252 



Garden and Forest. 



[July i8, 



Notes. 



Prices of cut flowers are so unsteady at this season, that our 

 weekly reports of the Retail Flower Market will be discon- 

 tinued until the Fall trade begins. 



The place for holding the August meeting of the Society of 

 American Florists has again been changed. The society will 

 meet in the Cooper Union and the exhibition will be in Nilsson 

 Hall. 



The florists and gardeners of Boston and vicinity have 

 planned for a holiday on July 24th. It will take the form of an 

 excursion down the harbor on a steamer, with a short landing 

 on one of the islands. The affair will be under the auspices 

 of the Gardeners' and Florists' Club. 



It appears from a recent issue of the -ffcv'a^^t' la Horticulture 

 Beige that the flowers of the Locust {Robinia Pseudacn cia) are 

 considered a delicacy for the table in Europe, being served 

 in pati's. The flavor is pronounced delicious. The flowers 

 of the European Elder {Saiiibucus nigra) are sometimes used 

 in the same way. 



A convention of the Cranberry-growers of Cape Cod will be 

 held in the town of Sandwich during the present month for 

 the purpose of discussing the necessities of this already im- 

 portant and rapidly developing industry, and especially to 

 devise methods for the more general introduction of the Cran- 

 berry crop into European markets. 



It is gratifying to note the constantly increasing use of the 

 Gloxinia as a florists' flower. It has been adopted generally by 

 the florists of Boston as a standard variety in their summer 

 stock. Its rich coloring and graceful form recommend it for 

 use in floral designs for all occasions. It is very easily bruised, 

 but if handled carefully will keep for a long time. 



Good blue flowers which can be used for cutting purposes 

 are never abundant, but more blue is now seen in the win- 

 dows of Philadelphia florists than usual, because the beautiful 

 Delphinium formosuin is now at its best and a prime favorite. 

 A few of these Larkspur sprays with any yellow flower, es- 

 pecially with Roses like Perle des Jardins, Marechal Neil and 

 Sunset, or a sprig of it in a cluster of Aquilegia chrysantha, 

 produces a most charming eftect. 



Professor Asa Gray left by will the copyrights of all his 

 books to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, for 

 the benefit of the Gray Herbarium, on condition that proper 

 provisions be made for their renewal and extension by new 

 editions, continuations and supplements as might be neces- 

 sary to increase and prolong the value of the bequest. His 

 herbarium, unequaled in North American plants, and library, 

 he presented to the college many years before his death. 



In the collection of Orchids in the recent exhibition in Paris, 

 which won for Sander, of St. Albans, the Grand Prix d' Hon- 

 neiir offered by the President of the Republic, was a noble 

 specimen of Cattleya guttata Leopoldi, more than four feet 

 high by as much across, and bearing more than a hundred 

 flower-stems, splendid great specimens of L<xlia purpurata, 

 and innimierable forms of Odontoglossum crispuiii, O. vexil- 

 larilim, O. //arryanum, and ot Cattleya Mossia 2C[\d C.Mendeli. 



All the plants remaining on the estate of the late C. M. 

 Hovey, at Cambridge, Mass., were sold at auction on Monday, 

 July gth. Many of these plants were seedlings, and rare speci- 

 mens collected by Mr. Hovey during nearly half a century, 

 and with wliich he never could be induced to part. The sale 

 attracted many buyers, mainly florists, from all parts of New 

 England, and prices realized were good, considering the condi- 

 tion of the stock, of which the greater part gave evidence of 

 sad neglect. 



The Promenade along the shore of East River Park, in this 

 city, will be a useful and attractive feature of that work. It 

 will be twenty-seven feet wide, and but a few feet above the 

 mean water-level, so that the cooling influence of the tides, 

 which always flow swiftly at this point, will be most grateful 

 in summer weather. When the walk is extended along the 

 entire shore, including the newly acquired addition to this 

 Park, if will be large enough to accommodate great numbers 

 of visitors from a district which will soon be densely populated. 



A common Eiu'opean Hawkweed {Hieracium anrantiacum) 

 is now pretty thoroughly naturalized in some places in the 

 Eastern States and is likely to become a troublesome weed 

 liere. In Greene County, in this State, it has already taken 



almost complete possession of some fields, and as this plant 

 spreads from stoloniferous, underground stems, it will proba- 

 bly spread as fast and be as difficult to eradicate as the White 

 Weed or Daisy. It is a hairy plant, with a cluster of narrow 

 leaves near the ground and a simple naked scape a foot or 

 more high, bearing a head of deep orange-colored or flame- 

 colored flowers. 



In commercial horticulture all good flowers are scarce, es- 

 pecially white ones. This is partly due to the hot week in late 

 June and partly to the fact that this is " between seasons " for 

 those who grow flowers for the wholesale market. That is, the 

 Rose plants, for example, which did service last winter and 

 spring, are now thrown out, and younger plants and new soil 

 are introduced, and the success or failure of the supply next 

 winter is often determined by the treatment of the stock at 

 this critical period. Sickly plants, badly prepared soil, a 

 lack of watchfulness now, mean a scant crop of inferior flow- 

 ers next season. 



A prominent nurseryman stated, recently that the reduction 

 of freight-rates on niu'sery stock brought about by the efforts 

 of the committee appointed by the American Association last 

 year would save to customers and the trade $50,000 during the 

 present season. The reduction applies only to stock packed 

 in boxes and thus puts a premium on proper packing. Such 

 stock is now carried as third-class freight, instead of first-class, 

 as it was formerly rated. Some of the arguments used to 

 secure this concession were that boxed stock can be roughly 

 handled without injury ; that when transported with ordinary 

 dispatch it is in no risk of damage, and that the carrying of nur- 

 sery stock brings in time more freight in the shape of fruit. 



M. Beurdeley, in a report made recently to the Horticultural 

 Society of France, invites the attention of horticulturists to the 

 results of his experiments with male and female plants of 

 Asparagus. He finds the former the more productive, seventy- 

 six shoots having been produced by twelve crowns of the 

 female plant, or an average of nearly six and one-half shoots 

 for each crown, while twenty crowns of the male plant yielded 

 244 shoots, or an average of over twelve shoots from each 

 crown. The experiments were only carried on during a sin- 

 gle year, but this is a subject of such practical importance to 

 gardeners, that, as the Reznte Horticole, from which this in- 

 formation is derived, suggests, they should be continued 

 on a larger scale and during a period of several years. 



A correspondent of the journal published by the Societe des 

 Agriculteurs in Paris sends some interesting information with 

 regard to the very large trade done in Cauliflowers from Ros- 

 coff and other places in Lower Brittany. He says that every 

 day, for a period of about two months, seventeen or eighteen 

 trucks, each holding about four tons of Cauliflowers, are dis- 

 patched from four or five stations, thus making a total of over 

 4,000 tons of Cauliflowers during the two months. About a 

 thousand plants go to the ton, and the average price is 

 $17.00 per ton, or something under $70,000 for the whole lot. 

 The bulk of them are shipped at Nantes for Bordeaux and the 

 southern markets, or at Cherbourg and Havre for England, 

 though a great many trucks go to Paris. An enormous profit 

 in this trade is niade bv the middlemen, and the correspond- 

 ent not unreasonafily asks whether, with a little manage- 

 ment, a large proportion of this might not be secured by 

 the growers themselves. 



At the Cincinnati Exposition the American Forestry Con- 

 gress exhibits a section of a Tulip tree with a chronological 

 table of its history, showing that the tree began its life when 

 Queen Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, was a stout sap- 

 ling when Saint Augustine was founded, and gave respectable 

 shade when the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England. 

 When La Salle saw it on the banks of the Mississippi in 1682 it 

 had become a tree of royal stature ; when the Lhiited States 

 began to exist as an independent nation it was four feet in dia- 

 meter and when cut for the Cincinnatti Exposition it had added 

 another foot to its diameter, being five feet in 330 years. The 

 Forestry Congress also exhibits a chart with many instructive 

 illustrations of the present condition of our forest interests, 

 both state and national. The Division of Forestry of the De- 

 partment of Agriculture exhibits at the same place a collec- 

 tion of forest seeds ; sections of 100 of our most important 

 forest trees ; 200 volumes on the subject of forestry in dif- 

 ferent languages, showing that there is such a literature ; 

 thirty-six heliotype pictures illustrating the effects of defores- 

 tation and the mode of reforestation in the French Alps, and 

 a collection of tools used in European forest planting and 

 management. 



