272 



Garden and Forest. 



[Ai'Gisr I, 



Plant Notes. 



The Double-Flowered Chinese Crab Apple. 



OUR ilhistration represents a flowering- branch of this 

 ornamental tree, the Pj'rus speclabilis of Aiton, a 

 native of northern China and an old inhabitant of gar- 

 dens, although now less often planted in this country 

 than some of the forms of Pyrus baccata, especially 

 those of Japanese-garden origin, of which one of the 

 most useful was figured in an earlier issue of this journal 

 (6), and from which /"y/v/s spec/abilis may be distinguished 

 by its persistent calyx lobes, which remain upon the 

 fruit until it decaj's. 



The Chinese Crab Ap|:)le, as seen in gardens, is a small 

 shrub-like tree, twenty to twenty-fi\e feet high, with rigid, 

 upright, light gray branches, oval-oblong, finely serrate, 

 leathery leaves, dark green above, paler on the under sur- 



Loudon's remark of the Chinese Apple that "no garden, 

 wliether large or small, ought to l>e without this tree," still 

 liolds good, notwithstanding all the introductions of the 

 last half century. C. S. S. 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum. 



Genista tinctoria, the Woad Wax, is a dwarf European shrub, 

 one to two feet high, with creeping root-stalks, and upright 

 branches, clothed with dark green, simple leaves, and now 

 terminated witli spicate racemes of handsome yellow flowers. 

 It is a plant of no little beauty, very tenacious of life, and 

 capable of spreading rapidly, under favorable conditions, over 

 large areas. In some parts of Essex County, in this State, it 

 lias become tlioroughly naturalized, and has taken pos- 

 session of tliousands of acres of rocky upland, from which 

 it is practically impossible to exterminate it, and which is 

 thus ruined for pasturage or for tillage. These hills, when 

 the Woad Wax is in flower, seem to have been covered with a 



Fig, 44 — Tl,t- D.iub:e-flo\ 



face, which, as well as the petioles and young shoots, is 

 covered, especially along the mid-rib, with a short, 

 fine tomentum. The flowers are semi-double, nearly 

 an inch across when expanded, pale rose colored, fading 

 white, and much lighter colored than the large, showy, 

 bright red flower-ljuds. They appear here the middle ot 

 May, and are produced with the greatest profusion along 

 the entire length of the branches in sessile, man)'-flowered 

 umbels. ■ The fruit, which rarely sets here, barely exceeds 

 half an inch in diameter; it is round and somewhat angled, 

 or often olilong, and when fully ripe of a dull yellow color, 

 and hardly edible. The Chinese Crab is propagated by 

 grafting on the common Apple tree. There are excellent 

 colored figures of this plant in the Nouveau Duhamel 

 (vi., /. 42, f. 2) and in Watson's '• Dciulrologia Bntaniiica 

 (i., t. 50, the flower with the normal number of petals). 



I'ercd Chinese Ciali Apple. 



golden carpet, and present an appearance quite unlike any- 

 thing which can be seen in anv other part of the United 

 States. There is a tradition that the Woad Wax was intro- 

 duced into the United States by Governor John Endicott, of 

 Salem, wlio planted the famous Pear tree which still bears 

 Ills name, and one of the pioneers of American horticul- 

 ture, whose garilen and farm were well known in the colony 

 before the middle of the seventeenth century. There 

 is, I believe, no other instance in the United States where a 

 foreign shrub has taken such complete possession of so large 

 an ai-ea, or has so entirely driven out the natural occupants of 

 the soil. All parts of this pkmt, especially the leaves 

 and branclus, have been used in Europe by dyers to 

 produce a yellow color, although it does not appear to have 

 been cultivated for this purpose, and it was probably the 

 beauty of the flowers which gained for it a place in Governor 

 I'.ndicott's garden, and so led to the ruin of the Essex hills. A 

 variety of 'this plant, with taller and more slender stems, and 



