400 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 503. 



in agricultural chemistry and the breeding of domestic ani- 

 mals, he kept himself abreast of all the latest advances in the 

 science and practice of agriculture. A politician in the 

 best sense and alive to the dignity of citizenship, he 

 enjoyed the game of politics, as he did a horse race, and 

 no man not a professional was better versed in the techni- 

 calities of the baseball field and the football gridiron. 

 Shielding himself behind his invincible modesty, this 

 many-sided man long escaped the publicity which he 

 never sought or desired, but eventually the knowledge of 

 his true value spread beyond his personal friends and 

 associates. Two years ago he was made one of the Park 

 Commissioners of this city, a position for which he was in 

 every way admirably equipped, and gradually the public 

 has learned that he was one of the strongest and most 

 valuable men in this community. 



His death is a serious loss to the readers of Garden and 

 Forest, and to every one in the United States interested in 

 landscape-gardening, horticulture and the care and protec- 

 tion of our national and state forests. To this city at 

 this particular time his death is a great misfortune, for 

 it leaves it without its most intelligent and powerful 

 champion in the constantly recurring fight between the 

 people and the would-be spoilers of their parks. Of his 

 life-long devotion to those nearest to him by blood, 

 untiring in its constancy and tenderness, we must not 

 speak here ; nor can we trust ourselves to speak of the 

 faithful friend and associate tried by the test of long years 

 of intimate relations, the wise counsellor and the joyous 

 companion. Men who knew William A. Stiles loved him. 

 and to them his memory will be immortal. 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — II. 



TUMION, or Torreya as it is more generally known, is a 

 genus of small trees with elongated lanceolate sharp- 

 pointed alternate leaves spreading in two ranks, and soli- 

 tary dioecious axillary flowers, the male composed of 

 numerous stamens with filaments dilated above into four 

 anthers connate into a half ring, the female of a single erect 

 ovule surrounded by a fleshy aril which becomes confluent 

 with the woody testa of the seed, the whole forming a 

 plum-like fruit peculiar in the deep folds of the albumen of 

 the seed which resembles that of the Nutmeg. There are 

 now four species known confined to western Florida, Cali- 

 fornia, Japan and northern China, although during the 

 Tertiary period the genus inhabited the Arctic Circle and 

 then spreading southward existed for a long time in Europe, 

 from which it has now entirely disappeared. All the exist- 

 ing species produce handsome close-grained pale yellow 

 durable wood, well adapted for cabinet-making, for which 

 it is used in Japan in considerable quantities. 



None of the species of Tumion have taken particularly 

 well to cultivation or shown themselves really desirable 

 garden plants. The Florida Tumion taxifolium, which is 

 the type of the genus, is one of the least widely distributed 

 North American trees, being confined to a narrow strip of 

 bluff about forty miles in length along the eastern bank of 

 the Apalachicola River from River Junction to Bristol. 

 This tree can be kept alive in eastern Massachusetts in 

 sheltered, well-shaded positions, and occasionally indi- 

 viduals have survived a number of years in gardens near 

 New York and Philadelphia. 



The California species, Tumion Californicum, which is 

 really a noble tree, occasionally one hundred feet high, 

 with a trunk four feet in diameter, is not at all hardy in the 

 east, although it is occasionally cultivated in Europe, 

 where it was introduced in 1851 and has produced flowers, 

 although it gives slight promise of acquiring in Old World 

 gardens the beauty which distinguishes it in the forests of 

 northern California. 



Tumion nuciferum, the Japanese Kaya, is common in 

 the forests of central and southern Hondo and in those of 

 the southern islands as an undershrub or small tree twenty 



or thirty feet tall, and rises occasionally to the height of 

 eighty feet, with a trunk four or five feet in diameter, forming 

 a tree unequaled in the massiveness of its appearance and 

 the beauty of its bright reddish bark and dark green, 

 almost black, foliage. Although introduced into Europe 

 more than fifty years ago, the Japanese Tumion, like the 

 other species, has never really flourished in gardens for the 

 reason, perhaps, as has been suggested, that most of the 

 cultivated plants have been raised from cuttings, the seeds 

 of Tumion being exceedingly difficult to transport without 

 the loss of vitality as they soon become rancid. The 

 nature of the climate where it grows, however, in central 

 Japan, and the hardiness here of its associates in its native 

 forests give some hope that it may be possible to cultivate 

 successfully this beautiful tree in the eastern states. The 

 kernels of the seeds have a pleasant, resinous flavor, and 

 in Japan are largely used as food ; an oil, kaya-no-abura, 

 used in cookery, is pressed from them and is an article 

 of some commercial importance. 



Very little is known of the Chinese Tumion grande, which 

 has not been tried, probably, in our gardens, and which, 

 possibly, will be found identical with the Japanese tree. 



Taxus, the Yew, is a genus rather widely distributed 

 through the northern hemisphere, with a small number of 

 species all very similar in habit and foliage and nearly iden- 

 tical in flowers and fruit ; it is characterized by short 

 linear, alternate, sharp- pointed, dark green leaves disposed 

 in a subspiral and appearing two-ranked on lateral branch- 

 lets by the twisting of the short compressed petioles, 

 dioecious or monoecious solitary axillary flowers, the male 

 with from four to eight stamens collected into a globular 

 turbinate head, the female with an erect ovule on a ring- 

 like disk, which enlarging becomes a bright red succulent 

 aril, and nearly encloses the ripe seed. Six species are now 

 known ; they are widely distributed through eastern and 

 western North America, Mexico, Europe, northern Africa, 

 and western, central and eastern Asia, the descendants of 

 Yew-trees which have existed since Miocene times. 



The best known of all the Yew-trees, Taxus baccata, has 

 been cultivated for centuries, and the oldest trees planted 

 by man in Europe are probably Yews, which are believed 

 to live occasionally for a thousand years. Taxus baccata 

 is scattered over western and central Europe and the moun- 

 tains of southern Europe and northern Africa ; it reaches 

 southern Scandinavia on the north, and extends through 

 western Asia to the temperate Himalayas, where it is com- 

 mon, ascending to elevations of twelve thousand feet above 

 the sea-level. In India the Yew attains its largest size, 

 sometimes growing to the height of a hundred feet, with a 

 trunk five or six feet in diameter. Usually, however, it is 

 bushy in habit, and trees more than thirty or forty feet in 

 height are not very common. Long before the Yew at- 

 tracted much attention in modern Europe as a garden plant 

 the wood was in great demand for the manufacture of 

 bows, and for centuries after the Anglo-Saxon conquest 

 Yew-wood bows were the principal weapons of the English. 

 It is still considered the most valuable of the European 

 woods for cabinet-making, and it is manufactured into 

 many small articles of domestic use. In some parts of 

 India the trees are venerated and their wood is burnt as 

 incense, while both the bark and leaves are employed by 

 the native physicians in the treatment of various human 

 diseases. 



During the seventeenth century, when the fashion for 

 formal gardens and clipped trees prevailed in Europe, the 

 Yew, which endures better than most trees an annual short- 

 ening of the branches, was cut into all sorts of fantastic 

 shapes and was largely planted in hedges, for which pur- 

 pose it was well suited and is still frequently used. The 

 Yew has always been the favorite ornament for English 

 churchyards, and no English park or garden is considered 

 complete without it. 



Taxus baccata must have been brought to eastern North 

 America more than a century ago, as there are a number 

 of large individuals in New York, Philadelphia and Balti- 



