May II, 189Z.] 



Garden and Forest. 



217 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Offics: Tribune Building, Nkw York. 



Conducled by . . 



. Professor C. S. Sakgent. 



RNTFIKKD AS SKCOND-CLASS MATIER AT THB POST OFFICE AT NHVV VORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY ii, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



hAGE. 



E ilToRlAL AR-rtCLHS :— The American Hawthorns. (With figui-e.) 217 



The Loveof Nature.— Ill 218 



The Forests o£ India 219 



The late Sereno Watson Professor Win. H. Brewer. 219 



Spring in tlie New Jersey Pines Mrs. Mary Treat. 220 



I'LANT Notes :— Some Recent Porti-aits 220 



FoitEiGM Correspondence; — London Letter W. Watso^i. 222 



Ci'i.TiiKAL Dfpartment: — The Cultivation of Ginseng G. Stanton. 223 



Koliar Nematodes. (With figure.) Professor Byron D. Halsted. 224 



Euphorbia Jacquinijt'flora O. O. 224 



Notes on Species of Tulips Max Lcichtlin. 224 



Seasonable Worlt W. II. Taplin. 225 



How Some Half-hardy Shrubs Survived the Winter J. G. jack. 225 



Correspondence :— Spring in IBoston— .\ Foreigner's Impressions C IVaern. 226 



Bird's-foot Violets in Cultivation Caroline .4. Farley. 226 



Recent Publications 227 



Notes 22S 



Illustrations :— The White Thorn (Crateegus mollis) in New England, Fig. 40. . 221 

 Leaf attacked by Nematodes, Fig. 41 224 



The American Hawthorns. 



OUR American forests are rich in Hawthorns, nearly 

 one-third of the forty species which are now known 

 being found within the territory of the United States. They 

 are scattered from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island and 

 to Florida and Texas, and every state and territory, with 

 the exception of Arizona, contains its representative of the 

 genus. They are more common, however, in the east than 

 in the west, and in the number of species and individuals 

 the south is richer than the north. They abound in the 

 country between the Red River and the Trinity, which 

 must be considered the head-quarters of the genus, as 

 more species occur there than in any other region of siini- 

 lar extent, while individuals of several species grow in 

 greater abundance and luxuriance there than in any other 

 part of the country. 



The American Hawthorns have long puzzled students of 

 trees, and botanists have regarded them as difficult sub- 

 jects. But it is the botanists themselves, rather than the 

 peculiarities of these trees, which have made them hard to 

 understand, and the chief difficulties in elucidating the dif- 

 ferent species are literary, and not morphological. For 

 many of the species having been early introduced into the 

 gardens of Europe, there developed under cultivation, 

 numerous more or less distinct forms which were de- 

 scribed as species, and often as genera, different naines 

 being sometimes given to the same cultivated form. This 

 making of species went on for a century in nearly every 

 country of Europe, while in America botanists were 

 hardly less active in burying these unfortunate plants under 

 a load of almost inextricable synonyms. It is, nevertheless, 

 possible to obtain a correct idea of the species if the student 

 will remember that two Havi'thorn-plants raised from seeds 

 taken from the same tree may be and probably will look 

 very unlike one another and their parent ; that individuals 

 of most of the species vary in the form of the leaves, in 

 the amount and character of the hairs which cover them, 



in the presence and absence and in the size and character 

 of the glands which are often found on their leaves and 

 calyx-lobes, in the size and shape of the stipules, which 

 vary on different parts of the same individual, in the num- 

 ber of styles and of the nutlets of the fruit, which is some- 

 tiines round and sometimes pear-shaped, and red or yel- 

 low in the same species. The student of trees must re- 

 member, too, that climate and environment modify indi- 

 viduals, and that when a species has a north and south 

 range of two thousand miles an individual at the north may 

 look very different from one which has grown in the ex- 

 treme south. If all these facts are remembered, a patient 

 observer able to keep his mind clear of the pitfalls in 

 synonymy dug by Moench and Willdenow, by Alton and 

 Du Mont de Courset, and by RtDemer, Wenzig and Kale- 

 niczenko, and with abundant opportunities for studying in 

 their native forests the different species in all parts of the 

 territory which they inhabit may be able at the end of 

 twenty j'ears, perhaps, to recognize the different species 

 and find characters for separating them, although botanists 

 will probably never agree whether certain forms shall be 

 called species or varieties. 



The American Hawthorns fall naturally into two groups ; 

 the first contains those species which produce large many- 

 flowered compound corymbs, and the second those species 

 with simple few-flowered corymbs. The species of the 

 first of these principal divisions may be divided into three 

 groups ; the first with black or blue fruit, the second with 

 large scarlet or yellow fruit, and the third with minute scar- 

 let fruit, while the species of the second of the principal di- 

 visions fall naturally into two groups, the first with red or 

 greenish j'ellow fruit, and the second with large globose 

 red fruit. These divisions being established, there is 

 nothing better than the shape of the leaves, in these plants 

 a variable and therefore unsatisfactory character, by which 

 to distinguish the species. 



It is not our purpose to describe here all the American 

 Hawthorns in detail, but rather to call attention to the 

 value of the genus as a good subject for study,, promising 

 our readers that they will find in it much interest and ex- 

 cellent opportunities for intellectual development, and to 

 remind cultivators that some of the species are beautiful 

 and desirable garden-plants still too little known or appre- 

 ciated in their native land. 



From a gardener's standpoint the most desirable of our 

 Hawthorns is Crataegus Crus-galli, the Cockspur Thorn, 

 which is perhaps better known in cultivation than any of 

 the other species. Its'hardiness, the beauty of its lustrous 

 foliage, the lateness of its flowering-time, all recommend it. 

 The head of this tree, which is soinetimes round, with pen- 

 dulous branches, and sometimes flat-topped, with spread- 

 ing horizontal branches, is always handsome and interest- 

 ing. The autumn color of the leaves is not surpassed by 

 that of any of the species, and the abundant fruit hangs on 

 the branches without changing color throughout the win- 

 ter. The Cockspur Thorn is little subject to fungal diseases, 

 which disfigure many Hawthorns, and it is usually long- 

 lived in cultivation. The long thorns which arm its rigid 

 branches make it a good hedge-plant, and early in this cen- 

 tury it was much used for this purpose in some of the 

 eastern states. In the form of its leaves the Cockspur 

 Thorn is one of the most variable of our species, and in 

 addition to the varieties which are found growing wild in 

 different parts of the country others have appeared in 

 European gardens, where this species has been cultivated 

 for nearly two centuries, and where it is now more often 

 seen than any other American Hawthorn. 



Of the broad-corymbed large-fruited species the White 

 Thorn is, next to the Cockspur, the best garden-plant. 

 This tree has been considered a variety of the Scarlet 

 Thorn and also as a species. Perhaps the latter view is 

 the most sensible, as the two plants differ in size and habit, 

 in the size of their flowers and the time of their appear- 

 ance, in the size of the fruit and the length of time this 

 remains on the branches, as well as in the pubescence 



