May 9, i888.] 



Garden and Forest. 



129 



light gray, very smooth bark, and coriaceous yellow-green 

 leaves, three to four inches long and two inches broad. 

 They are pointed at both ends, and are borne on stout 

 petioles, which, as well as the prominent mid-ribs, are 

 somewhat lighter colored than the rest of the leaf. The 

 fruit is small and nearly round, about one-third of an inch 

 in diameter, and sessile in the axils of the leaves. It is 

 yellow as it approaches maturity, a character which prob- 

 ably led Nuttall to apply the name aurea to this species, 

 but when perfectly ripe turns bright red. 



The noble tree which stands in front of the United States 

 barracks at Key West, and which all visitors to the island 

 are taken to see, belongs to this species. 



Ficus aurea was quite generally introduced into cultivation 

 a few years ago, through the agency of the Arnold Arbor- 

 etum. It is easily raised from seed, and at the north makes 

 a hardy conservatory or house plant, although inferior for 

 this purpose to the common Rubber-plant {Ficus elaslica). 



Our picture is from a photograph made by Mr. James M. 

 Codman, to whom the readers of this journal are indebted 

 for many of its most interesting illustrations. C. S. S. 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum. 



THE earliest shrub in flower in the collection, with the ex- 

 ception of a few Willows and Alders, is Erica carnea. It 

 was in full bloom by the 14th of April ; and the season here 

 this year is ten or twelve days later than the average. This is 

 a dwarf species which inhabits the lower hills of the European 

 mountain ranges from Switzerland to the Balkans. It rarely 

 exceeds six inches in height, although in some localities it 

 grows erect and much taller {E. Aiediterraned). The flowers 

 are bright, clear red, a quarter of an inch long, drooping, axil- 

 lary and arranged in leafy racemes, terminal or just below the 

 ends of the branches. This is one of the hardiest and most 

 satisfactory of all the Heaths in this climate ; and is indispensa- 

 ble in a rockery. It flourishes in a compost of peat mixed with 

 a liberal amount of sand ; and blooms not only earlier in the 

 spring than other species, but again very late in the autumn. 

 In a milder climate it continues in flower nearly all winter. A 

 slight protection of pine branches thrown over it in winter 

 protects it here from the scorching sun of February and 

 March. A variety with white flowers is generally known in 

 gardens as E. hcrbacea. 



A few days later Daphne Mezeretiin was in bloom. This is 

 a widely distributed shrub, common over nearly the whole of 

 Europe and Russian Asia and extending to the Arctic regions. 

 For centuries it has been a favorite garden plant in Europe, 

 but is now too rarely seen in this country. It is an erect 

 glabrous shrub, one to three feet high, with rigid, erect 

 branches, each terminated with a tuft of narrow deciduous 

 leaves. The flowers appear before the leaves, in numerous 

 crowded clusters of two or three, along the shoots of the pre- 

 ceding year, and are succeeded by large red, handsome berries. 

 This is a very hardy and perfectly satisfactory little shrub, which 

 thrives in any good garden-soil. There is a variety with white 

 flowers, and another which blooms in the autumn. The bark 

 of the Mezereum has medical properties, and is collected in 

 large quantities in some parts of Germany. It is now princi- 

 pally employed as an ingredient in the compound decoction 

 of Sarsaparilla. 



Comics officinalis is in full bloom at the end of the third 

 week of April. This is a Japanese species which, according to 

 Siebold, reaches a height of 10 to 12 feet, and is greatly valued 

 by the Japanese as an ornamental plant and for the medicinal 

 qualities of its bark. An admirable colored plate {f. 50) of this 

 plant is published in Siebold & Zuccarini's " Flora Japonica." 

 It very closely resembles the well known Cornelean Cherry 

 [Cortius viascula), as Siebold himself points out, audit is prob- 

 ably merely an extreme geographical form of that species. It 

 has the same small yellow precocious flowers produced in 

 simple umbels from the axils of the leaves on the shoots of the 

 previous year, and the same cuspidate-acuminate entire 

 leaves, which, however, in the Japanese plant have tufts of 

 thick rusty hairs in the axils of the primary veins. The fruit, 

 as described by Siebold, seems identical with that of the Corne- 

 lean Cherry. Cornus officijialis is a very hardy, fast growing 

 shrub, chiefly valuable tor its very early showy inflorescence. 



Cormis masctila is also in bloom, its leafless branches 

 wreathed in yellow. But this is such a well known plant that 

 nothing need be said about it except that it is not appreciated 



or planted half often enough in this country, and that the 

 varieties with variegated leaves — great favorites with many 

 nurserymen — do not bear our hot sun well and are not worth 

 planting here. Forms now exist in French collections which 

 vary from the type very considerably in the shape and color 

 of the fruit. The most striking and interesting of these is one 

 with clear, bright yellow drupes. 



Andromeda Japonica, an evergreen species, the Japanese 

 representative of our Alleghany A. florihunda, is in flower, or 

 rather it would have been in flower several weeks ago had not 

 the cold, as it does every year, destroyed nearly all its beauti- 

 ful racemes of pure white bell-shaped flowers. This Japanese 

 Andromeda is a perfectly hardy plant, hardier here even than 

 its American congener, but it blooms too early and is not 

 worth cultivating at the north as a flowering plant. At the 

 south it might be expected to open its flowers in February and 

 to become a most useful and attractive garden ornament. 

 Corema Conradi, which is now well estalilished in the Arbore- 

 tum, is also in flower. This is one of the rarest of North Amer- 

 ican shrubs, being found only in a few isolated stations on 

 the coast of New Jersey, Long Island, New England, and in 

 Newfoundland. It is a diffusely branched, spreading little 

 shrub only a few inches high with scattered or nearly whorled 

 heath-like leaves and minute apetalous flowers in small terminal 

 heads. Its interest is botanical rather than horticultural, al- 

 though the male plant is handsome when in flower with its 

 tufted purple filaments and brown anthers. This plant is 

 rather impatient of cultivation, but it can be grown in sandy 

 peat in full exposure to the sun and once established it spreads 

 rapidly. Plants, however, when they are taken upon the sea- 

 shore must be thoroughly rooted in pots in a frame or cool 

 green-house before being planted in the border. It is hope- 

 less to try to transplant it in any other way. 



The Leatherwood {Dirca paluslris) of our far northern 

 woods, will interest the botanist rather than the gardener ac- 

 customed oifly to plants with showy and conspicuous flowers. 

 It is one of the earliest shrubs to bloom and one of the easiest 

 to cultivate. Its small yellow flowers in dense heads appear 

 some time before the leaves. J. 



The Forest. 

 The Forests of the Yellowstone National Park. 



STANDING upon one of the high peaks in the north- 

 western part of the Yellowstone National Park, the 

 observer looks out upon an almost unbroken, undulating, 

 dark green forest, stretching away to the eastward and south- 

 ward. This timbered area, comprising the central and 

 southern portions of the Park, is a high, rolling, volcanic 

 plateau, with an average altitude of about 8,000 feet, except 

 in the extreme south, where an altitude of 10,000 feet is 

 reached. On the north-west it is flanked by the Gallatin 

 Range, mainly sedimentary, and along the whole eastern 

 border by the rugged volcanic peaks of the Absaraka or 

 Yellowstone Range, both reaching altitudes of 11,000 feet. 

 The continental divide crosses the Park and is generally 

 broad, ill defined and heavily timbered throughout, with an 

 altitude varying from 8,000 to 10,000 feet. 



The mountain slopes over the region, where not too 

 precipitous and rocky, are generally well clothed with 

 timber up to 9,000 feet. Above this the country becomes 

 more open, grassy parks mingled with groves of trees, 

 until the timber line is reached, which may be roughly 

 estimated at 9,600 feet on the peaks and somewhat higher 

 on the elevated plateaus. The altitude of the Park, with 

 its topographic features, make it one of the storm centres of 

 the northern Rocky Mountains. It is one of our greatest 

 natural reservoirs, including within its limits the head 

 waters of the Yellowstone, Gallatin, IMadison and Snake 

 Rivers. The Park lies in the Rocky Mountain belt 

 of coniferous forests, geographically termed the Interior 

 Pacific, and which, trending north-westward, unites in 

 Washington Territory with that of the Pacific coast, form- 

 ing a broad belt which still farther north in British America 

 merges into the north-west extension of the Atlantic forest. 



The common and most widespread tree of the Park is 

 the Black Pine {Pinus Murrayana). It is the only tree 

 forming extensive forests, to the exclusion of other species. 

 It reaches its greatest development on the drier plateaus, 



