320 



Garden and Forest. 



[August 29, iS 



The side tables of the cool Orchid house are of cement and 

 trough-shaped above so as to hold a few inches deep of water. 

 Over this a flat iron staging' made of the same material as de- 

 scribed above is laid and supported on iron rests, which are 

 placed in the water so as to afford no chance for vermin, sucli 

 as cockroaches, slugs or wood-lice, to get to the plants. 



IVlr. Ames' Orchid house stages are also of cement and iron, 

 but there are no open water tanUs or troughs under the plants ; 

 a coating of gravel is laid over the tables and kept moist. The 

 luxuriant vigor of Mr. Ames' cool Orchids is a good in- 

 dication of genial quarters. It is a very long, lean-to structure 

 facing the north, nine feet lu'gh at the l)ack, eight feet wide 

 and four feet high in front. The patliway is three feet wide 

 and alongside of the back wall, and the bench, which is five 

 feet wide, is all on one level, in front. But as such a wide 

 stage must necessarily be unhandy, recesses in the bench 

 three feet wide by two feet deep occur, with eight feet intervals 

 all along the pathway. The inside back wall is covered with 

 netting to hold some sphagnum, and is kept a living carpet 

 of dwarf Selaginelia. Tlie pathway is of cement. Ventilation 

 is admitted all along the roof at the top, and in the front wall 

 ventilators nine by fourteen inches occur at distances of 

 twelve feet apart. The house is heated by steam with si.x rows 

 of one and a half inch pipes under the bench. Jl'. F. 



Lenten Roses. — These are hybrids and varieties of species 

 of Hellebore which bloom during April and May. They are 

 tar more satisfactory as hardy plants in America than Christ- 

 mas Roses. A good, deep loam, partial shade, plenty of 

 water during the growing seasons-April and May — and a cov- 

 ering of horse litter, for the purpose of protection in wintei', 

 is all they require. The flowering stem in H. Ellebnis niger'-i?, 

 produced directly from the crown in the form of a one, rarely 

 two, flowered, leafless scape. In the Lenten Roses the inflor- 

 escence is much branched ; the secondary branches bear two 

 or three flowers, and are always accompanied by almost stalk- 

 less, yet normal, leaves. The flowers are spreading, or cam- 

 panulate, and vary in color from while to slatey purple, with 

 sometimes a mi.xture of both, and prettily spotted. Propagation 

 is by division, which should always be done in spring ; or by 

 seeds, sown as soon as ripe, and kept over in a cool frame to 

 be brought into the green-house to germinate in spring. Some 

 of the best are H. atroritbus, H. Cauiasiiiis piinctatiis, H. 

 Colchiais, II. Olympicus, H. orien/alis and its varieties, manv 

 of which are sold under specific titles, such as, H. orientates 

 antiquorum, one of the best, with flowers white, softly toned 

 with pink and gray ; H. orientates guttatns, white, and one of 

 the earliest and best for cutting, being quite equal in beauty to 

 a Christmas Rose, but not lasting so long when cut. 'The 

 hybrids raised by F. C. Heinemann and others are mostly with 

 H. orientatis, the seed-bearing parentand tlie foregoing species. 

 The best are: Albin Otto, Commissioners Benary, F. C. 

 Heinemann, Hofgarten, Inspector Hartweg and Willy 

 Schmidt, the latter being robust in halait, with pure white 

 flowers, which should make it valuable to the trade. 



T. D. Hatfietd. 



Plant Notes. 

 Primula Rush}-!. 



THE inquiry of an English correspondent concerning 

 the habitat of this new Primrose prompts me to send 

 to Garden and Forest a note on the beauty of the plant, 

 its discovery and habitat. 



Early on the morning of the 4th of May, 1881, I had left 

 my camp at the end of a wagon road in one of the canons 

 of the base of the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona, 

 had mounted successive heights — the grassy slopes covered 

 with a sparse growth of Oaks and Arbutus, the breezy 

 ridges crowned with Pines, and the more difficult steeps 

 dark with the Douglas Spruce — and was clambering pain- 

 fully up the long, bare crest of Mount Wrightson, the 

 monarch of that mountain group, when I was reanimated 

 by the exclamations of delight of my young assistant, 

 then a little in advance, o\-er the prettiest flower.he had yet 

 seen in Arizona, as he declared. I found it to be a Primula. 

 It was much smaller than P. Parryi of the mountains of 

 Colorado, but so nearly answering to the description of 

 that species, that I puzzled over it, as I collected it again 

 and again on those summits, trying to learn if it was really 

 distinct, until Mr. Greene named it and tlescribed it from 



specimens collected by Mr. Rusby in New Mexico in 

 August following. 



Its habitat is the meagre soil of bare ledges and the verge 

 and shelves of cliffs of summits of 7,000 to 10,000 feet 

 elevation. Its range from the mountains about Clifton, 

 New Mexico, southward along the Cordilleras certainly as 

 far as 200 miles beyond the boundary. 



The beauty of this Primula must make it a choice addi- 

 tion to the list of plants for rockeries, etc., and the fact that 

 along the northern limits of its distribution it must be ex- 

 posed to much freezing is a guarantee of its hardiness. 



The " Sour" or " Pie Cherry," is a conspicuous object dur- 

 ing tlie last weeks of July in central and northern New Hamp- 

 shire, where a farm house is rarely seen without a clump of 

 this low spreading tree or bush along the garden walls. It 

 is a variety of the old Morello Cherry, a form of Primus Cera- 

 siis. The bright red fruit hanging upon long stems is very 

 ornamental and as the birds do not relish its acid flesh 

 it hangs a long time. Formerly the Sour Cherry was very 

 generally cultivated through the Middle and Northern States, 

 but the Black Knot, to which this plant is subject, has nearlv 

 e.xterminated it, in spite of its habit of spreading by suckers 

 which it throws up vigorously in all directions. According to 

 Darlington, it had almost entirely disappeared from Pennsvl- 

 vania early in the centiu'y, and it is now unknown in south- 

 ern New England, although it was a common garden plant in 

 that part of the country thirty or forty years ago. In the prairie 

 states, too, it has had .to succumb, and it is now apparently in 

 northern New England only that this once common and famil- 

 iar plant can be seen in this country. The New Hampshire 

 plants are sometimes infested with the Black Knot, but they 

 are often quite free from it ; and there is every appearance 

 that they will survive there many years longer. The Morello 

 Cherry is sometimes ten or even twenty feet high, with slen- 

 der, graceful branches, spreading out horizontally and forming 

 a round bushy top. The leaves are one and a half to three 

 inches long, on slender petioles rarely an inch long. The fruit 

 stalks are usually solitary, sometimes in fascicles of two or 

 three. The fruit is fleshy, acid, rarely more than a half or two- 

 thirds of an inch in diameter, bright red or nearly purple 

 when dead ripe. Formerly this was considered the best Cherr\- 

 for cooking, and was highly esteemed in the manufacture of 

 " Cherry Bounce." 6'. 



Aratia Cashiinerica. — This is one of the noblest and most 

 stately hardy herbaceous plants of recent introduction. It 

 forms a mass of dark green foliage, six feet high by as much 

 through, and in August bears narrow terminal racemes, three 

 or four feet long, composed of numerous umbels of white 

 flowers. The leaflets of the immense compound leaves 

 are four or five inches long, hispidulous, sharply serrate, 

 broadly acuminate, prommently veined, with a pale lower 

 surface. It is a native of the mountains of Cashmere and of 

 Afghanistan, where the botanists of the late Afghan Boundary 

 Commission found it in the Birch forests of the Malana vallev 

 at an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet. It would be difficult to 

 find a better subject among herbaceous plants for planting 

 singly on the margins of a lawn or shrubbery. Aratia Cashi- 

 nierica is perfectly hardy, and may be easily raised from 

 seed, which it produces in great abundance. D. 



Shepherdia argentea. — A correspondent writing from Man- 

 dan, in Dakota, calls attention to the probable value of this 

 plant, the Bull Berry of the settlers in the upper Missouri 

 valley, for hedges in the severe climate of the northern 

 plains. " The Shepherdia grows on the Missouri bottoms, 

 where it is sometimes overflowed, and where it reaches a 

 height of twenty-five feet and is somewhat diffuse ; it is most 

 aliundant on the steep bluffs of streams where there is not 

 much grass, but it appears also on the summits of some of 

 the highest and driest buttes in this vicinity, where it is short 

 and compact. It seems to grow slowly. Isolated clumps of 

 these bushes are beautiful. The red berries are gathered and 

 used for food by Indians and by whites, and are said to make 

 good jelly." The Sheplierdia is hardy at the east, and, when 

 covered with its bright red fruit, extremely ornamental. 



A New Rose. — In the report of the July meeting of the Bel 

 gian Botanical Society, M. Crtfpin gives a full account of a sup 

 posed very fine new species of Tea Rose, which has been dis 

 covered by General Collett on the mountains between Birmah 

 :u:d Siam. It has a pure white flower, th'e inches in diameter, 



