April 4, iSSS,] 



Garden and Forest. 



61 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



[limited.] 

 Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted bv Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, li 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— Trees for Planting in America,— Rainfall on the Great 

 Plains. — The Study of Botany by Horticulturists. — The Pink-flowered 

 Dogwood 61 



Landscape Gardenint^, VI Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 



Anglomania in Parit Making Charles Eliot, 



Conifers and their Cultivation Charles A. Dana. 



Wanted— A Hand-book of Horticulture Professor IVolcott Gibbs. 



Phlox adsurgens (with illustration) Sereno Watson. 



Photinia villusa (with illustjation) C .S. 5. 



Cultural Notes : — Epidendrum (Nanodes) Medusse — Ccelogyne cristata alba 

 (hololeuca) — Sarcochilus(Thri.xspermum) Berkeleyii — Bei"tolonia mar- 

 morata — Rondeletia{Rogieria)gratissima — Amaryllis Aulica — Phala?- 

 nopsis Sanderiana — Calanthes — Phalsenopsis Harriettis — Freesias — 

 Hydrangea rosea — Chinese Primroses 



Trial Beds The Rev. Edward P. Roe. 



Foliage With Cut Flowers Professor IV. IK Tracy. 



Correspondence : — Boronia megastigma — Wiiitc Pine in Massachusetts 70 



The Forest : — The Forest Vegetation of Northern Mexico, I C. G. Pringlc. 70 



The Forests of Tunis 71 



Answers to Correspondents 71 



Recent Publications : — A Catalogue of Niagara Plants 72 



The Flower Market : — New York, Philadelphia, Boston 72 



Illustrations : — Phlox adsurgens. Fig. n 66 



Photinia villosa, Fig. 12 67 



63 

 64 

 64 

 65 

 66 

 67 



67 

 69 



Trees for Planting in America. 



AT this season of the year many persons who desire to 

 beautify the surroundings of their homes by plant- 

 ing, seek instruction with regard to the trees best adapted 

 for their purpose. Instruction upon this subject, especial- 

 ly in a country like the United States, of such varied climatic 

 and social conditions, is difficult to give ; sources of infor- 

 mation are neither numerous nor very available. Planters 

 are too often obliged to rely upon the advice of dealers and 

 plant-peddlers in the selection of their trees. Such advice 

 is often based upon imperfect knowledge, and nurserymen 

 too frequently recommend the rarest and most high- 

 priced trees or those most easily and therefore cheaply 

 raised in nurseries, without regard to their fitness to the sit- 

 uation for which they are intended. People who would 

 gladly plant trees become discouraged by the difficulty of 

 learning what varieties they can use to the best advantage, 

 or by the failures and disappointments which invariably 

 follow errors of selection. 



There is, however, one safe rule in the choice of trees 

 which all persons who are unfamiliar with the subject can 

 safely follow. This rule is to plant only such varieties 

 as they see growing and thriving naturally in the 

 neighborhood of their homes. No teacher in such matters 

 is so wise and so unprejudiced as the forest The Elms 

 and Maples taken from the adjacent swamps and hillsides, 

 — many of them now more than a century and a half old — 

 which grace the streets of some of the older towns or adorn 

 the early homesteads of New England, and the Magnolias, 

 Live Oaks and Water Oaks seen in the cities and plantations 

 of the South, abundantly testify to the truth of this fact. 

 These are the only really successful examples in America 

 of tree-planting as tested by time. In England, too, it is 

 the native Oaks and Elms and Beeches which give to the 

 land its distinctive aspect, and to its homes their greatest 

 dignity and beauty. 



Fortunately, we are abundantly supplied with American 

 trees. In the South, the great evergreen Magnolia, unsur- 

 passed in beauty, the Live Oak, the Water Oak — one of 

 the best of American street trees — the Laurel Oak, the 

 Pecan, the Bays, and many other beautiful native trees, are 

 available to the planter And it is fortunate that he has 

 been obliged to make use of this material by the fact that 

 few foreign trees of large size will thrive in that climate. 

 In the Pacific Coast States, on the other hand, the condi- 

 tions which govern planting are different There are com- 

 paratively few native trees and these are confined chiefly to 

 the mountains and the uninhabited portions of the country. 

 The few which grow in the valleys are not in all cases or- 

 namental, and are often difficult to cultivate. There are, 

 however, exceptions. Some of the noble California Oaks 

 surpass in stately beauty any e.xotic trees which are likely 

 to flourish in that peculiar climate, and serious attempts to 

 cultivate them should be made. And two California Coni- 

 fers — the Monterey Cypress and the iNIonterey Pine (Piniis 

 insignis) — are already widely and successfully grown froin 

 Vancouver's Island to San Diego. Fortunately they 

 are both beautiful representatives of their class. Yet 

 California will doubtless always be obliged to depend 

 somewhat upon other parts of the world for her materials 

 for ornamental planting. The trees of the Eastern States 

 do not flourish there, and it is not probable that those of 

 either Europe or Eastern Asia will ever gain much foothold 

 on California soil. It is to Australia and other dry coun- 

 tries that California planters must look in the future, as they 

 have in the past with such apparent success in the case of 

 the Eucalyptus and of various Acacias. 



The settlers of the dry interior region of the continent 

 have not yet found any tree as valuable as the native Cot- 

 tonwood which fringes the river-banks of all that territory, 

 to protect their farms and orchards and to supply them vi'ith 

 fuel. 



It is, however, in the Eastern and Middle States tliat the 

 greatest interest in ornamental planting has been felt, and 

 that the greatest mistakes, arising from ignorance with 

 regard to the true beauty and value of our native trees, 

 have been made. It is in this part of the country that for- 

 eign trees have been most generally introduced and culti- 

 vated, to the serious injury of parks and homesteads. It 

 is not easy to estimate the amount of this injury, or of the 

 widespread discouragement which must be felt as trees 

 carefully nurtured for a generation show themselves in- 

 capable of reaching maturity in our climate. We should 

 have escaped much disappointment if, thirty years ago, 

 our parks and gardens had been planted with native trees 

 instead of the Spruces, Oaks, Ashes, Maples, Pines and 

 other trees of Europe. These trees have been and still are 

 largely planted in this country. They grow rapidly for a 

 few years and are more easily raised in nurseries than 

 many American trees, and are therefore favorites with 

 dealers; but it is now evident»that their general introduc- 

 tion was based upon very insufficient knowledge and that 

 their cultivation here has proved a failure. 



There are, of course, exceptions. The English Elm has 

 grown successfully in New England for a century ; the 

 White Willow is now as much at home in Eastern America 

 as in Europe, and the Norway Maple almost equals here in 

 beauty and vigor some of its American congeners. But, 

 in general, planters in the Eastern and Middle States can do 

 better than depend upon the forests of Europe for their 

 trees. There are not less than a hundred and thirty na- 

 tive trees found in this region, or among the Alleghany 

 Mountains where elevation produces a climate similar to 

 that of more northern regions. 



The Silva of no other part of the world is more rich in trees 

 of ornamental value. Its Magnolias, Oaks, Hickories. 

 Walnuts, Maples, Elms and Ashes, its Tupelo, its stately 

 Tulip Tree, its great Rhododendron and Mountain Laurel, 

 its Birches and Lindens, its Coffee Tree, Sour-wood and 

 Sassafras, its Beech — the loveliest of our deciduous trees 

 in winter, and in early spring when its leaf-buds are bursting 



