August 4, 1S97.] 



Garden and Forest. 



301 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by . . Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles — The Use of Trees and Shrubs with Leaves ot Abnormal 



Colors ■ - 301 



Two Southern Botanical Worthies 301 



Notes on the Codling .Moth Professor Fred IV. Curd. 302 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. IVatson. 303 



New or Little-known Plants: — A New Hickory — Hicoria pallida. (With 



figure.) Professor William Willard Ashe. 304 



Cultural Department : — Border Plants T. D. Hatfield. 306 



Herbaceous Perennial Plants in Flower Robert Cameron. 307 



Hybridizing Caladiums G. IV Oliver. 307 



Notes on Flowering Plants IV. H. Taplin. 30S 



Correspondence: — Wintering Hardy Plants in Vermont F H. Horsford. 308 



A Plea for Zinnias Fanny Copley Seavey. 309 



Recent Publications 309 



Notes 309 



Illustration: — Hicoria pallida. Fig. 39 305 



The Use of Trees and Shrubs with Leaves of 

 Abnormal Colors. 



A BOSTON correspondent writes in a discouraged tone 

 about the planting- he observes in the suburbs of that 

 city. It seems to him that popular taste is setting strongly 

 toward Prunus Pissardi, the Golden Elder, variegated Ne- 

 gundos and the like. We have no doubt that too many 

 trees and shrubs which are valued for the abnormal color- 

 ing of their leaves are used about Boston, and, in fact, 

 about every other American city. Unless our own observa- 

 tion is at fault, however, the tendency of public taste, as a 

 rule, is in the other direction, by which we mean that 

 the people who plant nowadays are more inclined 

 to follow the teachings of nature in this respect than they 

 were a few years ago, when the tree agent, with his highly 

 colored catalogues, was more pervasive and influential 

 than he now is. The so-called foliage plants with brightly 

 colored leaves and hues, set in patterns of various sorts, are 

 certainly not as prevalent as they once were, and it is very 

 evident that in American parks the use of shrubs and trees 

 with streaked and spotted or vari-colored leaves is not as 

 profuse as it is in European parks. Perhaps, our corre- 

 spondent in some afternoon drive has observed several 

 glaring offenses against that quietness and self-restraint in 

 planting which alone can make home grounds homelike, 

 and this has depressed his spirits. 



First and last, we have often discussed the principles 

 which ought to underlie the art of garden design so far as 

 it relates to the selection of trees and shrubs for some 

 peculiarity of form or of color. It would be an affectation 

 of severe taste to lay down a rigid and invariable rule 

 that no plant should be used whose individuality was so 

 pronounced that it might be called abnormal. In the hands 

 of a skilled artist a plant with yellowish or wine-colored 

 leaves might be used occasionally as a climax in a gradation 

 of color. Nature herself gives a wide range to select from 

 between the sombre tone of the dark green foliage of 

 certain Pines and other conifers to the pallid gray of the 

 Lead-plant, the silvery tints of the Ekcagnus and the 

 almost snowy leaves of our native Hydrangea radiata 

 when they are disturbed by the wind so as to show their 

 under side. There is no fear that our natural landscapes 



shall ever be of that " vapid green " which is depreciated 

 by the rhyming gardener in his well-known lines. But 

 with all her variety nature rarely, in our northern latitude, 

 produces variegated leaves. It is true that in the autumn 

 we have a wealth of color in the foliage of every land- 

 scape, and as the leaves come out in spring they take on 

 tints even more delicate and quite as remarkable in their 

 range. But both these displays are transient. Much of 

 their beauty consists in the fact that it is evanescent, just 

 as our most luxuriant displays of blossoms in the flower- 

 ing time of the Dogwood and Rhododendron and Judas- 

 tree and Crab-apple clothe many a forest border with a 

 beauty which is as profuse as it is fleeting, 



These are the two real objections to the free use of plants 

 with vivid foliage. They are unnatural, or, at least, they are 

 alien to our climate, and they are monotonous. Nature occa- 

 sionally produces a freak, but it is not in accordance with 

 nature to multiply these oddities until they become promi- 

 nent features in the landscape. A Negundo with pale and 

 sickly foliage may be a chance production of nature, but 

 nature never produced these pallid trees in such compara- 

 tively large numbers as they appear in certain European 

 parks. Nor did any one ever see in nature such masses of 

 purple Barberry or Golden Elder as we see in many private 

 grounds in America. When we exalt what is rare and 

 accidental to the place which ought to be occupied by the 

 typical and normal vegetation of our climate, we are forci- 

 bly subverting the laws of nature and substituting devices 

 of our own invention. It is not simply because we are 

 introducing high colors into the landscape, for few coun- 

 tries in the world have scenery where abundant bright-hued 

 flowers are more characteristic. But plants with golden 

 leaves or variegated leaves are alien to our native silva, 

 and when we use them in profusion we introduce a new 

 motive altogether out of harmony with our natural land- 

 scapes. 



Again, one of the characteristic beauties of an American 

 landscape is its constant change. Between the delicate 

 beauty of the tender leaves of our woodlands and roadside 

 thickets in spring and their rich colors in autumn, there 

 are new pictures every day as the foliage changes in form 

 and color. We have meadows full of buttercups to-day, 

 and daisies to-morrow. Our mountain slopes are now pur- 

 ple with the flowers of Rhododendron, and again pink with 

 those of Kalmias ; while from midsummer to autumn Sun- 

 flowers and Rudbeckias, Asters and Golden-rods keep our 

 landscapes in continued transformation. For this reason we 

 never tire of them, as we should, perhaps, if the Rhododen- 

 drons bloomed all summer through, or if our forests from May 

 until November presented in unvarying profusion the rich 

 colors they show r in October. And here is the fundamental 

 defect of the trees and shrubs and plants with variegated 

 and bright-hued foliage. It is not only that their colors are 

 unnatural, but they are unchanging, and consequently to 

 the last degree monotonous and wearying. 



Two Southern Botanical Worthies. 



COMPARATIVELY little is known of Thomas Walter, 

 an Englishman who wrote, under the title of Flora 

 Caroliniana, an account of the plants of South Carolina, 

 where he lived and died. Many years ago Mr. H. W. 

 Ravenel, of South Carolina, published in the Proceedings 

 of the Elliott Society (i., 54) a transcription from the stone 

 which marked Walter's grave in his garden on the banks 

 of the Santee River in St. John's Parish. The stone was 

 erected " In memory of Thomas Walter, a native of 

 Hampshire, in England, and many years a resident of this 

 State. He died in the beginning of the year 17SS, .Etatis 

 cir. 48 Ann. To a mind liberally endowed by nature, and 

 refined by a liberal education, he added a taste for the 

 study of Natural History, and in the department of Botany, 

 Science is much indebted to his labors. At his desire he 

 was buried on this spot, once the garden in which were 

 cultivated most of the plants of his Flora Caroliniana, 



