3^4 



Garden and Forest. 



TNUMBER 232. 



Notes on the Flora of Smythe County, Virginia. — I. 



THE mountains of south-western Virginia have been so 

 often and so thoroughly explored and botanized over that 

 it would seem that nothing new could be found there, and 

 that anything written about their flora would be an altogether 

 too oft-told tale. The reality was, however, always fresh, and 

 every new excursion through sometimes almost untrodden 

 forests and up to mountain-summits reveal, if not new plants, 

 at least those that, either by their beauty, great luxuriance or 

 curious structure, never' failed to interest the collector. 

 Marion, in the neighborhood of which most of our botanizing 

 was done, lies in tlie heart of Smythe County, on the Middle 

 Fork of the Holston River, about twenty-eight miles, as the 

 crow flies, from the boundary-line of North Carolina. It is a 

 small straggling village on a slope at an altitude, they say, of 

 2,300 feet, surrounded in every direction by innumerable little 

 foot-hills, called by the natives knobs. Most curious little hills 

 they are, molded and furrowed and worn into all sorts of 

 whimsical shapes. There are round hills, pointed hills, sym- 

 metrical hills ; hills that have gentle slopes, hills that are too 

 steep for the most ambitious tobogganist, and hills that have 

 no shape whatever. Beyond them to the south, in the Blue 

 Ridge, rises the long, scarcely broken range of the Iron Moun- 

 tain, and still beyond, in the same system, the two high peaks, 

 White-top and Mount Roger, the latter familiarly known as 

 Balsam Mountain, for the names of the United States Topo- 

 graphical Survey maps are not by any means the local names. 

 North of Marion the long, straight, almost plateau-like level of 

 Walker Mountain completely'shuts out any view into the 

 broad valley of the North Fork of the Holston River beyond. 

 All the mountain-tops are densely wooded, with small scat- 

 tered farms with Rye and Corn fields on the lower ridges, and 

 in the fertile valleys many an acre of rippling Wheat-fields. 



The Holston at Marion is rather more than a brook, some- 

 thing less than a river, and it flows between high banks that 

 gradually, a mile or so below the village, become so steep and 

 rocky as to make it practically inaccessible except at certain in- 

 tervals. The river tosses and foams between Moss and Fern 

 fringed cliffs and dense and fragrant woods of Arbor-vitse and 

 Hemlock. The latter were all large, fine trees, and the Arbor- 

 vitses giants of their race. One of the largest of the latter 

 measured nearly fifteen feet in circumference, and many were 

 more than half that size. For a month or more we botanized 

 at intervals along the river-banks, and the succession of plants 

 was most interesting. 



Toward the latter part of May the flowering trees and shrubs 

 were numerous. Some superb Wild Black Cherry-trees were 

 in bloom in the woods and along the roads. Many of them 

 were large trees, and were beautiful objects while their flowers 

 lasted. Redbud was in its glory, and both Dogwoods, Cornus 

 florida andC. alternifolia, were in bloom at the same time, and 

 side by side in great clumps. The Sugar-berry (Celtis occi- 

 dentalis) was just dropping its flowers, but the pretty Bladder- 

 nut (Staphylea trifolia) was still hanging out its graceful, 

 drooping white bells. Rather smaller than this was the Nine- 

 bark (Physocarpus opulifolius), a most effective Spirsea-like 

 shrub, and Berberis Canadensis. The Barberry we found was 

 fairly widespread all through the county on dry hill-sides as 

 well as on the river-banks, thougli nowhere in any great 

 quantity. Its yellow drooping racemes are very pretty, and 

 altogether it is a neat little shrub. The clefts of every rocky 

 ridge were filled with great bunches of Hepatica acutiloba, 

 then in fruit, and quite close to the village one of the cliffs 

 was covered with a mass of Polypodium incanum growing on 

 the edge of and in the seams of the rocks. With it were the 

 Cliff-brake (Peltasa atropurpurea), a light green, somewhat sil- 

 very-looking. Fern, and two Aspleniums (A. parvulum and 

 A. Rutamuraria), the latter with fronds nearly three inches 

 long. At the base of the rocks and through the woods was 

 the pretty Oxalis recurva. It is a handsome plant, quite erect, 

 and over a foot tall, the golden yellow flowers being in many 

 instances nearly an inch across, and the leaves very striking, 

 with their bright brown margins. In the swampy borders of 

 the river Phacelia Purshii was abundant, a beautiful species, 

 with a rather straggling habit and delicate light blue-fringed 

 corollas. 



Violets have a more or less prominent place everywhere 

 during the month of May, and in the vicinity of Marion their 

 profusion and luxuriance of growth was most surprising. In 

 all we collected thirteen species in the valley and on the hills, 

 all, with the exception of the little yellow one, Viola rotundi- 

 folia, blooming at the same time. With the Phacelia on the 

 river-bank was Viola striata, over a foot tall, with large creamy 

 white flowers, and V. rostrata, smaller, with flowers of two 



shades of lilac-purple. The latter was by no means rare, and 

 could be seen all through the swamp}' woods and often in 

 open fields, where it did not reach three inches in height. The 

 near relative of the Violets, Solea concolor, a coarse herb with 

 inconspicuous little greenish flowers, grew with the white 

 Violet on the river-bank. 



The only Iris we found in the region was I. cristata, a lovely 

 light bluish flower with yellow crests, on wooded hill-sides, 

 growing in great beds. Many of the shrubs were overgrown 

 with an impassable tangle of Cat-briers, prominent among 

 which was Smilax hispida. Dioscorea villosa and Smilax her- 

 bacea were in such close proximity that it was hard to say 

 where one ended and the other began. The curious Leather- 

 flower (Clematis Viorna) was found trailing on hot, dry hill- 

 sides on the ground, the flowers standing up straight from 

 the vines. They are more than an inch long and of a delicate 

 reddish purple. One of the most striking among the smaller 

 plants on the river-bank was the light violet-blue Cedronella 

 cordata. Higher in the mountains and in more sheltered situ- 

 ations its flowers were of a delicate pink. During the last week 

 in May, as soon as the Red-bud flowers were over, the Locusts 

 (Robinia Pseudacacia) began to bloom, and lasted in the val- 

 leys for over ten days. The village streets and the fields and 

 woods were full of their sweet fragrance. In the deepest and 

 gloomiest part of the Holston ravine grew the Twin-leaf (Jef- 

 fersonia diphylla). It was in fruit when we found it, but was 

 none the less interesting, as the pear-shaped pod with its little 

 cone-shaped lid and bright orange-brown seeds was very 

 quaint. Tlie Barren Strawberry (Waldsteinia fragarioides) was 

 found in a little isolated bed under one of the big Hemlocks, 

 and with it was the bright rose-purple Polygala pauciflora, a 

 charming little plant, by no means uncommon in the moun- 

 tain-region. 



Great cliffs were covered with long pendent masses of the 

 Bladder Fern (Cystopteris bulbifera), and some of the rocks 

 were so covered with mats of the Walking-leaf (Camptosorus 

 rhizophyllus) as to be completely hidden. 



In a shady nook was quite a dense growth of the plants of 

 Aconitum uncinatum, and with them the straggling Polemo- 

 nium reptans, with blue-purple nodding flowers. Spiranthes 

 latifolia, the prettiest of the North American Ladies' Tresses, 

 was growing on the edge of the water, almost in the river, and 

 near it the queer little green spike of another Orchid, Habe- 

 naria bracteata. The Leatherwood and the Spice-bush (Lin- 

 dera Benzoin) were both beginning to fruit in the densest 

 portion of the wood, and the silky Cornel or Kinnikinnick (Cor- 

 nus sericea) was just opening its flowers on a litfle island in the 

 river. 



New York. Anna Murray Vail. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Richea pandanifolia. 



THIS very remarkable Tasmanian plant, of which living 

 examples are now in cultivation at Kew, is figured 

 and described in Hooker's Flora of Tasmania, where it is 

 said to grow in the dense mountain forests in the interior 

 of the southern and western parts of the colony, present- 

 ing a more striking appearance than any other Tasmanian 

 plant, its long, naked, slender annulate stems attaining a 

 height of thirty-six feet, and bearing one or several huge 

 crowns of long waving leaves, often rising far above the 

 surrounding vegetation, and strikingly resembling in gen- 

 eral aspect the mountain Pandani of India. The trunk is 

 nine inches in diameter, with a large pith, sometimes 

 branching with a crowded head of rigid coriaceous leaves, 

 each from three to five feet long, shining green sheathing 

 at the base, tapering to a long point, the margins finely 

 serrated. The flowers, which are small, are produced on a 

 compound axillary panicle six inches long. The appear- 

 ance of the plant certainly suggests an endogens, such 

 as Bromelia or Pandanus, rather than the exogenous 

 order EpacridaceEE, to which Richea really belongs, its 

 nearest affinity being the well-known genera Sprengelia 

 and Dracophyllum. The Kew plants were raised from 

 seeds collected by jMr. Justice Dobson, of Hobart, in 1882, 

 from whose letter to Sir Joseph Hooker I am permitted to 

 make the following extract relating to the Richea. He 

 wrote : " To get these seeds I made an expedition to the 

 head of the Lachlan River, which falls into the Derwent, 



II 



