August 31, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



409 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBUSHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Okkicr: Tribune Builiiing, Nkw York. 



Conducted by 



Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGR. 



Editorial Articlfs : — The Western Shad-bush. (With fij^ure.) 409 



Water-towers in Massachusetts 410 



Civilizinr^ Power of Floriculture T. H. HoskinSt M.D, 410 



Tlie LaU'eside Pleasure-ground at Waltefield, Massachusetts, 



Syh'cstfr Baxter, 411 



Late Summer Flowers on the Prairie .^ E. J. Hill. 412 



New or Littlk-known Plants : — Cypripedium Chamberlainianum. (With 



(leure.) 412 



New Orchids R. A. Rolfe. 412 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter \V. Watsoiu 413 



Cultural Department: — Some New Pears Professor George C. Butz. 414 



The Wild Garden in August. — 11 M. Barker. 415 



Some Little-hnown Annuals B. M. 416 



Senecio Japonicus O. O. 416 



Begonia futgens, Primula obconica gi-andiflora, Aster Candelabra, 



7. N. G. 416 



Deforestation in Russia 417 



CoRRKSPONDENCK ; — The Violet Disease Professor C. S. Plumb. 417 



Plants atDongan Hills C. 41S 



A Pretty Native Vine Lora S. La Ma>ice. 418 



The Way-side Flowers E. S. S. 419 



Recent Publications 419 



Notes 419 



Illustrations ; — Cypripedium Chamberlainianum, Fig. 68. 413 



The Shad-busn (Ainelanchier ainifolia) in Washington, Fig. 69 415 



The Western Shad-bush. 



THE genus Amelanchier is a natural one, closely re- 

 lated botanically to Cratcegus, from which it differs 

 in its long, strap-shaped petals and principally in the nature 

 of the ovary, which is usually five-celled, each cell being 

 incompletely separated into two chambers by the develop- 

 ment from the back of a partial or false division, so that 

 the fruit, which is a little fleshy pome or apple, appears to 

 be ten-celled, each cell containing a seed with a cartilagi- 

 nous chestnut-brown mucilaginous coat. Frequently, how- 

 ever, there are only five seeds in the fruit, owing to the 

 abortion of one of the two ovules which the ovary con- 

 tained in each of the original five cells. To its juicy flesh 

 and thin-shelled seeds is due the superiority of the fruit 

 of Amelanchier to that of Crataegus, in which the flesh is 

 dry and mealy, and the stones, which make up a large part 

 of the fruit, are large and thick-walled. In fact, the fruit 

 of the Thorns is barely edible, and, unless the stones are 

 removed, very indigestible. 



Amelanchier has not been differentiated into a large 

 number of species, as is the case with many of the genera 

 of the Rose family, to which it belongs, and only five or 

 six species with a number of varieties are distinguished, all 

 of them bearing such a close resemblance to each other 

 that it is not always easy to recognize them or to find sta- 

 ble characters by which to distinguish them. The genus is 

 widely and quite generally distributed, however, through 

 the north temperate zone; it occurs in the northern and 

 temperate parts of eastern and the mountain-region of 

 western North America, in Japan and central China, in 

 Asia Minor, the Caucasus, southern Europe and northern 

 Africa, but is not found in the great mountain-region of 

 central and southern Asia, to which it might naturally have 

 extended. Europe possesses one small shrubby species, 

 which abounds also in north Africa and in Anatolia ; a 

 second species inhabits the Orient, and a third is widely 



distributed in central China and in Japan. This is the 

 Amelanchier Asiatica, which such careful observers as 

 Mitiuel and Maximowicz considered merely a variety of 

 the arborescent Shad-bush of eastern North America, where 

 there are two species. These are Amelanchier Canadensis, 

 with several well-marked varieties, and the beautiful 

 Amelanchier oligocarpa, a shrub of the extreme north, 

 which, as a garden-plant, is one of the most desirable of all 

 early-flowering Norlh American shrubs. 



In the year 1804 a party of United States soldiers, under 

 the leadership of Captains Lewis and Clark, commenced 

 the first overland journey from the shores of the Allantic to 

 those of the Pacific Ocean ; on the waters of the upper Mis- 

 souri River they were able to eke out their scanty diet with 

 the large and delicious Service-berries, which they found 

 in great profusion along their route. This was the fruit of 

 the western Shad-bush, or Service-tree (Amelanchier aini- 

 folia), which first appears in literature in the history of this 

 famous and important expedition. The specific character 

 of the plant, which was confounded with the species of the 

 eastern states, was not recognized in these early days, and 

 although it was introduced from Oregon into English gar- 

 dens by David Douglas in 1826, it was not until some years 

 later that Thomas Nuttall, who had found it in the northern 

 Rocky Mountains, gave the western Shad-bush the rather 

 inappropriate name slill used to designate it. 



Amelanchier ainifolia is usually a low shrub with spread- 

 ing stems only a few feet high ; sometimes it sends up 

 from the ground a cluster of tall thin stems, or occasion- 

 ally, under exceptionally favorable conditions, it forms a 

 slender tree thirty to forty feet in height, with one straight 

 trunk eight to ten inches in diameter. 



In different parts of the country Amelanchier ainifolia 

 varies in a striking manner in the size and color of the 

 leaves and in the amount and color of the pubescence 

 which covers their under-surface while young as well as the 

 shoots. These are generally oval to nearly circular in out- 

 line, rounded or rarely acute at the apex, rounded or slightly 

 heart-shaped at the base, and coarsely toothed above the 

 middle ; usually they are dark green and membranaceous 

 or slightly coriaceous, although in the dry interior parts of 

 the continent they are much thicker and gray-green on the 

 two surfaces. The leaves vary from an inch to an inch 

 and a half in length and breadth ; they are rather incon- 

 spicuously veined, and are borne on short slender stalks. 

 The flowers, like those of all the Amelanchiers, are pro- 

 duced in short erect racemes, and are smaller than those of 

 the Shad-bush of the eastern states, the pure white petals 

 varying from a quarter to an inch in length. The fruit 

 ripens in different parts of the country from June to Sep- 

 tember; it is subglobose, from a half to nearly an inch in 

 diameter, dark blue, or sometimes nearly black, covered 

 with a beautiful glaucous bloom, and very sweet and juicy. 



The western Shad-bush grows over an immense terri- 

 tory ; at the north it is found in the valley of the Yukon 

 River in latitude 62° 45'; it extends south over nearly all 

 the mountain-ranges of western America, ranging eastward 

 to Colorado and Nebraska and through the Saskatchewan 

 and Manitoba to the western shores of Lake Superior and 

 to the northern peninsula of Michigan, where forms occur 

 which are not always easy to distinguish from varieties of 

 the eastern Amelanchier Canadensis. 



In the interior of the continent Amelanchier ainifolia is 

 confined to high elevations, sometimes ascending to 10,000 

 feet above the level of the ocean, where it occurs near 

 the borders of alpine meadows or covers dry hill-sides 

 \vith thickets not infrequently hundreds of acres in 

 extent. It is in the valley of the lower Columbia River in 

 rich bottom-land often inundated, or on the small prairies 

 which are common in Washington near the shores of Puget 

 Sound, that the western Shad-bush grows to its greatest 

 size. In such situations it occupies the ground to the ex- 

 clusion of other shrubs, or is associated with the Oregon 

 Crab-apple, the Hawthorn and the Choke-cherry in dense 

 masses about the margins of the forests of larger trees. 



