August 



'■] 



Garden and Forest. 



303 



abnormal habit like the Lombardy Poplar and of trees with 

 peculiarly cut or variegated foliage, although there is al- 

 ways the chance that seedlings will appear with similar 

 peculiarities to renew the race with fresh blood. The Pur- 

 ple Beech, for example, so potent is the peculiarity to 

 which it owes its name, often comes true from seed ; 

 but individual peculiarities of this sort are not, as a rule, 

 very firmly fixed in the case of trees, and cannot be de- 

 pended upon to repeat themselves with much certainty. 

 It is fortunate that they cannot, and that many of the 

 monstrosities in which modern planters so delight are 

 blessed with feeble constitutions, and are doomed to dis- 

 appear entirely off the face of the earth. But the failure 

 of the Lombardy Poplar is not a blessing. Planted as it 

 was a hundred, or even fifty, years ago, in all possible 

 situations, without regard to its surroundings or to tlie po- 

 sitions in which it was placed, it did more, perhaps, than 

 any tree which has ever been planted, especially in some 

 parts of Europe, to disfigure the landscape. There is no 

 tree, however, which can take its place, or which can 

 so quickly send up a tall, slender shaft to break a low 

 or monotonous sky line. It became an unplea-t^ant 

 feature in the landscape only when it was used without 

 judgment and without discretion. 



A Wood Picture. 



WE are sometimes told that Nature hides her 

 choicest products from all but those who are 

 willing to search for them in the more secret recesses of 

 her great laboratory of beauty — that she spreads indiffer- 

 ent things before the indifferent world, and reserves her 

 loveliest for her true lovers. But the charge is hardly a 

 just one. Generally speaking, the most beautiful plants 

 are not the rarest. It is truer to say that to many eyes 

 the rarest will always seem most beautiful, simply because 

 of their rarity. 



But if we speak not of the things which grow, but of 

 ihe way in which they grow — not of Nature's productions 

 as such, but of the arrangements, the compositions, the 

 pictures into which she weaves them — then we may 

 confess that no one understands her power who is fa- 

 miliar only with roadsides and meadows and the trodden 

 paths of the woods ; and no one who, in more secluded 

 places, takes account of the large things but overlooks 

 the small. In the heart of the forest or the depth of the 

 swamp or by the tangled margin of the lowly rivulet we 

 must search amid Nature's little things to find what she 

 can do in the way of producing varied, delicate, subtile 

 and tender effects of beauty. One such effect I found 

 iiot long ago which seemed to me to deserve descrip- 

 tion quite as much as any of the conspicuous features 

 of the very beautiful Catskill country I was visiting. 



In the heart of a moist hillside forest, chiefly composed 

 Df young Beech trees, thickly bestrewn with large 

 Doulders, and carpeted with rich patches of Fern, I found 

 a smooth, gray trunk set close to a low, rounded rock, 

 beside which the Ferns grew in tall, feathery tufts. The 

 top of the rock on the side furthest from the tree sloped 

 gradually into the ground, and was covered with green 

 Mosses and a tangle of Strawberry vines, from which the 

 scarlet fruit hung profusely in scattered bunches. Close 

 to the tree the rock was bare, but in a hollow of its sur- 

 face the large-flowered Wood-sorrel {Oxalis Acetosdla) had 

 taken root, forming a great cluster of drooping, heart- 

 shaped leaves spangled with white, starry blossoms deli- 

 cately veined with pink. A fissure in the stone began 

 near this hollow, passed around to the front of the rock, 

 and slanted across its face to the lower corner beneath 

 the Strawberry vines, and all along this fissure the Oxalis 

 had spread so that a garland of leaves and flowers 

 seemed to have been thrown around the stone. No artist 

 could have imagined anything so exquisite — could have 

 chosen materials which contrasted so effectively yet har- 



moniously in form, texture and color alike, or could have 

 disposed them with such skill that there should not seem a 

 leaf too many or a flower too few, a line out of place, a 

 color too strongly emphasized, a detail of any kind that 

 might be altered without detriment to the general effect. 

 And what artist could have executed any idea with such 

 delicate completeness that the closer one looked the more 

 beauties one discovered .? 



It is things like these that one finds in the woods for the 

 looking, but never finds unless one looks. Stones and 

 Beech-trees and Ferns, Strawberries and Moss and Sor- 

 rel, are common things enough, but it is only where 

 Nature is most quietly at home, where the foot of man 

 comes seldom and the hand of the flower-gatherer has 

 not trespassed, that she perfects such lovely pictures with 

 common materials, and shows them to us in their dewy, 

 fresh completeness. M. G. van Rensselaer. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



THE interest of the meeting of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society on July loth was centred in the new hardy 

 plant, Ostrowskia viagnifica, which has flowered for the first 

 time in Europe in the nursery of Veitch & Sons. This 

 plant has been pronounced by such men as Herr Leicht- 

 lin, of Baden-Baden, to be the finest of all the Campanula 

 family, and these great expectations have been realized, as it 

 turns out to be a grand plant, and certainly not rivaled by 

 any other herbaceous plant of a similar description. When 

 full grown it is from four to five feet high, with the fleshy 

 root-stock of many other campanulaceous plants. The 

 short stems rise erect as straight as a gun barrel, and the 

 large, sessile leaves are arranged in whorls at intervals of 

 a few inches. Surmounting each stem is a huge flower, 

 fully six inches across, in form like a shallow cup, and 

 deeply divided into eight lobes. The .color is a delicate 

 mauve, traversed with a network of pencilings and vein- 

 ings of a deep purple, while here and there the color 

 deepens. The flowers look at flrst sight more like those 

 of a large Clematis than a Campanula, and it is scarcely 

 credible that such a plant is hardy. Lovers of hardy 

 flowers are in raptures about it, and a brilliant future is 

 predicted for the plant. The vote for a first-class certifi- 

 cate to it was unanimous in committee. It comes from 

 central Asia, in the Turkestan region, and its introduction 

 is due to Dr. A. Regel, who, above all other men, has made 

 us acquainted with the vegetation of this comparatively 

 unknown region. 



Among the new Ferns, one named Gytnnograinna 

 Pearcei robusla, is the embodiment of elegance, and is 

 perhaps the most delicately beautiful of the genus. This 

 variety is remarkable for a stronger growth than the type, 

 and is so different that one would not be likely to confuse 

 the one with the other. The fronds are cut very finely, 

 and being of a peculiar shade of bright green are most at- 

 tractive. This was shown by Messrs. Veitch. A crested 

 form of the well-known green-house Fern, P/en's treniula, 

 was deservedly admired. Every one knows how graceful 

 the original is, and though this new sport does not gain in 

 elegance, its tasseled pinnas give it a singular appearance. 

 As the fronds are long and recurve, it is thought to be 

 highly ornamental, and one that will take with the 

 market growers. 



Messrs. Veitch again showed a large collection of their 

 new seedling green-house Rhododendrons of the Javanese 

 group, and the committee selected for a certificate a very 

 beautiful sort called Souvenir de J. H. Mangles. The flow- 

 ers are very large, compared with older sorts, of good 

 shape and color, and of thick texture ; they are a lovely 

 salmon-orange. 



Messrs. Paul had splendid blooms of their new dark 

 Rose, Grand Mogul, which already holds a higly place 

 among deep crimson Roses. It is as fine as A. K. Williams 



