26o 



Garden and Forest. 



[July 25, 1888. 



bed is thoroughly saturated and covered to a depth of two 

 or three inches with water ; the supply is then shut off 

 until the next morning. Some of the varieties, under this 

 generous treatment, grow to a height of five or six feet, 

 and have produced flowers fully ten inches across, and 

 surprising in their profusion and beauty. While irriga- 

 tion is doubtless necessary to develop the greatest per- 

 fection of the Japanese Iris, it can be successfully grown 

 in this country in ordinary seasons in any good garden 

 soil and without artificial watering. Very fine flowers 

 have been produced without special treatment by Mr. 

 Parkman and other American growers, who have raised 

 good seedling varieties of this plant without giving to it 

 more care than is required by other Irises. The Japa- 

 nese Iris is one of the handsomest of the whole genus, 

 and, when in flower, one of the handsomest of hardy 

 perennial plants. It is beloved by the Japanese, who 

 make holidays to visit the Iris beds when the plants are 

 blooming, and who have' devoted infinite pains to its 

 improvement. The flowers are hardly surpassed in deli- 

 cacy of texture or in beauty of color, but they do not ap- 

 pear here until July, and the hot sun soon fades them. 

 The blooming season may be prolonged by the use of an 

 awning placed over the beds during the day, but it cannot 

 be denied that this plant flowers too late here, and that 

 its period of beauty is too short in this climate ever to 

 make it a great popular favorite. It is hard to imagine, 

 however, anything more beautiful than a mass of these 

 many tinted flowers like that which our illustration rep- 

 resents, and which certainly has no equal in the United 

 States, either in the varieties which it contains or in the 

 perfection with which they are cultivated. 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum. 



T^HE European Privet (Ligiislrum viilgarc) is in bloom. 

 •'■ This is such an old-fashioned shrub, and such a com- 

 mon one, having long remained the favorite hedge plant in 

 the Northern States before Conifers were as mucli planted for 

 hedges as they are now, that few people realize, perhaps, what 

 a valuable plant it is or how numerous are its claims upon the 

 attention of the planter. There is not a shrub more hardy, 

 or one less fastidious in regard to soil; it blooms profusely 

 at a season of the year when comparatively few shrubs 

 are in flower; it is little affected by drought, and therefore 

 invaluable for planting under or near large trees, which 

 quickly exhaust the moisture in the soil, and so make it 

 difficult for other plants to thrive near them ; and in autumn 

 it is covered profusely with handsome black berries, which 

 remain bright and unwithercd upon the branches mitil the 

 new leaves appear the following spring. The Privet, like 

 the Barberry, has gradually become naturalized in some 

 parts of the Eastern States, through the agency of birds, no 

 doubt, and seems to adapt itself now to its surroundings as 

 completely as any American plant ; and. like the Barberry, 

 it can be planted in connection with our native shrubs with- 

 out raising any question of want of fitness or naturalness 

 of grouping or composition. Several varieties are cultivated. 

 There is one with yellow fruit, which has now liecome natur- 

 alized in the neighboriiood of Boston. There is one with pen- 

 dulous branches, which, when grafted standard high, makes 

 an excellent small weeping ti'ce ; and there are forms with 

 erect growing branches, giving to the plant a fastigiate habit, 

 and with golden, blotched leaves. 



Ligtistniii! Ibota is a Japanese and north China Privet, and a 

 valual)le, hardy shrulj, of graceful habit, just now covered with 

 flowers. It has erect, softly pubescent branches, ovate-ellip- 

 tical, obtuse leaves, and a slender thyrsus of .small white 

 flowers, with a long and slender corolla tube. It is a variable 

 species ; at least there are two forms here of what is evidently 

 the^ same species, one with leaves two inches long on short 

 petioles, and a slender, erect inflorescence three" inches or 

 more long. In some collections this is known as Ligustrutii 

 Aiiiurensc, under which name it is very well figured and de- 

 scribed by Carriere in the Rcviic Horticole for 1861, p. 352. The 

 other variety has leaves rarely an inch and a half Ions;-, more 

 oval in outline and with shorter petioles, while the inflor- 

 escence is less than an inch long, few-flowered, and often 

 one-sided and nodding by the curving downwards of the 

 peduncle. 



Ligiistrum ovalifoHum is another Japanese species belong- 

 ing with the last to the section of the genus with long-tubed 

 flowers. It has been of late years very widely distributed in 

 American gardens under the name of /-. Californicutn, or the 

 California Privet, a name which -it perhaps owes to the possi- 

 ble fact that it reached eastern nurseries first from California, 

 where it has been very generally cultivated for several years. 

 It is a hardy and free-growing shrub, with erect branches, 

 five or six feet high, covered with handsome oval or ovate- 

 elliptical, bright green, shining leaves, which do not fall until 

 late in the winter. The small white flowers are produced in 

 abundance. Like all the Privets, it is easily propagated from 

 cuttings — so easily that it has become a great favorite with 

 nurserymen ; and certainly no other shrub of such compara- 

 tively recent introduction has been so widely and generally 

 cultivated in this coimtry. 



Not the least attractive adornment of many old-fashioned 

 New England door-yards is Spircea sorbifolia. Unfortunately, it 

 is rarely seen nowadays anywhere else in this country, foritisa 

 nol:)le plant, forming, with generous treatment, a great massof 

 dark green foliage, six or eight feet high by as much through, 

 and now covered with immense panicles, fully two feet long, 

 of small white flowers. The leaves are pinnate, with red- 

 dish stems, fifteen to eighteen inches long, and composed of 

 about ten pairs of acuminate, sharply serrate leaflets, with 

 prominent veins. The flower clusters are produced on the 

 ends of vigorous l)ranches of the year, which often attain 

 a length of three feet before the flowers appear, and are quite 

 red. It is a common and widely distributed Siberian species, 

 reaching Japan, and the earliest to flower here of the plants of 

 the small section Sorbaf-ia, which some botanists now sepa- 

 rate from Spirira as a genus. They all have pinnate leaves 

 and large terminal panicles of white flowers. They are 

 Asiatic, generally Siberian, with one species confined to the 

 Himalaya and one in Mongolia or northern China. S. Lind- 

 hyaiia, the Himalayan species, a handsome plant in English 

 gardens, where it sometimes attains almost the size, and the 

 habit of a tree, is not hardy here, being cut down to the ground 

 every winter, and never flowering. 



Spiraa Japonica, as defined by Maximowicz and made to 

 include S. callosa and S. Fortunei, is an exceedingly variable 

 species, widely distributed from Japan (where it was first 

 made known) to northern China and the Himalayas. It con- 

 tains forms (especially those referred to 5. Fortunei) of very 

 considerable garden value, and among those in the collection 

 here some are in flower from the end of June until frost. One 

 now in flower and the earliest is of Japanese origin and seems 

 identical with the plant figured by Hooker in the Botanical 

 Magazine (t. 5164) as 6". Foi-tunci. It is a spreading, flat-topped 

 shrub, four or five feet high, with reddish glabrous branches, 

 the young shoots puberulous, dark green leaves, paler on the 

 under side, five or six inches long, elliptical-lanceolate, with a 

 long acumen, and glandular serratures. The flowers are rosy- 

 purple, arranged in a lax, flat cyme with slender spreading 

 branches and more than a foot across. The disk, as is the 

 case with the flowers of all the forms of this species, is provided 

 with a row of small, sul.)-crect red glands. It is a hardy, free 

 growing plant not particular about soil ; and one of the 

 liest of the forms of 5. Japonica. 



The opinion is frequently expressed that the European 

 Heaths are not hardy in this country, or that they are difficult 

 to manage. There is a large collection of these plants in the 

 Arboretum, where they grow well and flower freely every 

 year. They are planted in an exposed, sunny position, and 

 in soil with which a considerable amount of peat has been 

 mixed, and they receive in wintera covering of Pine branches. 

 Young plants — and this is true of many garden shrubs — flower 

 lietter tlian old ones, and it is found advisable to renew the 

 collection occasionally with new plants. The earliest of the 

 summer-blooming species in flower is Erica Tetralix. It is a 

 dwarf plant of grayish hue, six or eight inches high, with 

 minute, ciliated leaves arranged in foin^s and pale red flowers 

 in terminal heads. It remains in bloom nearly all summer. 

 The hardy lieaths are all capital rock-garden plants and they 

 make good edgings for Iieds of larger evergreens. 



The Silky Cornel {Corniis scricca) is one of the latest of the 

 North American Dogwoods in the collection to flower. The 

 remarks which have f:ieen made in earlier issues of these notes 

 regarding the value of our larger growing native shrubs for 

 planting in public .sjrounds, are as applicable to this plant as to 

 the other Dogwoods and to the A' ibvu-nums. Like C. sioloni- 

 fera, it is handsome in winter with its purple Ijranches. It has 

 ovate pointed leaves, silky downy on the imder side, close, 

 flat, rather small cymes of vellow-white flowers and pale blue 

 fruit. It is very common at the north along the borders of 



