November 28, iS 



Garden and Forest. 



469 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



rUBLISHED WEEKLY HV 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sakgent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 188S. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Ari icles : — Injuries to Shade Trees. — Pine-fibre Matting;. — Paper 



from the Wood of Red Ced.Tr 469 



Newport — I Mrs. Sch iiyUr Van Rensselaer. 470 



The Japanese Plums — The Satsuma D. B. H'ier, a,-j\ 



New or Little Known Plants ; — Pentstemon rotundifolius {with ilhistration), 



Serena Watson. 472 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter. U'. Goidring. 472 



Cultural Department : — The Flower Garden Win. Falconer. 472 



New Hardy Hybrid French Gladioli W. E. Gunibhton. 474 



Ferns for the Window Garden C. L. Allen. 474 



Cosmos liybridus — Pancratium speciosum — Cymbidium Hookerianum. . 474 



Orchids in New York ^. D. 475 



The Lawn G. C. 475 



Plant Notes; — The Live Oak (with illustration) C. S. S. 476 



The Forest : — Swiss Forest Laws 477 



Correspondence: — The New York Chrysanthemum Sliow — Paulownia Impe- 



rialis 47S 



Horticultural Exhibitions : — The Short Hills Orchid and Chrys.inthemum 



Show — Autumn Flower Show in New York '. 479 



Recent Plant Portraits 479 



Notes 480 



Illustrations: — Pentstemon rotundifolius. Fig. 73 473 



The Live Oak (Quercus vii'ens), ?\%. 74 476 



Injuries to Shade Trees. 



THAT a well-formed, vigorous tree is worthy of re- 

 spect and consideration, is a fact of whicli it is to 

 be hoped no reader of Garden and Forest is either ignorant 

 or unmindful. There is one point, however, to which 

 public attention should be called, viz., to the danger aris- 

 ing from the reinoval of large branches of sound trees, 

 either intentionally, by wholesale pruning, or by the vio- 

 lence of winds and storms, without propersubsequent care. 

 If a branch is in the way, few persons now hesitate about 

 cutting it off, no matter how large it is, and it is not a rare 

 thing in our thickly-settled towns and their suburbs to see 

 trees which have been reduced to two-thirds, or occasion- 

 ally to one-half, their normal dimensions, by indiscriminate 

 trimming. Or it may be that a superannuated family 

 mansion has been sold for a few hundred dollars and 

 removed to the outskirts of the town, to be transformed 

 into a tenement-house which is to be made to pay several 

 hundred per cent, to the shrewd purchaser. That is, per- 

 haps, none of our business. But it does concern us if the 

 house has to be dragged through a mile or two of streets, 

 crashing and tearing off the branches of shade-trees on 

 the way. Recently a three-hundred-dollar house did much 

 more than three hundred dollars' damage to trees during its 

 slow passage down the streets of a city, which need not be 

 named. 



In the first place, by such acts of violence, or even van- 

 dalism, the beauty of the trees is diminished, and they 

 become not only unsightly, but also less valuable as 

 shade trees. That is evident to every one. But the more 

 serious evil of which I would speak is one which is not 

 recognized at the time. The trees are not killed at once, 

 to be sure, but the open wounds made by breaking or 

 cutting off good-sized branches are just the places in which 

 the spores of many destructive fungi lodge and grow. So 

 long as the bark remains as a covering of the wood, such 

 spores do not readily find an entrance to the wood itself 

 Of course, there are some fungi which destroy trees by 

 entering the leaves or roots. But the fungi no\v referred 

 to are rather certain toadstools, punk-fungi and their 

 allies, which, while they do not grow upon the leaves and 



not usually on healthy roots, often attack open wounds 

 where the wood, exposed to the action of the weather, 

 becomes naturally somewhat rotten. Once established in 

 such places, the mycelium of these fungi makes its way slow- 

 ly but surely into the adjoining healthy wood, until, in com- 

 paratively fev7 years, the whole tree becomes diseased. 

 The mycelium is not annual but perennial, and bears, on 

 the surface, repeated crops of toadstools or punk, as the 

 case may be. Knowing this fact, one should hesitate 

 before cutting off' large branches, and so endangering the 

 life of the tree itself We know the dangers from open 

 wounds in animals, and we must also recognize that they 

 are dangerous in plants. If one wishes to be convinced 

 of the truth of these statements, he has only to walk along 

 the streets of any town in late summer, and notice how 

 frequently toadstools and punk are growing on the scars 

 where branches have been removed. If the wounds are 

 of some years' standing, and have not been treated, as all 

 wounds upon trees should be treated as soon as made, 

 with a coating of coal-tar or paint, he will probably also 

 find rotten spots on the trunks themselves, in which fungi 

 are growing, wliich have developed from the mycelium 

 that has penetrated into the trunks from the old scars. 



In this connection one should notice the wounds caused 

 by the bites of horses fastened to trees. In thickly settled 

 regions this evil is a serious one, and householders should 

 be compelled by law to place some protection around the 

 parts of the trunks of trees on their sidewalks likely to be 

 injured by horses. Oxford Street, in Cambridge, Massa- 

 chusetts, affords a good illustration of the evil. For some 

 distance the trees have been bitten by horses, and on the 

 side of the trunks facing the street there are large wounds, 

 which are not only unsightly, but which have also caused a 

 disturbance of nutrition to such an extent that the trees are 

 sickly, and, in some cases, apparently dying. The health 

 of trees which are for the benefit of coming generations 

 as well as our own should not be endangered by the care- 

 lessness of those who now live near them. 



Uses are constantly found now for minor products of 

 our forests which, until recently, were considered value- 

 less. A conspicuous example of this fact is pine-fibre 

 matting, which is manufactured, in North Carolina, from 

 the leaves of the Long-leaved Pine {Pimis palustris). The 

 industry is a new one, comparatively, but it has already 

 become important, and it is likely to grow as the value 

 of the matting made from Pine leaves is better known. 

 A bagging material is also made in the same way, which 

 can be used for covering cotton-bales. This fact is now 

 creating much interest in the cotton-producing States, be- 

 cause the price of jute-bagging, which up to the present 

 time has been the only material used for covering cotton- 

 bales, has been enormously increased by the manipulation 

 of a combination of importers who control the supply, and 

 who have formed a jute-bagging trust. It is now believed 

 that Pine-leaf bagging will prove the best substitute for 

 jute. Should this "expectation be confirmed, the produc- 

 tion of this article may be expected to be very large in 

 the course of the next few years. 



The green Pine leaves, collected in the forest for the 

 purpose, are purchased at the factories for lifteen cents the 

 100 pounds. They are first cleaned, and then placed in 

 large iron cylinders set on end and surrounded with 

 steam-pipes. They are then thoroughly steamed, the 

 vapor being conveyed through pipes into an ordinary dis- 

 tillery-worm in an adjoining building. Pine-leaf oil, a 

 valuable antiseptic, is obtained in this way at the rate of 

 about one-half gallon for lOO pounds of leaves. The 

 leaves are then boiled to remove the silica, which is found 

 in their outer covering, and which can be used in tanning 

 leather. The leaves are next boiled again and bleached, 

 and are then ready to be dried, which is done in machines, 

 by means of which all moisture is evaporated from them. 

 The fibre is then ready for manufacture, and is put up in 

 buriap bales weighing twenty-five pounds. The Pine-leaf 



