. West Indian tree, inhabits the 

 keys of soutberfi Florida. TwQ Sumachs, R. typhina and R, co- 



pallina, are represented by beautiful figures, those of the former 

 perhaps the most attractive in the volume ; certainly none 

 others better display the artist's patient labor or iiis ar- 

 tistic method in the arrangement of his material. More 

 interesting, perhaps, than any of the Sumachs is the familiar 

 Poison Dogwood of our northern swamps (R. Vernix), on 

 account of its near relationship to the Japanese Lacquer- 

 tree. Of the cultivation and uses of this tree in Japan, the 

 most valuable of all the Rhuses, the reader will find most 

 interesting information embraced in the copious notes upon 

 several exotic species which the author has appended to his 

 general description of the genus Rhus. Here, too, is an ac- 

 count of Chinese galls, excrescences found on the leaves of 

 R. semialata, a beautiful tree now well known in our gardens ; of 

 the Vegetable Wax of Japan, the product principally of R. succa- 

 dadenea, and of the European R. coriarea, which furnishes the 

 larger part of the sumach of commerce, and of its cultivation. 

 R. integrifolia, the only California representative of the genus 

 described, is usually a low shrub, covering witli almost impene- 

 trable thickets vast wind-swept areas exposed to the ocean in 

 the southern part of the state, and occasionally, especially 

 south of the territory of the United States, a tree with a short 

 thick trunk. 



It is an interesting fact that no arborescent representative of 

 the family of Leguminosa; grows naturally in California beyond 

 the desert region of the south, although the family, in many 

 shrubs and in almost numberless herbs, furnishes one of the 

 most marked features of the California flora. Of the genus 

 Dalea, a New World group of a hundred species, there is one 

 representative in The Silva (Dalea spinosa), a small contorted 

 bushy tree of the Colorado desert, which, perhaps, a less 

 conscientious author would have dropped entirely in a work 

 on trees, as it is usually a shrub, and, except for the small 

 amount of soft, light and usually half-rotten wood its stems 

 might furnish to a traveler lost in the desert, of no value 

 whatever. Fremont discovered it in one of his transconti- 

 nental journeys, but it was Thurber, years afterward, who 

 made its characters known, and to this excellent and learned 

 man, whose death was announced in these columns a year or 

 two ago, the author here pays a fitting tribute. 



A few small Mimosas, one of the great divisions of Legumi- 

 nosse, cross our southern borders from Mexico, east of the 

 Rocky Mountains, and are sometimes, especially in the valley 

 of the lower Rio Grande, rather conspicuous features of veg- 

 etation. They are representatives of Acacia, Leucsena, 

 Pithecolobium and Prosopis ; among them is the well-known 

 Acacia Farnesiana, one of the most widely distributed of all 

 trees, and an inhabitant of Australia as well as of many 

 parts of tropical America. This is the Cassie of the French, 

 who cultivate it in all the territory bordering the Mediter- 

 ranean for the perfume which is extracted from the flowers. 

 But the most important of all the Mimosa group of North 

 America is the Mesquite (Prosopis juliflora), the most valu- 

 able of all the North American arborescent Leguminosas, and 

 one of the most valuable of trees in view of the fact that it 

 has the power, through the immense development of its 

 roots, which sometimes penetrate fifty or sixty feet into the 

 ground in search of water, to grow in regions so arid that no 

 other tree can survive there. The Mesquite furnishes the 

 only fuel produced in an enormous region, and the best fod- 

 der, for the sweet pulp which surrounds the seeds enclosed 

 in long pods is devomed by all herbivorous animals, and 

 furnishes a valuable article of food to Mexicans and Indians. 



In this volume, too, will be found accounts of many trees 

 now familiar in the gardens of the United States and in those 

 of Europe — the Virgilea, the Kentucky Coffee-tree, the Three- 

 thorned Acacia and its relative, the Water Locust, the Red- 

 buds, and the Locusts — and of a few that are not as well known 

 to the general reader, such as Olneya, a beautiful inhabitant 

 of the deserts of Arizona and Sonora ; Ichthyomethia, the 

 fish-poisoning tree of theCaribs and an inhabitant of southern 

 Florida, as well as of the Antilles ; the two Texas Sophoras, 

 handsome small trees of a genus known in our gardens in its 

 Asiatic representative, Sophora Japonica, and the Cercidiums 

 or Green-barked Acacias, curious trees of the territory of the 

 Mexican boundary, which they enliven with tlieir bright green 

 branches, destitute of leaves during a large part of the year, 

 and their brilliant yellow flowers. 



But a mere enumeration of the trees contained in this vol- 

 ume can give but a very faint idea of the character and extent 

 of the information which it contains. This is not confined to 

 American trees alone, for under the description of the genera 

 included in the work will be found, in the form of notes, a vast 

 amount of important and curious information relating to the 

 principal trees of each frpiT! gther parts of the world — the 



