JULV i8, 1888.] 



Garden and Forest. 



249 



green foliage, and small, pure white, single flowers, solitary 

 or two or three together. It continues to expand its flowers 

 during several weeks and is one of the most attractive of the 

 foreign Roses in the collection. It is well suited to plant on 

 banks or among other shrubs, where it can send its long 

 stems freely over therh, or it is an exceedingly attractive plant 

 when trained to a tall stake or to a pillar. 



Many of the American Greenbriers {Smilax) are handsome 

 climbing plants. They are never cultivated, however, although 

 some of the strong growing species can be made to serve a 

 good purpose in preventing access across the boundaries of 

 parks or pleasure grounds. Neither man nor beast will try to 

 break through a well-grown mass of the tough, horribly 

 armed stems of the common Greenbrier, or Bullbrier {Smilax 

 rotuHdifolia), one of the handsomest plants in leaf found in the 

 Atlantic forests. 



Another species peculiar to the south, S. Pseudo-China, 

 is blooming here now, and although its stems are unarmed, 

 or nearly so, they are so tough and become so interlaced, that 

 passage through them is almost impossible. It soon spreads 

 from the tuberous root-stocks, sending up stems ten or twelve 

 feet long, covered with large, dark green, ovate-oblong, sharply 

 pointe'd leaves, the small clusters of greenish flowers and 

 handsome black fruit on slender stems three or four times 

 longer than the petioles. There are still several species of 

 these interesting plants to introduce into cultivation and much 

 to be learned of their horticultural capabilities. 



Several of the Viburnums and Dogwoods of the Northern 

 States are now in flower. Among them are shrubs which 

 are unsurpassed in beauty of foliage, or of flowers, or of fruit. 

 They can all be easily cultivated and all thrive in any variety 

 of soil and in all exposures. Where great masses of low 

 foliage is needed in pulilic parks, or where shrubberies are 

 liable to suffer from neglect, as in city squares, or on railroad 

 embankments, or where the adornment of country roadsides 

 is undertaken, these and other native shrubs should be se- 

 lected for the purpose, rather than exotic garden plants, which 

 always require considerable attention to keep them in good 

 order, and which, often fastidious about soil, are liable to be 

 attacked by insect and fungoid enemies. Our common nadve 

 shrubs, however, are very rarely cultivated. A few years ago 

 they were completely unknown in nurseries and entirely neg- 

 lected by planters. Some attention has been drawn to them 

 lately, but they are still rare in nurseries, and it is impossible 

 to obtain them in large quantities. Such plants are easily and 

 quickly raised, and a demand for them will soon create a sup- 

 ply. Attention has already been directed, in an earlier issue 

 of these notes, to the beauty of I'iburnuiu Lc/itago. Among 

 the species in bloom a few days later are Viburnum dentatum, 

 the Arrow-wood, a compact shrub, with erect branches eight 

 or ten feet high, ample, sharply toothed and strongly veined 

 leaves, and broad, peduncled cymes of white flowers, which 

 in the early autunm are followed by bright blue, handsome 

 fruit. Viburnum cassinoides grows six to ten feet high, in the 

 northern swamps, which are its home. It has handsome, 

 leathery, opaque, or dull, ovate, generally entire leaves, and 

 broad, flat cymes of yellow-white flowers. This is one of the 

 handsomest shrubs in the»Northern States. It is easily culti- 

 vated, and soon grows into a round-topped, spreading speci- 

 men, flowering with the greatest profusion. Viburnum accri- 

 folium is a smaller plant than either of those already men- 

 tioned, rarely exceeding a height of three or four feet' on the 

 rocky wooded hillsides where it abounds in the northern 

 States. It is a plant of compact habit, producing freely 

 small, long-stemmed clusters of white flowers, but its greatest 

 beauty is m the rich, deep claret color .which its handsome, 

 three-lobed leaves assume late in autumn. 



Among the native Dogwoods now in flower the handsomest, 

 perhaps, are C. alternifolia, a shrub-like tree with wide 

 spreading branches and a flat top, the alternate leaves crowded 

 toward the ends of the branchlets, and open, wide cymes of 

 pale yellow or white flowers, followed by deep blue fruit, with 

 reddish stalks ; and C. circinata, the round-leaved Cornel, a 

 compact shrub six to ten feet high, with green, warty-dotted 

 branches, large, round-oval, pale green leaves, four or five 

 inches across, woolly on the lower side, flat cymes of rather 

 large flowers, and light blue fruit. This is certainly one of the 

 most attractive of all the Cornels. 



Corttus paniculata, the Panicled Cornel, a tall, spreading 

 shrub, often ten or twelve feet high, with smooth, gray 

 branches, taper pointed, ovate-lanceolate leaves, and cyFnes 

 or panicles of pure white flowers, which are produced in 

 the greatest profusion, and quite cover the plant at this sea- 

 son. The handsome fruit is white. This is a very common 

 and widely distributed northern plant found along the borders 



of streams and abounding on the margins of lowland woods 

 and thickets. No shrub is more easily cultivated, and none is 

 better suited to grace a park-plantation in the Northern States; 

 Cornus stonolifera, the Red Osier, with its bright, red-purple, 

 annual shoots, and long, pale foliage, is a useful plant for gene- 

 ral planting. The flowers are pale yellow, produced in small, 

 flat cymes, and have the merit of appearing later than those of 

 most of the Dogwoods. The fruit is whitish or lead color. It 

 is a very common northern shrub, found in the wet borders of 

 swamps and in low woods. The habit of this plant of spreail- 

 ing by prostrate or subterranean shoots, and thus quickly 

 forming broad clumps, which sometimes reach a height of six 

 feet, makes it a useful plant for covering rapidly the ground 

 among trees or larg-er growing shrul)S, while its IjriUiantly 

 colored branches add interest and variety to a plantation in 

 winter. But by far the handsomest native shridj now in flower 

 is the common Elder {Suinbuciis Canadensis). It is such a 

 familiar object in every northern landscape that few persons 

 realize that the Elder possesses all the qualifications of an or- 

 namental plant of the very first class — hardiness, vigorous and 

 rapid growth, good habit, pleasing foliage, handsome and con- 

 spicuous fragrant flowers, opening at a time when nearly all 

 trees and shrubs have passed the blooming period ; and fruit 

 even handsomer and more conspicuous than the flowers which 

 precede it. Few plants are better worth cultivating in a large 

 garden or park, and yet, with the exception of the ugly yellow- 

 leaved variety, it is seldoin cultivated ; and most gardeners of 

 the modern school would consider it a weed to be extermin- 

 ated if, by chance, it should spring up along fence lines, where 

 Iiirds often sow it, and where, if the ground is moist, it soon 

 forms splendid masses of shrubbery. There is a form with 

 deeply cut leaves which will interest persons fond of novelties, 

 or of plants of peculiar or abnormal growth. 



The very latest of the Thorns to bloom here is an American 

 species, the so-called Washington '\\'\oxw {Cratcegus lordatd), 

 now in full flower. It is a handsome small tree, sometimes 

 twenty-five feet high, and perfectly hardy here, although it is 

 a southern plant, not found growing spontaneously north of 

 Virginia and Kentucky. In the mountainous parts of these 

 states and of those further south it is a common inhabitant of 

 rich woods. It has brightly shining, broadly ovate or trian- 

 gular, deeply cleft, serrate leaves, on long, slender petioles, 

 rather sniall flowers in simple corymbs, and small, but very 

 showy, bright scarlet fruit, which hangs until the early winter. 

 The autumnal coloring of the foliage, which does not change 

 until very late, is brilliant and beautiful. Crafa'gus cordata is 

 one of the most distinct of the American Thorns, and one of 

 the best small trees which can be planted in Northern gardens 

 and shrubberies. It blooms only a few days later than Cra- 

 taegus tomentosa, an Alleghanian and w-estern species, which 

 must not be confounded with some of the pubescent forms ot 

 C. coccinea, to which many recent writers upon American 

 l)ofany have improperly referred this Linnean species, which 

 does not occur in the Northern and Eastern States east of west- 

 ern New York. C. tomentosa may be readily distinguished from 

 any of the forms of C. coccinea, not only by the fact that it 

 flowers many weeks later, but by the pale gray branches, 

 almost entirely destitute of thorns, by its thicker and more 

 pubescent leaves, without glands, gradually contracted into a 

 stout, margined petiole, and densely pubescent on the under 

 side, as are the calyx and stems of the inflorescence. It 

 inay be distinguished, too, from forms of C. coccinea by its 

 broader and looser corymbs, and by the extremely disagreeable 

 odor of the flowers, and by the smaller, oblong, upright fruit, 

 which does not ripen until long after X\\2A 01 C. coccinea has 

 fallen to the ground. C. tomentosa is perfectly hardy, making 

 in cultivation a small, handsome tree, with spreading branches 

 and rather a flat top. The orange tints which its leaves as- 

 sume in late autumn are attractive. 



It is hopeless to undertake to unravel the confused synony- 

 my of the multitude of garden forms of Philadelphus. or 

 even to refer them to wild types, so mixed has been the blood 

 of the different species through years of cultivation, and so 

 unstable are many of the characters depended on to separate 

 the difterent species. It- is well to record, however, that the 

 earliest to flower in the collection, by ten or twelve days, is the 

 Manchurian and Japanese plant known as P. Schrenkii, and 

 now considered by Maximowicz as one of the varieties (var. 

 Satsumi) of the very varialile and widely distributed P. coro- 

 naria, the common Syringa of gardens. By far the hand- 

 somest of the early flowering Syrmgas in the collection, how- 

 ever, is that known in gardens as P. speciosus. It is a tall, erect 

 growing plant, covered with large, pure white flowers, and 

 evidently a hybrid or a variety of the American P. grandiflorus. 



June 30th. y* 



