May 12, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



189 



pound. A Vermont man secured the order and he is probably- 

 shipping from there yet. Around Hanover, New Hampshire, 

 an immense quantity of this seed could be collected, and upon 

 the whole, my experience is that the White Pine is spreading 

 over land where it was not known a century ago. 



Many years ago Burnet Landreth wrote to me to say that on 

 some land he owned in Virginia there was a large White Pine- 

 tree which he thought had grown from seed dropped acci- 

 dentally and this had seeded the land to a wonderful extent all 

 about it. I met with a greater surprise than he did when I 

 went to North Carolina to plant three hundred acres of White 

 Pine on the Vanderbilt estate. Right in the city of Asheville 

 on the hillside stood two White Pines on a sleep bank, and 

 these had seeded the long slope with Pines up to twenty feet 

 high, and in several months' leisure I had there I explored a 

 great part of the mountains of western North Carolina and 

 eastern Tennessee, and found White Pines in groups here and 

 there, and in many places in uncultivated hills, and in no 

 instance did I notice a sign of very old or decayed trees. 



On our sand dunes where there were hundreds of large 

 trees when I came here fifty-three years ago, straight White 

 Pine logs were used by the settlers to make houses and barns, 

 and the gnarly, stunted trees that were there then still stand and 

 produceseeds freely, and seedlings, too, but these are burned up 

 by fires which run over the ground almost every year. Now, 

 these White Pines in Tennessee and Carolina produce seed- 

 lings in wonderful quantity and they are of all ages, while the 

 Tulip-tree, although growing in abundance everywhere, pro- 

 duces very few seedlings, and these are separated by ten or a 

 dozen years of age. We have had samples of seed of the 

 Tulip-tree from Indiana, southern Illinois, Kentucky, Ten- 

 nessee and North Carolina, and we have never found more 

 than ten per cent, of it of germinating quality. All the while 

 I was at Mr. Vanderbilt's place we could find no seedlings, or, 

 at least, very few in a long ramble, except in one instance 

 where a tree had been broken nearly off at about ten feet from 

 the ground with the top still attached. There we tound about 

 a thousand seedlings three years old. Perhaps this experience 

 may help some one in theorizing on this interesting problem. 



Waukegan, ill. Robert Douglas. 



A Wholesale Market for Cut Flowers. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — One of the principal wholesale markets for cut flowers 

 in this city besides the Cut-flower Exchange, on West Twenty- 

 third Street, and the wholesale commission dealers, is the one 

 at the foot of Thirty-fourth Street, on the East River. Here 

 about 150 growers come each morning throughout the year, 

 including Sunday. The first sellers and buyers are on hand as 

 early in the morning as five o'clock, but six o'clock is an- 

 nounced to be the opening hour after June the first. The floor 

 of the second story used for the market measures, perhaps, 

 100 by 50 feet. Space on counters along the walls and in the 

 middle of two large rooms is let at the monthly rate of sixty- 

 five cents a foot to stockholders of the concern, and seventy- 

 five cents to non-members, four feet being the average space 

 rented. Growers come from fifteen to twenty miles out on 

 Long Island, from College Point, Bayside, Great Neck, Floral 

 Park, Woodside, Newtown and other sections. Germans pre- 

 dominate among the sellers, some of whom have attended 

 these sales since their establishment, about twenty-five years 

 ago, and among the buyers are many Greeks, with English- 

 speaking women and men, who have street-stands and small 

 stores of their own. While most of the customers are of these 

 classes, representatives of some of the best stores in New 

 York and Brooklyn come here for any chance novelties and 

 flowers of specially good quality. These early sales are a con- 

 venience to small dealers, who can buy the day's stock and 

 have it on their premises by eight o'clock, betore the Cut- 

 flower Exchange and commission men have begun business. 

 The early hours here are, however, a disadvantage during 

 midwinter, when buyers do not find it easy to start out before 

 daylight, and the wholesale markets are thus brought into 

 more direct competition, with the effect of lowering prices 

 here. After April the earlier hours are appreciated, as im- 

 proved prices indicate. At this time of year the main business is 

 clone from six to seven o'clock, when a babel of languages is 

 heard. The stock is brought to town by trolley and train, and 

 is carried in large oblong baskets or in great arm-loads. 

 During the Chrysanthemum season and at Easter, the busiest 

 times of the year, two or three persons are often needed to 

 bring the product of one establishment, but it is astonishing 

 how much is packed into one basket and how tightly the flowers 



are bunched without showing injury after they are opened up. 

 A large basket, with the enforced capacity of a good-sized 

 trunk, and an armful of ten dozen chrysanthemums or lilies are 

 readily carried by one person. The retail city trade on Satur- 

 day regulates the volume of Sunday morning purchases here, 

 but, as a rule, only about one-third as much trade is done then 

 as on week days. 



On a visit on Saturday morning, May 8th, a great variety of 

 the cheaper homelike and familiar flowers was noted. Can- 

 dytuft, long, luxuriant stalks of white Snapdragon, Stocks, 

 Sweet Alyssum, Mignonette, Geranium-leaves, Chinese Nar- 

 cissus, Narcissus poeticus, Lily-ot-the- valley and other bulbous 

 flovveis ; Forget-me-not, Marguerites, Sweet Peas, Heliotrope, 

 Lilac, Bermuda Lilies, Carnations and hybrid Perpetual 

 Roses were the staple stock. Neat bunches' of wild Violets 

 were offered at sixty cents a dozen ; attractive bunches of the 

 dainty and fragrant Daphne Cneorum, of about two dozen 

 stems, at $1.50 a dozen ; callas at fifty cents a dozen, and the 

 best Harris lilies at the same rate. Only a small percentage of 

 the carnations were of high grade, and while these sold for 

 $1.50 a hundred, $1.00 was a general price, and short-stemmed 

 flowers were offered at fifty cents. The arrangement and dis- 

 play of the flowers showed little of the taste and skill which 

 are seen in the markets where more choice and costly flowers 

 are sold, and had the suggestion ot out-of-door flowers from 

 a country garden rather than of flowers grown under glass 

 with the highest art and best appliances. For example, it 

 was not uncommon to see three distinct and conflictingcolors of 

 carnations in one bunch of a hundred. To be sure, this variety of 

 kinds in a small quantity made a more salable package to offer 

 to small dealers, and, as the object of the market is to sell 

 flowers, no reasonable fault can be found with want of aesthetic 

 arrangement. The range in quality of roses was most marked, 

 and, besides Perle des Jardins, Bride, Bridesmaid and other simi- 

 lar varieties at a dollar a hundred, included the same sorts at 

 three and four times that amount, and Ulrich Brunner at $1.50 

 and $2.00 a dozen. There were occasional offerings of the old 

 Lamarque rose at low prices, and considerable quantities of 

 well-grown moss roses at $1.50 a hundred. 



Primulas were seen more rarely, and showy Parrot tulips, 

 yellow centaureas, trusses of hydrangeas, branches of flower- 

 ing Almond, Astilbe, Deutzia gracilis, Genista, double-flowering 

 Peach and Spiraea Thunbergii. Buds of the richly colored 

 Paeonia tenuifolia in their fine foliage made a pleasing effect 

 on the eye, though a quantity of these flowers indoors has a 

 disagreeable odor. Spikes ot gladioli were seen once or twice, 

 and of Cymbidium eburneum and a Dendrobium. Funkia, 

 maiden-hair fern, asparagus and smilax were quite abundant, 

 and several dealers sold only remarkably fresh-looking poly- 

 pody and common brake, Pteris, gathered in the Catskills last 

 autumn. By eight o'clock the last flowers had changed hands 

 and been transferred to the baskets of buyers, and the depart- 

 ing throngs with filled and with empty baskets seemed 

 strangely like those which had arrived a couple of hours 

 betore. 



New York. M. B. C. 



Spring Notes from Germantown, Pennsylvania. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I have observed that the color of flowers seems to vary 

 in different years, as if the special qualities of a given season 

 had some influence in this matter, ft is noticeable hereabouts 

 that the flowers of the pink Dogwood are of a much deeper 

 color this spring than usual. The foliage of what is known as 

 the Blood-leaved Japanese Maple is also darker than usual, 

 and these small trees were never more striking than they are 

 now. In secluded nooks along the Wissahickon the rocks are 

 all ablaze with the flowers of tlie Wild Columbine. How can 

 these plants flourish with so little apparent nourishment? 

 They not only grow, but they grow with great thriftiness out 

 of crevices in the rocks where there is scarcely room enough 

 for their roots and where it seems impossible for any soil to 

 enter. 



Among our most beautiful trees just now are the Crab Ap- 

 ples of various kinds. The variety known as the Transcen- 

 dent has especially large white flowers, which are very fra- 

 grant, but the flowers of all the varieties are beautiful and 

 abundant ; their fruit, too, is ornamental, and much of it is 

 excellent for jellies and the like. The so-called flowering 

 Peaches, too, are particularly beautiful just now, a variety with 

 crimson flowers being specially effective. Lilacs are slower 

 in opening than usual, and this gives an opportunity for Syringa 

 oblata to show its special qualities of earliness, as its flowers 

 expanded in advance of all the forms of Syringa vulgaris by a 



