November 24, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



461 



the eastern states from the splitting of the hark, and in New 

 England, where it is otherwise hardy, it is usually short- 

 lived. Further south Pin us Nepalensis is more successful, 

 and there are now large healthy cone-bearing trees in the 

 Central Park, New York, and in the neighborhood of many 

 of the cities of the middle states. 



In Europe Strobus appears in Pinus Peuce of the moun- 

 tains of Macedonia, Servia and Montenegro, a tree which 

 has been sometimes considered a geographical form of the 

 Himalayan White Pine, from which it differs, however, in 

 its much shorter and more persistent leaves. In the Arnold 

 Arboretum, where Pinus Peuce is quite hardy, it differs 

 from the Indian tree in its closer and more pyramidal habit 

 and denser foliage. This is a slow-growing tree here, with 

 no special ornamental value, and is chiefly interesting as 

 the European representative of a group principally indige- 

 nous in the New World. 



The Pines which we have mentioned all belong to a sub- 

 section of Strobus in which the wings of the seeds are 

 longer than the seeds themselves, but there are other five- 

 leaved Pines, with pale, soft, straight-grained wood, which 

 have seeds with narrow wings much shorter than the seeds. 

 To this group belong the Rocky Mountain White Pine 

 (Pinus flexilis. See f. 19 in the current volume of Garden 

 and Forest), a beautiful tree widely distributed over the 

 mountain ranges of the interior of the continent. It is 

 hardy in the neighborhood of Boston, but in the east grows 

 very slowly, suffering severely here from fungal diseases, 

 and plants thirty-five years old are not more than four or five 

 feet high, with tufts of miserable stunted foliage on the 

 ends of naked branches. In England Pinus flexilis appears 

 to do better than it does on the Atlantic seaboard, and in 

 the Royal Gardens at Kew there is a tree twenty-five feet 

 in height and probably of the same age as the Boston 

 specimens, which were raised in the Harvard Botanic 

 Garden from seeds collected by Dr. Parry in 1862 in Colo- 

 rado. A year ago the Kew tree produced cones. 



Another Pine of this sort, Pinus albicaulis, also inhabits 

 the mountains of western America ; it is an alpine tree, 

 distinguished by its thin creamy white bark and short, 

 nearly oval, cones with much thickened scales. This tree 

 is said to have been introduced into Scotland in 1851 by 

 John Jeffrey, who discovered it in that year on the moun- 

 tains which rise above the valley of the lower Fraser River. 

 I have never seen it, however, in Europe, and it has not 

 been tried in this part of the country. Like other trees 

 which grow naturally only at high altitudes, it will prob- 

 ably grow very slowly at the sea-level, even if it could 

 be induced to grow here at all. 



Pinus Cembra, the Swiss Stone Pine, is another of the 

 White Pines with narrow seed-wings. It is a native of the 

 mountains of central Europe, of northern Russia, and of 

 Siberia where it sometimes forms pure forests of consider- 

 able extent. Pinus Cembra is always a slow-growing tree, 

 with short, slender horizontal branches which in youth 

 form a dense compact pyramid, and stout rigid blue-green 

 leaves clustered at the ends of the stout branchlets. This 

 tree is an old inhabitant of gardens and is perfectly hardy 

 in New England, where, however, it grows very slowly, 

 retaining its dense, handsome pyramidal form until it is 

 twenty-five or thirty years old, and then frequently becom- 

 ing thin and ragged. A species, Pinus pumila, nearly re- 

 lated to the Stone Pine covers the high summits of the moun- 

 tains of northern Japan with broad, almost impenetrable, 

 thickets four or five feet high, and is widely scattered also 

 over Saghalin, Kamtschatka and the Kurile Islands. This 

 shrub has probably never been tried in our gardens, where 

 it may be expected to be hardy and to grow very 

 slowly. 



In Japan the five-leaved Pines are also represented by 

 Pinus parviflora and Pinus pentaphylla. The former is one 

 of the most attractive of the exotic Pines which decorate 

 our gardens. It is a common inhabitant of mountain for- 

 ests above elevations of five thousand feet, through which 

 it is found scattered either singly or in small groves, occa- 



sionally growing to a height of sixty or seventy feet. This 

 tree is a great favorite with the Japanese, and one of the 

 principal subjects which they employ in dwarfing. In our 

 gardens, where there are now specimens from twenty to 

 twenty-five feet in height, Pinus parviflora grows rapidly, 

 sending out long picturesque, persistent branches clothed 

 with tufts of blue-green leaves and loaded with short oval 

 cones which, after ripening, turn nearly black and do 

 not fall for months. This beautiful tree, which is still 

 rarely seen in this country, is admirably suited for the 

 adornment of small gardens. The other Japanese five- 

 leaved Pine (Pinus pentaphylla), recently distinguished by 

 Mayr, is a rare inhabitant of the mountain forests of south- 

 ern Yezo. This little-known tree, long confounded with 

 Pinus parviflora, has been raised in the Arnold Arboretum, 

 where it seems to be hardy enough, although it is still too 

 early to say much about it. 



Pinus Koraiensis is a small five-leaved Pine, which is 

 another really valuable plant in the gardens of the north- 

 eastern states. A native of Corea, northern China, Man- 

 churia and Kamtschatka, it was long ago introduced into 

 Japan, probably by Buddhist priests, and is now one of the 

 plants commonly seen in temple gardens. From Japan 

 it was brought to the United States about thirty years 

 ago and has proved entirely satisfactory here. In the 

 color of the leaves it resembles Pinus Strobus, but it is 

 more compact in habit and the foliage is much more dense, 

 as the leaves do not fall until their fourth or fifth year, and 

 therefore clothe the branches for a long distance back 

 from the tips, while in Pinus Strobus the leaves mostly fall 

 during their second year, leaving the branches bare, except 

 at the extremities. Pinus Koraiensis now grows freely in 

 the neighborhood of Boston, producing seeds, which, like 

 those of all the five-leaved Pines with narrow seed-wings, 

 are large and edible. C. S. S. 



Notes from South-western China. 



The following notes are from a personal letter from Dr. 

 Augustine Henry, dated at Mengtse, September 9th of this 

 year : 



I may mention that I have found a magnificent Paulownia 

 with evergreen leaves, which is the most gorgeous sight when 

 in flower imaginable. Lonicera Hildebrandiana, discovered 

 by General Collett in the Shan States, also occurs here in the 

 mountains. It is a rambling shrub, climbing over rocks. The 

 flowers are deep yellow and about seven inches in length. 

 Leucosceptrurn canum, of northern India, is a remarka- 

 ble Labiate, common in mountain woods at about 5,000 feet 

 altitude. It is a tree some twenty feet high, and in habit is 

 exactly like a Buddleia. 



Yunan is a large province, and is associated in the minds 

 of botanists with the wonderful discoveries of Pere Delavay. 

 He collected mainly in the west of the province on the high 

 mountains near Tali, which are practically spurs of the Hima- 

 layas. The region here, that is, Mengtse and to the south, 

 crossing the Red River, and extending as far as the Shan States 

 under French control, is very different from Delavay 's ground, 

 and will probably turn out as rich in species, new and inter- 

 esting, but not so suitable for introduction into cultivation, as 

 the mountains do not rise to the heights seen in the vicinity 

 of Tali. Here, nevertheless, are many fine Rhododendrons, 

 and there is a great variety of Cyrtandreas. These are always 

 beautiful plants, occurring as a rule in shaded parts of moun- 

 tain forests, mainly on rocks. A good many Begonias also 

 occur in the same habitat. 



The forests are more beautiful as one approaches and enters 

 French territory, simply because the Chinese have not been 

 there long enough to destroy them. They are migrating south- 

 ward all the time and opening up forest laud to cultivation. 

 Curiously enough, it is two American plants which enable 

 them to extend cultivation high up on the mountains, namely, 

 Maize and the common Potato (Solatium) ; and the opium 

 Poppy, too, can be cultivated with profit to a high altitude. 

 In ancient times the aborigines, who were the only inhab- 

 itants of the mountains, depended almost entirely on the 

 Tartar Buckwheat (Fagopyrum Tartaricum), which succeeds 

 much better at high elevations than the common Buckwheat 

 (F. esculentum). South of the Red River there was scarcely 



