July 27, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



349 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tkibunb Building, Nkw York. 



Conducted by Prufessor C. S. Sakgent. 



ENTERED AS SHCOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial ARTiCLrs :— Umbcllularia. (Willi figure.) 349 



Surplus Trees in Central Park 350 



CultiiiK of I'recs ia the Yoscnirte Valley 350 



Max Leiclitlin 350 



Cultivating the Almond in California Henry J. Plulpott, 351 



Wild Flowers iii Italy Louise Dodge. 351 



A Bed ot Hardy Perennials Mrs. Danskc Dandridgc. 352 



Cultural Department :— Blights of Variegated Pelargoniums, 



Professor Byron D. lialsted. 353 



Notes on Shrubs J. G. Jack. 353 



Tlie Water Garden W. T. 354 



Alstrconieria aurantiaca A'. Cameron. 354 



The Harebells T. D. H. ^^s 



Abortive Sti-awberries E. G. Lodeman. 355 



Galium uristatunr S. 356 



Sobrulias Gardeners^ Magazine. 356 



The Forest :— The Forest as Modified by Human Agency. — I Colonel Bailey. 356 



CoRKESroNDENCE : — Vemou Park, Philadelphia Tltomas Meeltan. 357 



Gardens in Northern Germany Wilhelinine Seliger. 358 



Wintering Halt-hardy Plants Joseph Meehan. 358 



Recent Publications • 35S 



Notes 360 



Illustrations :— Blighted Leaves of Pelargoniums 353 



The California Locust (Umbcllularia Californica), Fig. 60 355 



Umbellularia. 



OF the Laurel family some fifty genera and nine hun- 

 dred species are distinguished. These are chiefly 

 tropical, and are American, Asiatic, Australian and Poly- 

 nesian. A few species are found outside the tropics in 

 southern Europe, the Canary Islands, south Africa, New 

 Zealand, and North and South America. The species are 

 mostly woody, and are distinguished by minutely punctate 

 alternate simple leaves with entire margins. The flowers, 

 which are always minute and are perfect or dioecious, are 

 usually arranged in umbellate clusters or cymes, the peri- 

 anth, which is generally white or yellow, being composed 

 of four or six sepals ; there are no petals, numerous 

 stamens in three or four rows, the anthers opening by one 

 or two uplifted valves, and a single style and stigma. 

 The fruit is fleshy and berry-like, or rarely drupaceous or 

 sometimes dry, and is always indehiscent. The plants of 

 this family secrete in the bark and in the glands of the 

 leaves and flowers a pungent volatile oil which has 

 stimulating or sedative properties. To it is due their 

 chief value to man, although many of the species produce 

 timber of great strength and value, and Persea gratissima, 

 a native of South America, yields a large, succulent fruit — 

 the avarcado or alligator pear — for which this tree is cul- 

 tivated in all tropical countries. To this family belong the 

 Cinnamon-trees cultivated in the tropics for their fragrant 

 hot, sugary bark, and the Camphor-tree, a native of China 

 and Japan, cultivated in the far east for the colorless vola- 

 tile fragrant acrid oil, the camphor of commerce, which is 

 distilled from the wood. To this family belongs, too, the 

 Laurel of southern Europe (Laurus nobilis), one of the 

 plants called Daphne by the ancients, the reward of the 

 victor, and still the best ornament of the gardens of 

 southern Europe. A tree of the Laurel family (Nectandra 

 Rodieeri), a native of Demarara, produces greenheart, one 



of the most valuable tropical woods known to the cabinet- 

 maker ; the Brazilian Licaria Guayanensis yields pepper- 

 wood, so called from the pungent cliaracter of the dust 

 made in working it; and Persea Indica, the so-called 

 Madeira mahogany of commerce. 



With the exception of Japan, temperate North America is 

 probably richer in species of Lauracete than other extra- 

 tropical regions. In the eastern United States live genera 

 are represented by seven species. The best known of 

 these is the Sassafras, one of the most beautiful trees of our 

 eastern forests, which it inhabits from New England to 

 Texas. No tree is so often mentioned as the Sassafras in 

 the annals of the early travelers in America, who imagined 

 it one of those spice trees of the east which fired the 

 imagination of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 

 turies ; and many expeditions were fitted out for the ])ur- 

 pose of gathering the bark and roots of this tree. The 

 family is represented, too, in eastern America, by the Red 

 Bay (Persea Carolinensis), a handsome, small tree of the 

 maritime region of the southern states, well known for its 

 beautiful, bright red heart-wood ; by the Lance-wood 

 (Nectandra Willdenoviana), a tropical American species 

 found also on the coast and islands of southern Florida ; 

 by the familiar Spice Bushes (Lindera and Litsea), and 

 by the curious leafless parasitic climbing Cassyta of 

 southern Florida. In the forests of Pacitic North America, 

 Lauracete is represented by a single species, Umbellularia 

 Californica, the noblest member of the family in North 

 America, and one of the most beautiful evergreen trees of 

 the north temperate zone. 



The genus Umbellularia, established by Nuttall and still 

 only represented by the California Laurel, is distinguished 

 by its perfect flowers, borne in stalked terminal and ulti- 

 mately axillary umbels, which are included before expan- 

 sion in involucres composed of four broad deciduous 

 bracts ; by a six-parted deciduous calyx, nine stamens in- 

 serted in three rovi's, those of the inner row being fur- 

 nished with a fleshy gland on each side of the base, alter- 

 nating with three staminodia, four-celled anthers, a dilated 

 stigma, and a dark purple sub-globose drupe an inch in 

 length, and surrounded at the base by the thickened rem- 

 nants of the calyx. The leaves, which are lanceolate- 

 oblong, are sometimes four inches in length, and are dark 

 yellow-green and very lustrous ; they are delightfully fra- 

 grant, although exceedingly acrid, and give off when 

 bruised a pungent effluvium which excites sneezing. The 

 California Laurel has been referred by botanists to a num- 

 ber of different genera, and to the people of California it is 

 known also as Mountain Laurel, Spice-tree, Cajiput, Cali- 

 fornia Olive and California Bay-tree. 



Umbellularia is common in all the coast-region from 

 southern Oregon to the southern borders of California, and 

 it is not rare on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada 

 Mountains. In the valleys of Oregon and northern Cali- 

 fornia, in rich soil and in the neighborhood of streams, the 

 California Laurel is most abundant and grows to its great- 

 est size, rising sometimes to the height of a hundred feet 

 and making tall stout stems five or six feet in diameter. At 

 the north it sometimes forms forests, either growing by itself 

 or in company with the great Oregon INIaple (Acer macro- 

 phyllum). In central and southern California, especially 

 when it grows beyond the coast-region, the California 

 Laurel is a smaller and often a bushy tree, which only in 

 old age assumes the spreading habit and forms the grace- 

 ful head peculiar to fine specimens of this species. 



The value of the California Laurel as an ornamental tree 

 is very great ; the forests of Pacific North America do not 

 contain another tree better suited to adorn the parks and 

 gardens of that state, and certainly the most beautiful 

 gardens in California are those in which single specimens 

 or groups of this tree were left when the indigenous growth 

 was originally cleared away. A view made of such a gar- 

 den by our obliging correspondent, Mr. F. Gallaher, of San 

 Francisco, appears in the illustration on page 355 of this 

 issue, in which may be seen a plant of Umbellularia with 



