October j, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



469 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



thh: garden and forest publishing CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGR. 



Editorial Articlhs :— The Islay. (With figure.) 469 



Statues in Parks 47° 



Overland in the Cayuga Country. — IV Professor L. H. Bailey. 470 



Shongum.— II M.H.P.^ti 



Nkw ok LnTLH-KNOWN PLANTS : — Astcr sericeus, (With figure.) 472 



Foreign CuKKusTONDaNCE:— The Chiswick Garden in England V. C. 473 



CusTURAL Dei ARTMENT I— The Cultivation of 'I'uberous Begonias 475 



Tuberous B:-gonias as Bedding-plants C. L. Allen. 476 



Planting Perennials Ji- O. Orfet. 476 



Water-lilies J. N. Gerard, ^tj 



Decay of Quince Fruit Professor Byron D. Halsted. 477 



CoEKESPONDENCK I— Frozeu Chrysanthemums at the Royal Aquarium, 



Louise Dodge. 478 



Cannas at Bay Ridge, New York J. N. Gerard. 47S 



Rkcknt Publications 479 



N0TE.S 480 



Ilj.u.strations : — Aster sericeus, P'ig. 80 473 



The Islay (Prunus ilicifolia), Fig. 81 475 



The Islay. 



ONE of the natural divisions into which botanists divide 

 the great genus Prunus is distinguished by the ever- 

 green foliage of the species referred to it, which, unlike 

 other plants of the genus, produce their flowers in racemes 

 developed from the axils of the leaves of the previous year, 

 and yield fruit with very thin flesh and large thin-walled 

 smooth rugose or reticulate-veined stones. To this group 

 is given the name Laurocerasus, an ante-Linnasan name 

 of the typical plant of the section, and its Linnsean specific 

 name. Laurocerasus is a tropical and sub-tropical group, 

 and is more widely scattered over the surface of the earth 

 than any other of the natural divisions of the genus. It 

 is largely represented in the Indian Archipelago and in 

 South America ; it occurs in southern China and Japan, in 

 India, in the West Indies and Mexico, while in the United 

 States three species are found. Of these one, an inhabit- 

 ant of Brazil and the West Indies, finds its northern home 

 on the shores of Bay Biscayne in Florida; the second is 

 distributed through the maritime regions of the southern 

 states, and the third is Californian. 



To gardeners, the most familiar plant of the group is the 

 so-called English Laurel, Prunus Laurocerasus, the type 

 of the section and a native of the Orient, whence it was 

 bi'ought two centuries ago into European gardens, which it 

 has done, perhaps, as much to decorate as any other plant. 

 As a garden-plant the narrow-leaved Portugal Laurel, 

 Prunus Lusitanica, a native of south-western Europe and 

 the north African islands, among broad-leaved evergreens, 

 is only second in popularity to the English Laurel in the 

 parks and gardens of temperate Europe. Unfortunately 

 these handsome plants are not hardy in the northern 

 ' United States. In our southern gardens they are replaced 

 by the so-called Mock Orange, the indigenous Prunus 

 Caroliniana, a tree which sometimes grows to the height 



of thirty or forty feet, and produces lanceolate acute lus- 

 trous leaves, short erect racemes of white flowers with 

 conspicuous orange-colored stamens, and oblong black 

 fruit half an inch in length. This tree may be found in 

 the immediate neighborhood of the coast, growing in deep, 

 humid bottom-lands from the valley of the Cape Fear River 

 in North Carolina, to that of the Guadaloupe River in 

 Texas. In the south Atlantic and east Gulf states it is not 

 particularly common, but it abounds in eastern Texas, 

 where it growls to its largest size, and sometimes forms 

 impenetrable thickets in the neighborhood of streams. 

 The leaves and young branches of this tree, like those of 

 many of the species of Laurocerasus, contain at the period 

 of active vegetation considerable quantities of hydrocyanic 

 acid, making them dangerous to animals browsing upon 

 them. The partially withered foliage is particularly dan- 

 gerous, and a city ordinance of Mobile prohibits people 

 from throwing into the streets the clippings of hedges of 

 the Mock Orange. This Cherry-tree appears to have been 

 one of the first native plants used by the settlers on .the 

 southern coast to decorate their homes, and now there 

 are few southern gardens that are not beautified by a hedge 

 or by a group of Prunus Caroliniana. 



In California, Laurocerasus is represented by Prunus 

 ilicifolia, the Islay, or, as it is sometimes called, the Span- 

 ish Wild Cherry and the Mountain Evergreen Cherry. It 

 is a small tree twenty or thirty feet high, with a short stout 

 trunk sometimes two feet in diameter, although generally 

 much smaller, covered with thick dark red-brown bark. 

 The branches are stout and spreading, and form a hand- 

 some, rather compact head. More often the Islay is a 

 shrub rather than a tree, and sometimes, when it grows on 

 the dry gravelly slopes of the southern coast-ranges, its 

 stunted stems only rise a few inches above the surface of 

 the parched soil. The leaves are beautiful, large, dark, 

 green and very lustrous on the upper surface, and usually 

 sharp-toothed like the leaves of the Holly — a peculiarity to 

 which this tree owes its specific name. The flowers in 

 slender racemes, -sometimes three inches long, are con- 

 spicuous from the bright orange-brown color of the large 

 cup-shaped calyx, the small petals being pure white. Tire 

 Isla)'' flow^ers profusely, and the contrast between the color 

 of the flowers and that of the foliage is strikingly beautiful. 

 The fruit, too, is ornamental ; it is sub-globose, sometimes 

 two-thirds of an inch in diameter, and dark red when first 

 fully grown, becoining dark purple or nearly black at ma- 

 turity. 



The Islay is a native of the coast-region, from the shores 

 of the Bay of San Francisco to Lower California, extending 

 inland in southern California to the western foot-hills of 

 the San Bernardino Mountains, and preferring the neighbor- 

 hood of streams, where, in moist sandy soil, it attains its 

 best dimensions. It grows, too, on Santa Cruz and Santa 

 Rosa Islands, off the California coast, where a form pecu- 

 liar for its usually entire leaves has recently been dis- 

 covered. 



It was David Douglas, the hardy and intrepid Scotch 

 botanist, the discoverer of some of the noblest trees of 

 western America, who found the Islay sixty-odd years ago 

 growing in the neighborhood of Monterey, although it 

 was not properly described until some years later. Long 

 before the days of Douglas, however, the Catholic 

 Fathers, who penetrated California from Mexico and were 

 the first white men to obtain foothold in that region, ap- 

 preciated the beauty of the Islay and planted it in their 

 gardens. They were wise in their generation, for, vi'ith 

 the exception, perhaps, of the Great Magnolia, the Tolon 

 (Heteromeles aibutifolia), another California tree, the Um- 

 bellularia, the Wadroiia and some of the Rhododendrons, 

 North America does not possess a more beautiful evergreen 

 tree. But the successors of the Spanish missionaries are less 

 appreciative of the value and beauty of the flora of the Pacific 

 coast, and, neglecting the plants nature has prepared for 

 them, hunt through the antipodes for material which as 

 often disfigures as beautifies their homes. 



