August i, i8S8.] 



Garden and Forest. 



273 



which does not bloom until several days later, is the var. Si- 

 birica, once considered a distinct species. This variety, 

 according to Loudon {" Arboreiuin," ii. 584), attains, in its 

 native country, a height of five or six feet. Here it barely 

 exceeds two feet. Two plants grown in the Arboretum as G. 

 lata {data ?) and G. duinatortini are clearly the same as the 

 Siberian variety. Some attention has been given of late years 

 to the Woad Wax by planters wishing to cover exposed or 

 sterile ground with a low, hardy, fast-spreading under-shrub. 

 It is well suited for this purpose, but care should be taken 

 that it is not planted in situations whence it can overrun and 

 take possession of valuable land, as it will prove a diffi- 

 cult weed to exterminate when once it has fairly established 

 itself. 



Cytisus nigricans is one of the most desirable of the dwarf, 

 yellow-flowered, hardy shrubs of the Pea Family, which 

 blooms at this period of the year. It reaches here a height of 

 a couple of feet, with erect, slender, twiggy branches, dehcate 

 leaves with three leaflets, pubescent on the under surface, as 

 are the young shoots, calyxes and pods, and elongated, slen- 

 der, terminal, erect racemes of bright flowers. The whole 

 plant turns black in drying, a fact to which it owes its specific 

 name. It is a native of central Europe, and has been culti- 

 vated on account of its beauty for more than a century and a 

 half, although rarely seen in American gardens. Cytisus 

 capiiatns is in bloom at the same time. A less graceful plant 

 than the last, it is not without its value. Its habit is compact 

 and good, the flowers, in dense, terminal heads, are showy, 

 and it remains in bloom during several weeks. The erect 

 branches, two feet tall, are hispid, like the broad leaflets. It 

 is a native of the mountainous parts of southern Europe and 

 has long been known in gardens. 



Free-growing, twining plants, perfectly hardy in this climate, 

 are not very abundant ; the introduction, therefore, of a plant 

 of this character of the first class, like Actinidia polygama, is a 

 matter of some importance. Actinidia (from aktin, a ray, the 

 styles radiating like the spokes of a wheel) is a genus of Asiatic 

 plants, many of them twining, of the Ternstraniiacece or 

 Camellia Family, of which Gordonia and Stuartia, two genera 

 of woody plants found in the Southern States, are the North 

 American representatives. They have simple deciduous 

 leaves, axillary clusters of white, fragrant flowers, and a fleshy 

 fruit composed of the coalescing carpels. Five or six species 

 are described. Several Japanese species or varieties are culti- 

 vated in the Arboretum, but none of them except A.polyga?na 

 have been sufficiently tested yet to warrant any statement of 

 their merits. A. potygama is a strong-growing, vigorous plant, 

 which in good soil will soon reach a height of twenty feet or 

 more, and cover a large space with its vigorous branches, 

 which are densely clothed with handsome, dark green, coria- 

 ceous, broadly-acuminate leaves, three or four inches long, 

 with sharp, slender, remote teeth, and contracted into a long, 

 slender point. With the exception of a few hairs on the under 

 side of the mid-rib, they are quite glabrous, and are borne on 

 stout, bright red petioles half their length. The white, fragrant 

 flowers, half an inch across, make but little show, being almost 

 concealed in the abundant foliage. The fruit, which has 

 ripened in several gardens in different parts of Massachusetts, 

 is as large as a pigeon's egg. It is edible and has an 

 agreeable flavor ; and is said to be esteemed by the 

 Japanese. The Actinidia, however, will be cultivated in this 

 country for its bold habit and handsome foliage rather than 

 for its fruit. 



Although they produce far less showy and conspicuous 

 flowers than their Asiatic congeners, the two North American 

 species of Diervilla or Bush Honeysuckle, are worth growing, 

 especially in wild parts of the garden. D. trifida is a com- 

 mon northern shrub, found from Newfoundland to the Saskat- 

 chewan, and extending through the Northern States to Ken- 

 tucky and the Alleghany Mountains. It often forms dense, 

 low masses of shrubbery on the borders of the forest. It has 

 ovate-oblong, pefioled leaves, and axillary peduncles, bearing 

 three small flowers, with narrow, funnelformed, yellow 

 corollas. D. sessilifolia (the D. splendetis of many foreign 

 collections) is a handsomer plant, with sessile leaves, and 

 many-flowered cymes of larger and more showy yellow flow- 

 ers. It is much more rare and much less widely distributed 

 than the first species, being confined to a few localities on the 

 high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, where it 

 inhabits rocky woods and banks. 



Few ornaments of the garden are more beautiful or more 

 safisfactory than the old-fashioned twining Dutch Monthly 

 Honeysuckle, once common on every cottage porch, but now, 

 for some reason, greatly neglected and rarely seen in this coun- 

 try. It is a variety of the common European Honeysuckle or 



Woodbine of England {Lonicera Periclymcni^m), which some 

 authors call the var. Belgicum. It has smooth, purplish 

 branches, oblong-oval leaves, dark green and shining above, 

 and pale on the lower surface. The deliciously fragrant flow- 

 ers, in terminal heads, are reddish or purple on the outside 

 and yellow within. This plant is perfectly hardy, and remains 

 in flower nearly all summer. 



Cornns asperifolia is in bloom. It is a westei'n and soutliern 

 species, with the habit and general appearance of C. stonoli- 

 fe7-a, but the branches are brown instead of red, and roughly 

 pubescent, as are the leaves on their upper surface. This is a 

 tall, hardy species, but not better in any particular for general 

 planting than our common Eastern Dogwoods of the same 

 class. 



A Japanese Bramble {Rubies trijidus) is worth a place in the 

 garden on account of the rose colored petals, which make 

 the flower-clusters showy at this season of the year. It is a 

 robust, vigorous plant, with semi-erect stems, clothed with 

 ample, deeply divided leaves. More popular as a garden plant 

 will be, no doubt, the double-flowered variety of the common 

 'E.uTo^yea.n'Bi-o.mhle {Riibu s fruticostts), with its large double or 

 semi-double white flowers, tinged with pink, in which a large 

 part of the stamens have developed into petals. In common 

 with nearly all the innumerable varieties of the European 

 Bramble, it is a very hardy and vigorous plant, growing and 

 spreading rapidly. The variety upon wliich the leaflets are 

 deeply cut and divided {Rubus laciniatus) is a handsome 

 plant, useful for covering rocky banks and other waste places 

 in the garden ; it might be seen more often to advantage in 

 this country. 



Among tlie late flowering Spiraeas now in bloom, the most 

 showy is S. Douglasii. It is a native of the North-west Coast, 

 from Puget Sound to northern California, and with two eastern 

 American species {S. salicifolia and S. tonientosa) forms Koch's 

 small section Spiraria, distinguished by its panicled flowers. 

 6". Douglasii has simple erect stems, three feet or less high, 

 covered with oval or oblong, coarsely serrated, simple leaves, 

 densely coated on the under surface with white tomentuni, 

 and terminated with a dense, elongated panicle of very hand- 

 some, bright rose-colored flowers, which remain a long time 

 in perfection. This is one of the showiest of the late bloom- 

 ing shrubs in the collection. Spiraa salicifolia, the Meadow 

 Sweet of the Eastern States, is a variable and widely distribut- 

 ed plant, being found in eastern North America, where it 

 bears white flowers sometimes shaded with pink, and from 

 western Europe through Siberia to Mongolia, Manchuria and 

 Japan. In the old world variety the flowers are pink or rose 

 colored. A great deal of attention seems to have been paid 

 to the cultivation and improvement of this plant in some parts 

 of Europe, more especially in Russia, and many varieties 

 (under innumerable names) have been sent to the Ar- 

 boretum from the St. Petersburg and otherContinental gardens. 

 Some of these show traces of the blood of 5. Douglasii, and 

 many of them are distinct in the color of the flowers, and in 

 their time of blooming, several weeks elapsing between the 

 time the first and the last of the series expand their flowers. 

 The strongest growing and perhaps the showiest of these 

 varieties is that known in many European gardens as S. Bethle- 

 hensis, a vigorous plant, probably a hybrid, with large, showy 

 panicles of "flo\^'ers. .S'. Billardi, raised many years ago by the 

 French horticulturist whose name it bears, is worth culti- 

 vating also for its showy flowers. 



The last of the Spindle-trees {Euonymus) to flower here is the 

 North American Burning-Bush or Wahoo {E. atropurpureus), 

 a tall shrub or shrub-like tree, found from western New York 

 to Wisconsin and in the Southern States. The flowers are 

 small, very dark purple, and not showy. In the autumn, how- 

 ever, when it is covered with itsabundant bright crimson fruit, 

 drooping on long peduncles, this little tree is a beautiful 

 object, although "less showy, perhaps, than some of the 

 varieties of the European Spindle-tree, in which long cultiva- 

 tion and careful selection have developed large and showy 

 forms of fruit. The Wahoo (which must not be confounded 

 with the Elm {Ulmus alata), which is populariy known in the 

 Southern States as "The Wahoo") is a not infrequent inhab- 

 itant of old-fashioned American gardens. 



Northern swamps are now white with the flowers of the 

 Swamp Honeysuckle, Rhododendron {Azalea) viscosum, the 

 last of the whole family to flower here, and well worth a place 

 in the garden, on account of its late and deliciously fragrant 

 clammy flowers. It is found from I\laine to Kentucky, but 

 generally near the coast, and sometimes grows to a height of 

 eight or ten feet. It requires the same treatment and can be 

 grown as easily as the other plants of its class. 



July nth. /• 



