86 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 471. 



take place at the great show to be held at Shrewsbury 

 in August, to which they have received a very cordial 

 invitation. 



This novel proposal was passed over without comment 

 at the meeting, but there are indications of uneasiness as 

 to how these medals will be distributed so as to avoid 

 creating ill-feeling. 



A proposal to institute an "arbor day" in the interests 

 of the cider industry was submitted to the meeting, but 

 met with no encouragement, the feeling being that the 

 subject belonged rather to the domain of agriculture. At 

 the same time there is much to be said in favor of a united 

 effort to renovate our orchards by the removal of old 

 worthless varieties of fruit-trees, particularly Apples, and 

 substituting better sorts. There are thousands of acres 

 occupied with trees that cannot be of the slightest value in 

 these days of an easy supply of good fruit from foreign 

 sources. There is a difficulty, however, in the fact that 

 many of the proprietors of these " wasted orchards " are too 

 poor to afford the cost of renovation. During last month 

 nearly ,£"300,000 worth of apples were imported into Eng- 

 land. The first installment of peaches from the Cape last 

 week, and 100,000 cases of apples, are announced to arrive 

 from Tasmania in April and May next. 



There is always an interesting display of plants at this 

 meeting, and that of last Tuesday was particularly so. 

 Orchids were numerous, and among them were several 

 new hybrids of distinct merit, namely, Lselio-Cattleya 

 violetta, a hybrid between L. pujpurata and C. Gaskelliana 

 (Veitch); Phalsenopsis Hebe, a hybrid between P. rosea 

 and P. Sanderiana (Veitch); Phajo-Calanthe Brandtia?, a 

 hybrid between P. Assamicus and C. Veitchii (Sander); 

 Cypripedium Enid, a hybrid between C. bellatulum and C. 

 Spicerianum (W. Rothschild); C. Rolfei, said to be a hybrid 

 between C. bellatulum and C. Rothschildianum, but con- 

 sidered by the committee to be between the former and C. 

 insigne (Staffer); Dendrobium Burberryanum, a hybrid 

 between D. Dominianum and D. Findlayanum (J. Cham- 

 berlain). There were also some magnificent specimens of 

 Dendrobium from Messrs. Cypher, of Cheltenham, and a 

 beautiful example of the rare D. subclausum, with bright 

 orange-scarlet flowers, was shown by Messrs. Veitch. 



London. W. Watson. 



r^ew or Little-known Plants. 



Pyrus occidentalis. 



THIS little alpine Mountain Ash is the best marked of 

 the whole group in the deep blue-green color of its 

 leaves and its dwarf habit, as I had good opportunity to 

 observe last summer in a journey which carried me through 

 many of the forest regions of the western states and terri- 

 tories, where I met with this shrub in Washington, near 

 the summit of the Cascade Mountains at the point where 

 they are crossed by the line of the Great Northern Railway 

 at an altitude of 3,400 feet, near the timber-line of Mount 

 Ranier at 6,000 feet altitude, at 5,000 feet altitude at the 

 timber-line on the ridge south of the Solduc River in the 

 Olympic Mountain region, and in Oregon near the timber- 

 line on the north slope of Mount Hood. 



Pyrus occidentalis (see illustration on page 85 of this 

 issue) where I have seen it is a shrub with many stems 

 from eighteen inches to two and a half feet high, forming 

 broad, symmetrical compact clumps, and during their first 

 season puberulous or even hirsute, and with large, broadly 

 ovate pubescent winter buds. The leaves vary from two 

 inches to nearly eight inches in length, with slender hairy 

 stems, and three, four or five pairs of lateral leaflets ; these 

 are short-stalked, oblong-elliptical or oblong-obovate, entire 

 below, serrate only toward the rounded apex with a few 

 coarse mucronate teeth ; they are from one to two inches 

 in length and from one-third of an inch to nearly an inch 

 in width, deep blue-green on both surfaces, but deeper on 

 the upper surface than on the lower. In the early autumn 



the leaves turn bright scarlet. The flower-clusters are from 

 one inch to two inches across, and the expanded flowers 

 are about a quarter of an inch in diameter ; they are quite 

 glabrous, with the exception of a few short hairs on the 

 acute, nearly triangular calyx-lobes, and of the conspicuous 

 masses of long, slender white hairs which cover the ovary. 

 The fruit is subglobose, rarely more than a quarter of an 

 inch long and bright orange-red, with short and compara- 

 tively broad seeds narrowed at the ends, and nearly 

 semicircular in outline. 



At the high altitudes* where I have only seen this plant, 

 it remains buried in snow until the beginning of August, 

 and then, as the snow melts, bursts suddenly into full 

 vegetation. So short here is the period of growth that the 

 side of one of these shrubs when it is growing against a 

 cliff may have flowered and begun to set its fruit while the 

 branches on the otherside, owing to their covering of snow, 

 are still leafless. 



Sereno Watson, who first distinguished Pyrus occiden- 

 talis,! refers to it the shrubby Mountain Ash of the high 

 California Sierras, but this plant differs from the Cascade 

 shrub in its greater height and more open, tree-like habit, 

 in its glabrous branches, buds and leaves, in its dark 

 green, not blue-green, leaflets, which are serrate below the 

 middle, and frequently nearly to the base, and in its larger 

 flowers and fruit and proportionately much narrower seeds. 

 Although this Sierra plant differs from other forms of the 

 second species of Mountain Ash of western America in its 

 shorter leaflets, it is probably only an alpine form of that 

 widely dispersed and very variable plant which has always 

 been referred to Pyrus sambucifolia of Kamchatka, but is 

 evidently quite distinct from that species. 



I was fortunate in obtaining a few ripe seeds of Pyrus 

 occidentalis, and these have been planted in the Arnold 

 Arboretum and distributed among a few European gardens 

 in the hope that this pretty and distinct shrub may be 

 added to the list of garden plants. C. S. S. 



Cultural Department. 



Daffodils for Pot Culture. 



}T is strange, since bulbous plants are so generally used for 

 forcing, that the Daffodils, the best of them all, should be 

 almost utterly neglected as subjects for pot culture. It is 

 true that within recent years the old double yellow Daffodil, 

 which the trade calls Von Sion, has become popular, and is 

 forced in quantities for the cut-flower market, but it is only a 

 poor representative of the varied beauty, both of form and 

 color, displayed by this wonderful family. This old double 

 form is distinctly a plebeian strain and lacks the general grace 

 of the family, and, as yet, I find that there are not a few intel- 

 ligent persons who are acquainted with no other Daffodil. 

 Hyacinths and Tulips are flowered in pots in every green- 

 house, and perhaps the only reason why Daffodils are not 

 used in this way is that we get into ruts and, apart from the 

 old double Von Sion, we leave Daffodils alone with a possible 

 exception in the case of the overwhelmingly odorous Jonquils 

 or the Paper-white Tazetta forms. Daffodils are more often 

 forced in England than they are here, but there is a stronger 

 reason for growing them in pots in this country. In an 

 average English season the Tenby Daffodil begins to show 

 flowers in the third week of February in the open ground, 

 and thenceforward throughout the long and gradually opening 

 spring a succession of Daffodils can be maintained until the 

 Poet's Narcissus fades in June. In this country, as a rule, no 

 flowers of any size break through. the frosty ground before 

 March is more than half gone, and last year it was mid-April 

 before the spring flowers were awakened, and then the sudden 

 appearance of August weather soon dried them up. There 

 is, therefore, much more reason in this country for protract- 

 ing the spring flower season than there is in England, and for 

 this the Daffodils are the very best pot-plants that can be used, 

 for by making selections from different sections of this large 

 family we can have a season which lasts through months. 



* Specimens of a plant which appears identical with Pyrus occidentalis were col- 

 lected by Funston in i8q> on the shores of Disenchantment Bay, Alaska, and this 

 species may be expected to range southward along the coast mountains ot British 

 Columbia. 



t Watson, Proc. Am. Acad., xxiii., 263 (excl. hab. Cal.) (1SS8). 



