February 14, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



61 



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. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article:— Horticultural Novelties 61 



Where the Work of the Landscape-gardener should begin. .H. A. Caparn. 62 



Exotic Trees and Shrubs for Florida Gardens. — II H. Nehrling. 62 



Notes for Mushroom-eaters. — IV. (With figures.). .Professor IV. G.Farlow. 63 



New or Little-known Plants : — A Fastigiate Sugar-maple. (With figure.) 65 



65 



New Orchids William Robinson. 



Cultural Department : — The Conservation of Water for Orchards../. P. Roberts. 



Grapes in January E. P. Powell. 



Annual Flowers from Seed. — I J. N. Gerard. 



Single White Pasonies 5. 



Hardy Carnations R. A. 



Correspondence : — Mandarin and Tangarine Oranges 5. 



Forestry and the State M. L. D. 



Recent Publications 



Notes. 



Illustrations: — Coprinus comatus (Horsetail Mushroom). Small specimen — 

 edible. Fig. 10 



Cantharelluscibarius, Chanterelle (two-thirds natural size) — edible, Fig, 11. 



A Fastigiate Sugar-maple, at Flushing, New York, Fig. 12. 



Horticultural Novelties. 



EVERY year, as the seed and plant catalogues come 

 with their glowing descriptions of new garden-plants, 

 the buyer is confronted with the problem whether he shall 

 test some of the more promising ones or wait until the ex- 

 perience of others has demonstrated their actual value. 

 New flowers, new ornamental plants, new fruits and new 

 vegetables in great numbers are sent out every year, and 

 the man who has them for sale rarely troubles himself to 

 explain their faults or weaknesses, even if he knows them, 

 but he naturally takes good care to paint their real or fan- 

 cied merits in the brightest colors at his command. Of 

 course, those who put utter confidence in these one-sided 

 descriptions are often disappointed, until at last they dis- 

 trust every statement and assume a hostile attitude toward 

 every new introduction. It is plain, however, that if we 

 reject everything because it is novel, we set ourselves 

 against all improvement, and, in fact, we deny the possi- 

 bility of any improvements. This is clearly unsound, for, 

 in the first place, there is always the possibility that new 

 species may be discovered or that plants hitherto unknown 

 to cultivation may be introduced, and when such introduc- 

 tions have the endorsement of some well-known collector, 

 it is not difficult for those who are familiar with plants which 

 are closely related to the new ones, to decide whether it is 

 worth while to give hospitable welcome to the new-comers. 

 Again, plants always have a tendency to vary, and, by sport- 

 ing or intercrossing, new varieties of old plants are constantly 

 appearing. It by no means follows that a new variety is 

 superior to the old in any respect, and it is highly improb- 

 able that it surpasses known forms in every respect, and 

 yet, so long as we believe that the limit of improvement in 

 the evolution of any plant has not yet been reached, we 

 cannot afford to neglect all new forms. Cosmos hybridus 

 has not been planted to any considerable extent until 

 within a few years, and yet we see in several seed-lists the 

 advertisement of new strains which are to give more and 

 larger flowers, and flowers of purer color than the ordinary 

 type. Last autumn we inspected some of these flowers, 



which showed a manifest advance over any we had before 

 seen, though whether these improved characters will per- 

 sist and be reproduced from seed, we have no means yet of 

 knowing. In such cases as this we have no guide but the 

 trustworthiness of the dealer, and yet there is little doubt 

 that the man who tests many novelties, and finds himself 

 often deceived, will have more pleasure out of his horticul- 

 tural experiments than he who assumes the attitude of re- 

 pugnance against everything that is new. 



It would be of considerable advantage if we could for- 

 mulate out of the teachings of reason and experience some 

 definite code of rules to guide us in determining what nov- 

 elties we should consider the most hopeful, and which ones 

 we should distrust ; but this seems impracticable with our 

 present knowledge. We know something of a plant when 

 we know its pedigree ; we know something of a hybrid or 

 cross-bred plant when we have some knowledge of its 

 parents, and the time may come when we may know a 

 good deal more with such data at command. Still there 

 are some general principles which it is worth while to con- 

 sider, and this is especially true in the case of new fruits. 

 Certain phases of this question were discussed at the recent 

 meeting at Rochester, and Professor Bailey laid down some 

 propositions which it is worth while to consider. We may 

 premise that short-lived plants change most rapidly — that is, 

 in a given number of years a plant with the greatest num- 

 ber of generations shows the greatest variation. For exam- 

 ple, there is as great a difference between the Strawberries 

 of to-day and the Strawberries of ten years ago as there 

 is between our present varieties of Apples and those of a 

 hundred years ago. Again, plants which are propagated 

 by seed constantly tend to differ from their parents, and 

 finally diverge so widely as to need new names. Plants 

 which are propagated from abnormally developed parts, 

 like the Potato, constantly tend to deteriorate unless they are 

 selected and grown under the very best conditions. Plants 

 propagated from normal or invariable parts by cuttings or 

 grafts remain substantially the same for long periods of 

 time. It should also be remembered that an improvement 

 in the type must come from the origination of new forms, 

 and a new form may have merit, even if it does not surpass 

 old ones in most qualities, for it may have some attribute 

 which fits it for a new use, for supplying an unfilled gap, 

 for new regions or soils or tastes. 



If, then, we assume that the evolution of cultivated plants 

 follows to some extent the laws of evolution of new types 

 in nature, we may constantly hope for improvement so long 

 as there is change in the physical features of the globe 

 brought about by human habitation, for new plants are 

 always found to adapt themselves to these new conditions. 

 These changes of environment have been very rapidin our 

 own country and they are still going on, and until these 

 physical conditions are more firmly established we may 

 hope for new fruits to meet our new wants. As our vast 

 territory has been brought under cultivation, all plants, and 

 especially those grown for fruit, have responded with wonder- 

 ful facility to the demands which new climates and new hu- 

 man wants have placed upon them. It is worth noting, that 

 this adaptability has been most marked in fruits which were 

 near to the wild type, and which find themselves, therefore, 

 under quite new conditions in cultivation. Our native 

 Plums have given us, within forty years, two hundred varie- 

 ties, adapted to a remarkable range of habit and use, while 

 our Blackberries and Raspberries, within a generation, have 

 almost equaled the advance which our native Crapes have 

 made in a century. We cannot hope for such rapid im- 

 provement in the future, because the more good varieties 

 of any plant which are produced, the more strenuous will 

 be the rivalry between them. But because new varieties 

 will be more rare among the old and standard fruits, it does 

 not follow that they will not be produced at all. On the 

 contrary, we may expect that desirable novelties will be 

 developed as long as horticulture needs them. 



The sum of the matter, to paraphrase Professor Bailey's 

 conclusion, is (i) that the older and more improved the type 



