504 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 513. 



Calopogon pulchellus. 



SOME years ago one of the illustrated journals gave a 

 sketch, with this legend: First tourist, "And how do 

 you like Venice?" Second tourist, very bewildered, 

 "Venice! why, is this Venice? I thought it was Milan ; 

 the itinerary says we are to be in Milan to-day." This is 

 the typical state of mind of plant collectors who try to fit 

 their newly-found plants to the descriptions found in either 

 scientific manuals or popular hand-books. The description 

 is grasped with a tenacity worthy of a better cause, while 

 the charm of variation is quite lost sight of; consequently, 

 when plants varying even slightly from the accepted de- 

 scription are found they are looked upon as something rare 

 or unique. 



The common descriptions of Calopogon usually read as 

 follows : "Plant about one foot high, bearing from two to 

 six flowers; color, magenta." The Dictionary of Gardening 

 is even more modest and reduces the number of blossoms 

 from " two to three," based on the plants figured in The 

 Botanical Magazine of 1790*, which were the first speci- 

 mens seen in England. Mr. Baldwin alone seems to really 

 have seen Calopogons as they are commonly found, and 

 in the Orchids of New England gives from three to nine 

 blossoms as the ordinary number. 



In the bogs of Adams and Franklin Counties, Pennsyl- 

 vania, where they are very numerous, the plants vary from 

 ten to twenty inches in height, and bear from six to fifteen 

 flowers, eleven being an average number during midsea- 

 son, both early and late ones having fewer blossoms. The 

 season is longer than that of any other native Orchid, 

 except the inconspicuous Spiranthes, and lasts from late in 

 June until about the beginning of August. 



The plants figured on page 505 were gathered late in 

 June and represent the most ordinary specimens found by 

 the hundreds in the South Mountain meadows. The color- 

 ation is generally given as "magenta," which seems tome 

 too harsh a term, as they are only magenta when removed 

 from their setting of bog-moss and grasses. The sepals 

 and petals are usually of the same tone throughout, occa- 

 sionally the wings are lighter, and generally the ridges of 

 the lab'ellum are white in their lower portion. 



In a small area selected for daily observation, the plants 

 ranged from one having pure white blossoms, with light 

 green stigmatic surface and anther-lid, through very pale 

 pink, to those with ordinary deep pink tones. The latter 

 in almost every instance bore many more flowers than the 

 paler specimens, the white one having only three blossoms, 

 though these were of unusually large size. The deep-toned 

 specimens averaged half as many filled seed-pods as there 

 were blossoms ; in no plant that was observed were all the 

 seed-pods developed, and in no case at all of the white or 

 very pale specimens were any seed-pods filled, or the pol- 

 linia even removed, so the attraction for insects appears to 

 depend not only on the kind of color, but the degree, those 

 having a purplish tone bearing more seed-pods. This 

 agrees with the accepted theories of color, but other locali- 

 ties may show different results. 



The Calopogons bear transplantation, and were not only 

 grown in England a century ago, but are among the Ameri- 

 can Orchids mentioned by Mr. Meehan as having been 

 successfully cultivated by the Comte de Paris (see page 484 

 of this volume of Garden and Forest). They are not 

 among our most showy bog-plants, but they are certainly 

 very pretty, with a certain distinction that entitles them to 

 consideration as worthy of protection, for the meadows 

 where they grow naturally are more and more disturbed 

 by the plow, so that in a few years we shall look in vain 

 for a single plant, where now hundreds may be found. 

 This has happened with many of our wild animals which 

 have been hunted to extermination, and is happening to 

 more of our wild flowers than most persons realize. Unless 

 those interested in the preservation of our native plants 

 endeavor, as wild land is needed for cultivation, to transfer 



to protected places some of our woodland and meadow 

 beauties, we shall in a little time find them only in the 

 botanical gardens of large cities. 



Harrisburg, Penn. 



M. L. Dock. 



Correspondence. 



' Garden and Forest, vol. 



, p. So. 



An Amateur's Experiment. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — The articles entitled " Harmony in Country Places," 

 " Native Plants for Ornamental Planting," and " What Can be 

 Done in Nine Years," in recent numbers of Garden and 

 Forest, have reminded me in so many things of my own 

 experience in endeavoring to carry out my plans for a subur- 

 ban home, that I think some of your readers may be interested 

 in a brief account of the results of seven years of experiment, 

 and the methods by which comparatively satisfactory results 

 have at last been reached. The term experiment should, in 

 this case, be emphasized, since the undertaking was not only 

 such at the beginning, but continues so. 



Besides lack of previous experience in such matters there 

 was much to contend with in the situation and other local con- 

 ditions. The grounds slope rather steeply to the south, more 

 gently to the west, and the terraces and banks face in the same 

 directions, thus exposing the greater part of the surface to the 

 summer's sun; besides, the ground being a very hard clay, 

 overlaid by a few inches of excessively poor soil, or in places 

 none at all, a far greater amount of rain or use of the hose is 

 necessary than on a level or more friable surface. This dis- 

 advantage proved so serious that my choicest trees and shrubs 

 were killed by drought during the five years when they were 

 dependent entirely upon rain and water carried by hand, and 

 each summer, after the middle of July, it was impossible to 

 prevent the grass from burning to the roots on those portions 

 of the lawn and terraces not protected by shade. Now, how- 

 ever, having Potomac water and some eighty feet of hose, 

 nothing has been lost from drought within the last two years, 

 and the lawn continues green until seared by freezing weather. 



It should be mentioned that my place is a small one, only 

 1 50 feet square (appropriately half an acre in area), fronting for 

 that distance on two streets, which form the west and south 

 boundaries, the latter marking the lowest level of the plot. 

 Crossing the lower portion diagonally a military road had 

 been built during the war, leading to a fort which crowned one 

 of the neighboring knolls. The grading of this road produced 

 the only level ground on the premises, and likewise a bank 

 averaging about three feet in height along the upper edge. 

 The only fair-sized trees on the place grew upon this old road 

 and below it, some dozen or fifteen slender and rather tall 

 Scrub Pines (Pinus Virginiana), about forty to fifty feet high. 

 Ranged along the top of the bank were four fine bushes of 

 Cornus circinata, several young flowering Dogwood-trees, 

 occasional clumps of smooth Sumach, a few other shrubs and 

 young trees, a slender Persimmon-tree growing between two 

 of the latter Pines and nearly of the same height, and a tangle 

 of Greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia) which overran a portion of 

 the shrubbery and clambered into the lower branches of the 

 Persimmon. From this fringe of shrubbery and small trees 

 the slope leading to the upper limits of the place was covered 

 with a jungle of young Scrub Pines, intermixed with Black- 

 berry brambles, Sumachs (Rhus glabra and R. copaliina), Sassa- 

 fras sprouts, weeds and coarse grasses, and a few small Red 

 Cedars. 



The first step toward improvement consisted in the building 

 of the fence, a procedure hastened by the discovery that my 

 larger Pine-trees had been blazed, and a fine Cedar cut 

 down by a small boy of the neighborhood, who had become 

 the proud possessor of a new, and evidently sharp, hatchet. 

 The fence consisted of Cedar posts set three feet deep and 

 connected by wire netting four feet wide.* The glaring scars 

 on the Pine-trees were coated with liquid grafting wax and 

 have quite grown over. Soon after the fence was built roots 

 of Japanese Honeysuckle were dug up from a piece of sandy 

 ground in the neighborhood, where this hardy and beautiful 

 climber had taken complete possession,! and planted on the 

 inside, one at each post and one or more at the middle of each 

 panel. These roots have developed, with assistance in the 

 way of training and pruning, into a hedge which I believe can- 

 not be surpassed in beauty, compactness and durability, and 

 is far superior, in my estimation, to any hedgeof shrubs which 



* The height of the fence was afterward reduced to three feet by cutting off both 

 posts and wire at the top, and the wooden top rails (2 .x 4 scantling), which were 

 continually sagging and rotting in the middle, replaced by double wire cable, 

 which, besides being permanent, binds the posts together far more firmly. 



t This plant is abundantly naturalized in the vicinity of Washington. 



