August 15, 18S8.] 



Garden and Forest. 



295 



to ten inches wide. With a garden trowel eartli enoiigli to 

 hold tlie papers in place can be easily managed ; then the 

 plants should he hilled up almost to the top of the papers. 

 This plan is recommended tor early Celery and is not much 

 more extra work than the tieing up practiced by gardeners. 

 Care must be taken to hold the pilants erect wliile putting on 

 the papers. 



Pittsford, Vermont G.A. U. 



Plant Notes. 

 A Manchurian Bird Cherry. 



OUR illustration represents a flowering- branch of a 

 form of Prunus Padiis, doubtless of Manchurian 

 origin, as it was raised from seed sent many years ago 

 to the Arnold Arboretum from the St. Peterslnirg garden 

 as Prunus Maackii, a Manchurian Bird Cherry, with pubes- 



any of the European Bird Cherries. No plant of its class 

 in the collection equals this Manchurian tree in the size and 

 beauty of its fiowers. It grows with astonishing rapidity and 

 is perfectly hard v; but, although plants here are now nearly 

 t\\'enty feet high and ha\'e tiowered regularly for several 

 3'ears, they produce no fruit. In regions where late spring 

 frosts, which would prove fatal to the early shoots and 

 leaves of this tree, do not occur, it will prove an import- 

 ant and interesting addition to the list of small, hardy, 

 ornamental trees. C. S. S. 



The European Lake-Flower. 



IX Mrs. Treat's notes (Garden and Forest, No. 21) on 

 June flowers in the Pine regions of southern New Jer- 

 sey, mention is made of our pretty Lake-flower {Lumian- 



F'S- 47- — Prunus Padus- 



cent foliage and j'oung branches, while those of this plant 

 are quite glabrous and show no trace of the glandular dots 

 which cover the under surface of the leaves of that species. 

 The old world Bird Cherry is a small tree widely distrib- 

 uted through the forests of northern and central Etn-ope ; it 

 is found in the Caucasus and in the mountains of Afghanistan, 

 and e.xtends through Siberia to Kamtschatka, Manchuria, 

 Mongolia and to Japan. The variety here figured is re- 

 markable in the fact that its leaves appear fully ten days 

 earlier than those of any other tree in the Arboretum, a jie- 

 culiarity which gives to it no little interest and some value 

 as an ornamental tree, apart from its very marked beauty 

 when in flower. The racemes of large white flowers, which 

 are deliciously fragrant, appear here early in May, fully two 

 weeks earlier than those of the earliest of the American 

 Bird Cherries, Prunus ]'irgititana, and long before those ot 



tJieinum huuiiusuin). This plant is extremely rare about 

 here, I judge. I can find no record of its occurrence in 

 the field notes of local botanists, and have heard of_ but 

 two limited localities where it has been found growing , • 

 and now it is wanting in both of these. Probably it was 

 never an abundant plant ; but the European species (Z. 

 ?iv>Hphcruidcs) is pretty sure to become common enough 

 in the near future, and possibly will crowd out some of 

 our native aquatics. It is not a bad exchange if it replaces 

 our American plant— that of foreign gold for native silver; 

 as the L. nvmpha-oides bloom is "of a golden yellow color, 

 beautifully fringed, and stands erect like the Water Poppies 

 {Liinuocharis')." There is a washout in a corner of my 

 pasture meadow, in which Nelumbiums, ^^■atcr Eilios and 

 other choice aquatics are now growing, and where the 

 golden Lake-flower was represented by a sins.' 



vilant 



