June 6, iSSS.] 



Garden and Forest. 



177 



seine, mosquito netting can be used, but tlie seine is very 

 much better, as it is no impediment to wind or air, and witli it 

 there is no fear of tlie berries musting, by being kept too close, 

 moist or warm. Get stalves about eiglit feet long, place 

 them around and across the beds and about ten feet apart, 

 and drive them about eighteen inches deep into the ground. 

 Then take factory-cut bass-wood strips (each sixteen or more 

 feet long and costing one to one and a half cents) and tack 

 them against the posts on the border of the bed, and from post 

 to post over the top. Then spread the netting over tliis frame. 

 Sometimes, instead of the bass-wood strips, marlin can be 

 used over the top. This gives a canopvsix and a half feet high, 

 leaving perfect freedom for picking the berries. The frame 

 costs very httle and the same stakes can be used for the same 

 purpose for many years. 



Cut-Worms, — From now till the end of June cut-worms are 

 most destructive and they always are worse in sandy than in 

 stiff clay land. They are especially fond of young beets, cu- 

 cumbers and melons, but almost any tender young vegetable 

 attracts them. No practicable means of poisoning, trapping 

 or destroying them in any other way than by hand picking has, 

 so far as I know, been discovered. Examine young crops in 

 the morning, and whenever you observe that some of the 

 plants have recently been cut, remove a little of the soil from 

 about the plants and probably the depredator will be found. 



The Rock-Garden in Spring. 



ONE of the most interesting plants flowering in the rock- 

 garden this week is a form of the Dogtooth Violet from 

 the mountains of Oregon and Washington Territory {Erythro- 

 niiDii grandijiornin, var, albiflorum). It sends up from long', 

 narrow corms, broad leaves, conspicuously blotched with 

 purple, and tall, slender racemes of two to six nodding, lilv- 

 like, long-pediceled flowers, which, when fully expanded, are 

 nearly three inches across. The segments are pale yellow, 

 dashed with orange towards the base, with darker orange 

 spots on the interior face. The hardiness of this exceedingly 

 beautiful plant has not been fully established here, but if if is 

 planted in an open, well drained situation it will probably 

 flourish. 



Several handsome Tulips are now in flower. The most 

 showy of these, perhaps, is Tiilipa ehgans, a form which is 

 known in gardens only, and which Mr. Baker considers a 

 hybrid between T. acuminata and T. siiaveolens. It produces 

 large and handsome bright red flowers, three to three and a 

 halt inches long. The base of the segments are beautifully 

 marked on the interior with a yellow eye. They are nearly 

 uniform in shape and are narrowed gradually to a very acute 

 point. This is a very hardy plant which will flourisli and in- 

 crease in any good garden soil. Very satisfactory here, too, 

 is TiiUpa syhiesiris, the European Wood Tulip, a common 

 plant from Norway to the Caucasus. Its handsome, clear 

 yellow, fragrant flowers, one to two inches long, somewhat 

 nodding before they are fully expanded, are borne on tall 

 flexuous scapes. The leaves, of which there are generally 

 three below the middle of the flower stem, are glaucous, 

 smooth and channeled, and often more than a foot long. 

 Less showy than many of the higher colored Tulips, this is an 

 exceedingly graceful and pretty plant. It is perfectly hardy, 

 and blooms freely year after year, requiring no special care or 

 cultivation. A much rarer plant, is the pretty little Tulipa 

 ".utdiilatifolia, which Mr. Elwes discovered a few years ago on 

 the Bozdagh range of mountains near Smyrna. It is a dwarf 

 plant which is here not over three or four inches high. The 

 leaves are glaucous, the lowest six inches long and one inch 

 wide, the others much narrower, concave on the face with 

 undulate margins. The handsome campanulate flower is 

 bright crimson-red on theinside and dull greenish red without. 

 The segments, which are handsomely marked on the inside, 

 with a large black blotch, surrounded with a bright yellow 

 border, are all gradually narrowed into a long acute point. 

 This is a hardy species here, but it doeS not grow with any 

 great vigor, and shows no inclination to increase. Another of 

 the fine new central Asia Tulips {T. Kalpako-wskyaita) does 

 admirably here. It is a native of Turkestan, where it was dis- 

 covered by Dr. Albert Regel, who introduced it into the St. 

 Petersburg Garden. Here the color of the flower is a bright 

 cherry red, with a dull blackish eye, and black filaments and 

 anthers, but it is described as a variable species, sometimes 

 producing yellow flowers flamed with red on the exterior of 

 the outer segments, and sometimes pure yellow flowers with a 

 dark eye and yellow anthers and filaments. This species here 



attains the height of a foot, and produces flowers nearly two 

 inches long. It is very hardy and is gradually increasing. 



The Painted Trillium (7". crythrocarpum) is a far less showy 

 plant than T. grandiflorum, but it is a pretty and attractive 

 species well worth a place in the rock-garden, where it seems 

 to flourish, although its home is in the cold, wet woods of 

 northern New England and far northward. The flower is 

 erect with oval-lanceolate, pointed, widely spreading petals, 

 which are pure white, painted at the base with purple stripes. 

 It flourishes in a partially shaded exposure, and requires the 

 same soil and treatment necessary for the other species of 

 the genus. 



Persons who value only plants with sliowy flowers will 

 hardly care to cultivate any of the species of Asaruiii or 

 Wild Ginger — low herbs, with kidney-shaped or heart-shaped 

 leaves, which completely hide the inconspicuous flowers, 

 not unlike, in general structure, those of the well-known 

 Pipe-Vine {Ayis/olochia Sipho). Asaruni Canadense, a com- 

 mon plant in northern woods, is now in flower, and well fills 

 a shaded pocket in the rockery with a mass of handsome 

 meml>ranaceous kidney-shaped and softly pubescent leaves, 

 which look bright and fresh throughout the summer. 



The Virginia Cowslip {Mertensia Virginica), an old and well 

 known inhabitant of gardens, is handsome in the rockery or 

 in the mixed border. It is a smooth, very pale, erect plant, one 

 or two feet high, with obovate leaves, and ridi, purple-blue, 

 trumpet-shaped, nodding flowers in short raceme-like clusters. 

 This Mertensia needs no special care or cultivation, and 

 thrives in all exposures, and in any rich loam. It can be in- 

 creased by division of the roots, or by seed, which should be 

 sown as soon as ripe. 



Dicenira exiinia, one of the plants to which the name 

 Dutchman's Breeches is commonly applied, is in flower 

 several days later than the more delicate D. Ciiciillaria. It has 

 bright green, three-lobed, deeply cut, handsome foliage and 

 rather tall scapes, with compound clustered racemes of droop- 

 ing red or flesh-colored flowers, nearly an inch long, with the 

 crest of the two inner petals of the heart-shaped corolla pro- 

 jecting above the outer petals. This is a coarser leaved plant 

 than the other American species of this genus, and is much 

 more rare, Ijeing confined to a few localities in western New 

 York and to the Alleghany Mountains of Virginia. It takes 

 readily to cultivation, however, and has now covered a con- 

 siderable piece of ground in a rather exjiosed part of the 

 rocker)'. It can be easily increased by the division of the sub- 

 terranean scaly shoots. 



Few of oiu- northern wild flowers possess a greater charm 

 than the graceful and delicate little plants popularly known as 

 Spring Beauty, two tuberous rooted species of the genus 

 Claytonia. C. f'Yrg'zVj/awa, the more southern of the two species, 

 and easily distinguished from C. Caroliniana by its long linear- 

 lanceolate leaves (those of C. Caroliniana are spathulate- 

 oblong, and only one to two inches long), is now thoroughly 

 established here, and is blooming freely in one of the driest, 

 and in summer most deeply shaded parts of the rockery. 

 The pretty, rose-colored flowers in loose racemes close in the 

 evening, but continue to open during several days. 



Anemone ranunculoiJes is a tuberous rooted European 

 species with deeply parted leaves and involucre, and with the 

 general habit and stature of our common wild Wood 

 Anemone, but with rather coarser foliage and clear bright 

 yellow, instead of white or rose colored, flowers. It is an ex- 

 ceedingly pretty little plant, widely distributed, and not infre- 

 quently cultivated in Europe, but rarely seen in this country. 



Among the few perennial plants of California which find 

 themselves thoroughly at home in eastern gardens, the hand- 

 somest, perhaps, is the great peltate Saxifrage {S.peitata), which 

 inhabits the beds of rapid mountain streams in the northern 

 Sierra Nevada. This plant, which is one of the largest of the 

 entire genus, sends up iii early spring, before the appearance 

 of the leaves, from thick, creeping root-stalks, tipped with broad 

 green stipular leaf-sheaths with membranous pink margins, 

 glandularscapesone or two feet high, bearing dense, branched 

 cymes of handsome, large, pale pink flowers. The leaves 

 which appear later are peltate, round, twelve to eighteen 

 inches across, and are borne on stout, glandular petioles, 

 sometimes two feet high. This fine plant requires, in order 

 to develop all its beauty, a rather moist situation near a brook 

 or along the borders of a pond. Here it will spread rapidly, and 

 soon makes a great mass of foliage, which retains its beauty 

 throughout the summer. It is now in full bloom. 



The great interest which has been felt in England of late 

 years in the cultivation of the Narcissus has given rise to 

 several fine seedling forms of the Daffodil {Naj-cissus 

 Psi-Hdo-Narcissus) which command high prices as novelties. 



