July 25,- 1888.] 



Garden and Forest. 



261 



swamps and in other low, wet places, where it forms a wide 

 spreading bush eight or ten feet higli. 



Rubiis odoraiiis, the Flowering Raspberry, is another useful 

 native shrub. It has upright stems four to five feet high, 

 covered with bristly, glandular hairs, three to five lobed leaves, 

 and handsome, dark rose-purple, clustered flowers, more than 

 an inch across when expanded. It is a common northern 

 plant, spreading rapidly here in cultivation by underground 

 shoots, and soonformingalniost impenetrable masses of dense 

 stems and foliage, now gay with bright colored flowers. 

 It thrives, too, under trees, and is one of the best plants to cover 

 shaded ground rapidly in situations where sucli a tall grow- 

 ing plant can be properly used. 



Riibus Nutkanus , which resembles the common Flowering 

 Raspberry in foliage and in general habit, but with white flowers 

 is not hardy here, and is killed down to the ground every year, 

 and therefore does not flower. It is found from the shores of 

 Lake Superior and westward to Puget Sound and British Col- 

 imibia. 



Itea I'lfginica is now in flower. It is adwarf shrub, rarely 

 more than a couple of feet in height. The simple, upright, 

 terminal racemes are not very showy, Init it is an interesting 

 plant as the representative of a peculiar tribe of tlie Saxifrage 

 Family, and it flowers when shrub flowers are less abundant 

 than they were a month ago. It grows in low, wet places from 

 New Jersey southward near the coast. 



The three species of Jlcx belonging to the section Prhios 

 which are found in the Northern States are now all in flower. 

 Their chief ornamental value no doubt consists in their showy 

 fruit, but they are not without attraction in flower, especially 

 /. IcBvigata, which is much the rarest species-, and which may 

 be distinguished from the common Black Alder (/. verticillaia) 

 by the long stalked sterile flowers, and by its larger fruit, which 

 ripens somewhat earlier in the autumn. They are both easily 

 cultivated, and worth much more attention at the hands of 

 gardeners than they have ever received for the brilliant and 

 abundant fruit which covers their branches in winter. The 

 Ink Berry, Ilex glabra, is a handsome evergreen shrub, with 

 black berries. It occupies considerable tracts of sandy soil 

 near the coast from Massachusetts southward, notably on Cape 

 Cod and on Long Island, and it is often found along the borders 

 of ponds and streams in the Pine woods, wliere it grows much 

 taller (four or five feet sometimes) than on the exposed sea 

 coast. This is one of the few broad-leaved evergreens of the 

 Northern States ; it assumes a compact habit in cultivation ; 

 its foliage and its fruit are both handsome; yet although it was 

 introduced into England one hundred and thirty years ago, 

 and has always been grown in foreign nurseries, it is practi- 

 cally unknown in American gardens, and its value seems 

 to have been never appreciated by planters in this country. 



Andromeda ligustrina is not a showy flowered species, but it 

 can be used, perhaps, with advantage, to give variety to a plan- 

 tation of native shrubs, and it will thrive in low, wet ground, 

 where it reaches a height of eight or ten feet and produces at 

 this season of the year an abundance of racemose-panicled, 

 rather small, pure white flowers. The ovate-oblong deciduous 

 leaves turn brilliantly in autumn. 



One of the most Ijeautiful of our native Roses now in 

 bloom is Rosa nitida. It is rather a rare plant, found 

 fron^i Newfoundland to eastern Massachusetts, and although 

 distinguished and described long ago and even introduced 

 into Europe early in the century, it has been but little known 

 in this country, and has, imtil quite recently, been confound- 

 ed with other species. It is one of the most distinct, never- 

 theless, of the American Roses, and may be known always by 

 the red shoots, thickly beset with slender red spines, barely 

 stouter than the red prickles. The leaves are bright green 

 and shining, and make a charming contrast with the bright, 

 rose-colored or red flowers, one and a half to two and a half 

 inches across. Rosa nitida inhabits damp swamps and 

 other low, wet places, but transferred to the garden, like 

 most of our native Roses, it grows freely, soon making 

 a broad mass of foliage and flowering with the greatest 

 profusion. There are few shrubs better worth a place in the 

 garden. 



Alyssiim gemonensc is a dwarf under -shrub, a native of 

 southern Europe, and quite hardy here. It grows a few 

 inches high, and the base of the stems only are woody. They 

 are covered with small, lanceolate, entire leaves, clothed witli 

 grayish, stellate down, which gives them a velvety appearance. 

 The yellow flowers are produced in close, terminal cymes, 

 which quite cover the plants giving to a mass of them a 

 showy appearance, which they retain during several weeks. 

 This is an excellent dwarf rock-garden plant. 



July 3d. J. 



The Forest. 



The Long-leaved Pine. 



'T'HIS widely distributed tree [Pinus fialustris) forms almost 

 -'- exclusively the immense forests of the lower Southern 

 Pine Belt, which with scarcely any interruption cover tens of 

 thousands of square miles. It furnishes not only enormous 

 supplies of valuable timber, but is also the chief source of 

 the resinovis products of North American forests. It is there- 

 fore first in importance amongst all the trees of the southern 

 division of the Atlantic forest region. 



From the northern confines of North Carolina, the forests of 

 Long-leaved Pine extend in a belt, varying from go to 120 miles 

 wide along the coast of the Atlantic States, to Florida, crossing 

 the Peninsula to the Everglades, and from western Georgia 

 following the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the bluffs of the 

 Mississippi River. One vast forest of Long-leaved Pine covers 

 the belt of gravelly and sandy drift soils from 5 to 25 miles in 

 width, which traverses Alabama from its eastern to near 

 its western borders. On detached patches of the same for- 

 mation such forests reach in that state the 38th degree of north 

 latitude at an elevation of about eight hundred feet above 

 the sea. West of the Mississippi River this belt appears be- 

 yond the alluvium of the delta on the drift covered uplands. 

 The magnificent forests of Long-leaved Pine of the western 

 Gulf region stretching from the Pachita river to the valley of 

 the Trinity in Texas and from the thirty-second degree of 

 north latitude to the savannas and marshes of the coast are 

 unsurpassed in tlie luxuriance of their growth and their timber 

 wealth. 



Provided with a powerful taproot, the finely sliaped trunk of 

 this tree rises in the fullness of its growth to a height of 100 

 to 115 feet, with a diameter of 24 to 32 inches near its base, 

 and free from limbs to one-half or two-thirds of its length. The 

 massive, horizontally spreading limbs, rarely exceeding 20 

 feet in length, divide into short gnarled bi-anches, forming 

 an unsymmetrically shaped head which affords but a scanty 

 shade to the ground beneath. The leaves to the number of 

 three in a sheath of a rich glossy green and from 8 to 12 inches 

 in length, are shed during their second year, and therefore 

 with the increasing shortness of the axis of annual growth are 

 crowded at the extremities of the otherwise naked branches 

 in dense tassels or tufts. The edges of the bracts being 

 fringed with fine, long, silky hairs, provide the densely crowded 

 leaf buds terminating the branches with a soft covering of 

 silvery white, by which this species is readily distinguished at 

 first sight from its nearest allies. 



Theflowers, situated near the apex of the young shoots of 

 the season, make their appearance early in the spring. The 

 staminate flowers in great abundance and chiefly on the lower 

 branches, discharge their copious pollen here about the mid- 

 dle of March. The pistillate flowers being chiefly confined to 

 the upper part of the tree, are fully exposed to fertilization by 

 the pollen of other individuals. They are in some years much 

 more abundant than in others, and at times almost entirely 

 wanting for a series of years, to the complete failure of the 

 crop. The long, slender, slightly bent cones ripen during the 

 second year, an\l shed their 'seeds late in October. These af- 

 ford a rich mast eagerly devoured by many denizens of the 

 forests. If at thisseason the weather continues wet and warm, 

 the seeds sprout in the cone and the crop is lost. 



After fruitful seasons, which are observed to happen at in- 

 tervals of 3 to 4 years, seedlings spring up in the openings of 

 the forest wherever the rays of the sun can reach the ground, 

 the seeds sprouting soon after having fallen. In the follow- 

 ing season the plantlet produces dense tufts of its secondary 

 or foliage leaves, the stem scarcely rising above the ground. 

 During the succeeding three or four years i.ts growth is very 

 slow, being rather directed to the early development of a 

 powerful root system. At the end of that period the tufts 

 of the leaves of the young Pines scarcely reach above the sur- 

 rounding herbage. The simple stem having by this time at- 

 tained a certain thickness, now increases suddenly in height. 

 In the course of the following years irregular branches are 

 thrown out which, somewhat before the tenth year, begin to 

 form regular whorls. Trees ten years old a\-erage twelve feet 

 in height. During the next fifteen years growth proceeds at the 

 most rapid rate. At the age of twenty-five years the trees average 

 from forty to forty-five feet in height, with a diameter rarely 

 exceeding ten inches. At a hundred years of age they meas- 

 ure from seventy to eighty feet in height, which during the 

 next half century increases to over ninety feet, with a diame- 

 ter of sixteen to eighteen inches three feet above their base. 

 From this age to the second century of its life, the Long- 



