5^4 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 243. 



betake ourselves the more assiduously to lesser pleasures — to 

 warblers and Willows, Roses and Strawberries. Science will 

 never fail us. If worse comes to worst, we'will betake our- 

 selves to the moths." 



Notes. 



It is estimated that the cemeteries of London cover an ag- 

 gregate area of 2,000 acres, the value of which is not less than 

 ^2,000,000. 



In the issue of Gartenjlora for September 15th, it is noted 

 that twenty-seven horticultural firms had thus tar announced 

 themselves to Ihe Berlin committee as intending to exhibit at 

 the World's Fair in Chicago. 



Of the common shrubs that are valued for autumn color the 

 Forsythias should not be forgotten. The deep chocolate color 

 of the leaves just now is an admirable foil to the lighter and 

 brighter tints of many species. 



The most beautiful fruits in the market now are the Japa- 

 nese persimmons. One variety, larger than a goose-egg, and 

 with a smooth skin of a clear canary-yellow, seems to be as 

 fair a product as any orchard ever yielded. 



The product of some California orchards, as reported in a 

 late letter to Tlie Tribune, of this city, are somewhat astonish- 

 ing. For example, a sixteen-acre orchard of German Prunes 

 in Sonoma County, from five to eight years old, yielded 90,000 

 pounds of dried fruit this year and a net profit of $7,500. 



Several of the annual horticultural and pomological exhibi- 

 tions usually held during September in north Germany have 

 been officially interdicted, on account of the fear of cholera. 

 This is especially regretted at Breslau, where not only an ex- 

 hibition but a pomological congress was to have been held. 



Among the plants that are conspicuous for their beautiful 

 fruit just now are Berberis Thunbergii, B. Sieboldii, B. Chi- 

 nensis, B. Amurensis and the yellow-fruited form of B. vulgaris. 

 The Prinos section of the Hollies are also at their very best, 

 especially Ilex Sieboldii, and I. laevigata with its yellow form. 

 Some of the species of Evonymus are making a beautiful 

 display in the Arnold Arboretum, especially the variety Coc- 

 cinea of E. Europeus and the rose-colored variety from Japan. 

 The fruits of many shrubs are so beautiful and last so long in 

 good form that Mr. Jackson Dawson writes to suggest that 

 some one should plant an autumn garden of shrubs which 

 are especially valuable for their foliage and fruit. 



A writer in a recent number of a Belgian horticultural jour- 

 nal speaks of the " veritable invasion " of his region this year 

 by insectsof the genus Aphis. " It is enough to make one be- 

 lieve," he declares, " that each plant has a species of its own, 

 even weeds being attacked. Young and mature turnips, arti- 

 chokes, endives, leaves and fruits — everything is threatened 

 with death by this multitude of tiny parasites. Potatoes are 

 not spared, but it is to be remarked that those which were 

 sprayed with Bordeaux mixture have remained intact. In the 

 nurseries fruit-trees and other species have suffered to the 

 point of denudation. Copious irrigation, while it does not de- 

 stroy the insects, invigorates the plants and enables them bet- 

 ter to resist their depredations. A machine seems to be 

 needed which will spray small plants from beneath with poi- 

 sonous mixtures, since the clever aphides keep mostly to the 

 under sides of the leaves." 



In 1868 the "Portland Catalogue" of plants native to the 

 state of Maine was issued by Professor Goodale and the Rev- 

 erend Joseph Blake, and since then no complete account of 

 the flora of this state has been published. It will, therefore, 

 be welcome news to local botanists that a second and enlarged 

 edition of this catalogue has just been issued, especially as the 

 original one has become very rare. The new edition has been 

 prepared by Mr. Merritt L. Fernald, and is a reprint from the 

 Proceedings of the Portland Society of Natural History. It is 

 simply a list in which the distribution of the more common 

 plants has been noted by means of symbols, but it contains 

 more than four hundred and fifty species and varieties of 

 flowering plants and vascular cryptogams in addition to those 

 named in 1868, the whole number amounting to more than 

 one thousand t^ve hundred and fifty. 



In reply to an inquiry from the Boston Metropolitan Park 

 Commission for information concerning statutes relating to 

 parks, the chairman of the Berlin Committee on Parks, Gar- 

 dens and Tree Plantations replied that in Prussia special laws 

 relating to the laying out of public parks and gardens have 



thus far been considered unnecessary, since every community 

 has been alive to the desirability of such institutions, and, 

 therefore, legislative compulsion has not been required. Trav- 

 elers in Germany will bear testimony to the truth of this. In 

 every city tasteful public gardens and parks will be found ; 

 choice landscape passages are carefully preserved and their 

 beauty enhanced ; and there are usually extensive public for- 

 ests in the neighborhood, offering delightful recreation to the 

 people, while the city draws profit from the timber and fuel 

 cut there. May the time be hastened when our American 

 communities will universally show their public spirit in the 

 same enlightened manner. 



Sub-irrigation has been tried in the greenhouses of the Ohio 

 Experiment Station. Two beds, fifteen feet long and seven 

 and a half feet wide, were floored with matched boards laid in 

 white-lead so as to be water-tight, and the ends and sides were 

 made water-tight. In the bottom of these benches three-inch 

 tiles were laid two and a half feet apart, and arranged so that 

 water could be supplied to each row as desired and six inches 

 of soil were then placed on the benches covering the tiles out 

 of sight. The effects of sub-irrigation upon the growth of 

 Lettuce and Radishes were remarkable, and it was beneficial 

 decidedly to Cucumbers. The first crop of Lettuce on the 

 sub-irrigated beds was some thirty per cent, heavier than the 

 crop on the bed treated in the ordinary manner, while the 

 second crop showed a gain of fifty per cent, in favor of sub- 

 irrigation. Radishes treated in this way came to marketable 

 size earlier and were larger than those grown by the ordinary 

 method. Nearly one-half of the sub-irrigated Radishes were 

 ready to pull before one of the others could be used. 



The colored frontispiece to the issue of Gartenflora for Oc- 

 tober 1st shows the portraits of two specimens of the Ontario 

 apple, and is accompanied by a laudatory description written 

 by Herr Carl Matieu, of Charlottenburg. The author says that 

 this fruit, although described as early as 1885 in America, has 

 not been hitherto noticed in Europe except by a single brief 

 reference in a periodical published in 1888. On the 28th of 

 April of this year, he says, he laid specimens of it before the 

 Congress for the Promotion of Horficulture in the Prussian 

 States. "The fruits were in the best condition, showing very 

 slight, if any, signs of shrinkage, and yet had not been win- 

 tered in a cellar, but merely in a ground-story room wilji a 

 northern exposure, laid on a layer of thick paper and shielded 

 from the air only by two thicknesses of newspaper. They 

 were cut from a tree trained on cords, four years old and 

 about a metre in breadth, and from a pyramidally trained tree 

 of the same age, and about a metre in height, and numbered 

 in all twenty specimens." After explaining how easily this 

 Apple may be grown in various ways, the writer adds that it 

 is especially remarkable for its keeping qualities, for its deli- 

 cious flavor and for the delicate substance of its flesh, which 

 fits it admirably "for old people who have no longer any teeth 

 which they can call their own." 



At the forty-first meeting of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, held at Rochester, New York, 

 in August last, Mr. L. M. Underwood' spoke before the Botan- 

 ical Club of "A Variety of Polypodium vulgare, new to 

 America." " In the autumn of 1890," says the report of his 

 words, published in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 

 " my attention was called to a peculiar 'crispy ' fern, growing 

 on Mohawk Mountain, Connecticut, by Mrs. T. R. Waite, of 

 New Haven, who had spent several summers on the summit 

 of the inountain in the log-cabin established there for tourists. 

 The plant proved to be a variety of Polypodium vulgare 

 hitherto unknown in this country, but described from England 

 as var. Cambricum. The plant is easily recognized by its 

 deeply pinnatifid pinnae, which are strongly in contrast with 

 the normal entire pinnas of typical forms of the species. This 

 discovery is rendered more interesting by the announcement 

 of the State Botanist, of New York, of a second European 

 variety of this same species. Unlike var. cristatum, as figured 

 by Peck and shown in the specimens kindly communicated by 

 him, the specimens of var. Cambricum, as found on Mohawk 

 Mountain in August, 1S90, and again in July, 1891, were en- 

 tirely sterile, not even showing rudimentary sori. The plants 

 were growing on the sloping face of the granitic rock of which 

 the mountain is composed, in small patches thoroug:hly en- 

 tangled with plants of normal Polypodium vulgare. Environ- 

 ment is, therefore, not the cause of the variation in this instance, 

 but it must be attributed rather to an inherent tendency to be 

 something different. It is a question of interest to know just 

 when to recognize a form of this kind as a true botanical 

 variety." 



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