August 8, 1888.] 



Garden and Forest. 



285 



the ark. The Olive was cultivated by the ancient Egyp- 

 tians, and by the Greeks during- several centuries before 

 the Christian era. They brought it probably from the 

 southern part of Asia Minor, where extensive forests of 

 the wild Olive still exist ; at least this is the opinion of 

 M. Alphonse De Candolle, who, in his " Origme des Planles 

 Cullivees," has collected what is known of the early his- 

 tory of the Olive tree. Whatever region may claim the 

 honor of being the first home of th© Olive, it has now 

 become widely distributed, primarily by man, and second- 

 arily, and very considerably, no doubt, by the action of 

 birds, being found in a more or less wild state from the 

 drier regions of India through the Levant and the whole of 

 the Mediterranean Basin to Portugal, Morocco, Madeira 

 and the Canary Islands, where De Candolle doubtfully 

 suggests it might have been carried by the Phoenicians. 



The Olive {Olea Euro pied) is a tree with a short, stout 

 trunk, three to six feet, or even more, in diameter, divided 

 a few feet from the ground into a number of large branches. 

 It reaches, under favorable conditions, a height of forty or 

 fifty feet. The bark, which is gray, is quite smooth on the 

 branches and on the trunks of young trees, becoming 

 rough and deeply cleft on old trees. The leaves are 

 opposite, persistent, coriaceous, lanceolate-acuminate, less 

 than an inch long on the wild plants, an inch and a half 

 to two inches and a half long on some of the cultivated 

 varieties. They are entire, dark green on the upper, and 

 covered with a pale tomentum on the lower surface. 



The small white flowers appear in axillary racemes 

 equaling the leaves in length. The ovoid fruit of the 

 wild plant hardly exceeds a red currant in size, while 

 in some of the cultivated varieties it is considerably more 

 than an inch long. Not more than one or two fruits de- 

 velop then from each raceme, although in the case of the 

 wild plant there are often six, or even more. The fruit, 

 which in most of the best varieties is black when ripe, 

 is covered with a smooth and shining skin, covering a 

 soft green pulp filled with oil, and adhering to the hard, 

 oval, oblong stone, pointed at both ends, and consisting 

 usually of a single cell by abortion, and containing a 

 single oily seed. As might have been expected in the 

 case of a plant carefully cultivated for centuries in dif- 

 ferent countries, and by different races of men, many 

 varieties of the Olive have been developed. No less than 

 thirty-two such varieties are described systematically in 

 the Noiiveaii Duhamel (v., p. 70, /. 25 to 32), where by far 

 the best account of this tree, its economic uses and the 

 methods employed for the preparation of its products, 

 may be found. 



The Olive flourishes in regions of small rainfall and 

 in the most arid and barren soil, preferring that which 

 is strongly impregnated with lime ; but it will not sup- 

 port more than a few degrees of frost. Henry Laurens, a 

 merchant of Charleston, in South Carolina, introduced the 

 Olive into America about the year 1755. It is recorded 

 that his trees bore fruit, " which was prepared and pickled 

 to equal those imported." There are fine Olive trees 

 on the southern end of Cumberland Island, off the Georgia 

 coast, which bear fruit every year, and which must be 

 nearly a century old. The climate, however, of the 

 southern Gulf States, is not well suited to this tree, but on 

 the Pacific coast in southern California, where it has grown 

 for more than a century about some of the old Catholic 

 missions, it is perfectly at home, and the cultivation of the 

 Olive and the manufacture of Olive oil is one of the most 

 promising of the younger California industries. The 

 ancient Olive tree, which is illustrated upon page 284 of 

 this issue, is of peculiar interest. It is a venerable and 

 characteristic specimen of a tree which has few rivals in 

 its usefulness to the human race, while individually it is 

 one of the best known and most interesting trees in the 

 world. It stands in the Garden of Gethsemane, at the 

 base of the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem, and is known 

 as "The Tree of Agony," being popularly supposed to 

 have witnessed the vig-il of the Saviour. 



Notes From the Arnold Arboretum. 



" CHRUB," or Strawberry Bush, as Calycanihus Jloridus is 



'--' commonly called, was once considered an essential 

 feature of every old-fashioned garden ; and its fragrant, dark 

 brown flowers are perhaps known to as many people as those 

 of any American shrub. There are, however, two other spe- 

 cies of this genus with the same brown and fragrant flowers, 

 which are not often cultivated, although they are hardier tlian 

 C fragrans, which in severe winters is often killed down to 

 the ground ; and which flowers here early in June, or some 

 time earlier than C. Icevigaius and C. glaucus, which are 

 now in bloom here. The former has large oval leaves, 

 gradually acuminate at the ape.x, green on both sides, and only 

 slightly rugose on the upper surface. In C. glaucus the leaves 

 are narrower, and considerUbly larger than in the other spe- 

 cies, pale below, with a few hairs along the mid-rib, and 

 rugose on the upper surface. It has large flowers, and rigid, 

 upright branches, which are sometimes six or eight feet high. 

 The three species are natives of the Alleghany region from 

 Virginia to Tennessee and Georgia, C. lavigatus extending 

 as far north as southern Pennsylvania. Gardeners have too 

 long neglected this last species, which is one of the most de- 

 sirable of all hardy summer-flowering shrubs. 



The shrubby Cinque-foil (Potentilla fruticosa) is one of the 

 most widely distributed plants of the north temperate zone, 

 being found through the northern portions of North America, 

 in many parts of central and northern Europe, and through 

 central and Russian Asia to Japan. It is a dwarf and branch- 

 ing shrub, two to three feet high, an inhabitant of low groimd, 

 and just now a conspicuous object, with its large, terminal, 

 pale yellow flowers. The leaves are pinnate, with five to seven 

 pairs of crowded, pale, silky leaflets. The short, flowering 

 branches die down annually, but the base of the stems is truly 

 woody. This has been found a useful plant in the Arboretum 

 for forming masses of low shrubbery among trees, as it spreads 

 rapidly from underground shoots, soon taking complete posses- 

 sion of the ground. It may, however, become, like Genista 

 tinctoria, a dangerous weed if allowed to spread indiscrimi- 

 nately. It has indeed already overrun and utterly ruined con- 

 siderable areas of mowing land in some parts of Berkshire 

 County, in this State, and in Connecticut, where farmers find it 

 almost impossible to eradicate this plant, and where it is known 

 as "Hardback." Potentilla tridentata is another woody spe- 

 cies now in flower. It is found sparingly on the New England 

 coast north of Cape Cod, on the coast of the Great Lakes and 

 upon the summits of some of the high mountains of eastern 

 North America. It is a low, spreading plant, only a few inches 

 high, with handsome dark green and shining, palmate leaves, 

 with three wedge-oblong divisions, coarsely three-toothed at 

 the apex, and loose cymes of white flowers, half an inch across. 

 This is an excellent plant for the margins of the rock-garden, 

 as it remains a long time in flower, while its foliage is orna- 

 mental throughout the season. 



Among the Leguminous plants now in flower, Aniorplia 

 canescens, the Lead Plant of the western prairies, is by far the 

 handsomest and best worth notice. It is a spreading bush, 

 two or three feet high, softly canescentand hoary throughout, 

 with pinnate leaves, composedof fifteen to twenty-four pairs of 

 minute leaflets and spikes of handsome bright blue flowers 

 aggregated in a terminal subsessile panicle. It is found on 

 dry and sandy prairies from the Red River of the North to 

 Texas, and its presence is popularly supposed to indicate the 

 presence of lead-ore. It is an admirable and very hardy 

 plant in cultivation, remaining in bloom during several weeks. 

 The Lead Plant is rarely seen in gardens, however, although 

 one of the first of our western plants known to botanists ; and, 

 although it was introduced into England as early as 1812, no 

 figure of it was published until 1882, when it appeared" in the 

 Botanical Magazine (t. 6618). In the same volume of this Maga- 

 zine appears the figure of another plant of the Pea Family, 

 Lespedeza bicolor, now in flower. It is a native of north-eastern 

 Asia from Manchuria and northern China and Japan, and is con- 

 sidered one of the most beautiful of the hardy shrubs intro- 

 duced of late years into cultivation. Lespedeza bicolor is a 

 slender, leafy shrub, four or five feet high, with slender, elon- 

 gated and very graceful branches, three-foliate leaves on long, 

 slender petioles, with oblong, obovate leaflets, and a.xillary or 

 rarely terminal drooping or sub-erect racemes of showy rose- 

 colored flowers, an inch long, which are described as some- 

 times white or violet. This is a perfectly hardy plant and re- 

 mains a long time in flower. 



A Heatli-like plant, Dabcvcia polifolia, is in flower. It 

 is a dwarf shrub with slender ascending branches one or two 

 feet h'gh, covered with small, narrow leaves, which are dark 



