February 14, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



65 



New or Little-known Plants. 



A Fastigiate Sugar-maple. 



THE branches of the Sugar-maple in its juvenile state 

 often assume an upright habit of growth, and during 

 the first twenty or thirty years of its life this tree is more 

 apt to produce a narrow oblong head than one of any other 

 shape. Later the branches become horizontal when they 

 find sufficient room in which to spread, and the head of a 

 well-grown Sugar-maple in the prime of life is broad and 

 round-topped. That this is not the universal habit of 

 this tree, however, is shown in the illustration on this 



fastigiate habit which are available for our planters are 

 varieties of European species, and as these are less suc- 

 cessful, as a rule, in this country than our native trees, 

 planters who may require a fastigiate tree to produce a par- 

 ticular effect will be glad to replace European by Amer- 

 ican species where it is possible to do so. 



The tree, whose portrait we publish, is growing in the 

 grounds of Mrs. Leavitt, in Flushing, in "this state ; it is 

 now some eighty feet tall, with a trunk diameter of two 

 feet at three feet above the surface of the ground, and is 

 supposed to have been planted in its present position 

 more than fifty years ago, and to have been taken originally 

 from the seed-rows in the old Parsons' nurseries. 



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



page, which represents an individual on which all the 

 branches are regularly and constantly fastigiate. It is the 

 only large Sugar-maple with this habit that we have seen, 

 and as fastigiate trees are curious, interesting and often 

 beautiful objects which permit the landscape-gardener 

 to produce effects which cannot be made without them, 

 it is desirable that this individual should be propa- 

 gated by grafting. This is specially important, because 

 up to the present time only two other American trees have 

 produced forms with fastigiate branches ; these are the 

 fastigiate Robinia, or Locust, which appeared in 1839 in 

 Leroy's nursery in Angers, and the fastigiate Tulip-tree, 

 which originated much later in Alsace. The other trees of 



New Orchids. 



Masdevallia Rebecca. — This is a hybrid between Masde- 

 valliaigneaerubescens X M. amabilis. The flowers are as 

 large as those of the seed-parent ; the perianth tube is cin- 

 nabar red ; the veins crimson ; the free portion of the upper 

 sepal triangular, contracted into a slender tail one and a 

 half inches long, nearly upright, and deep orange-red. 

 The lateral sepals are connate to the middle, terminating 

 in short tails, of deep red color, studded over with rich 

 crimson-purple papilla?. This hybrid flowered for the first 

 time in January, 1893, in the collection of Mr. Ames, Lang- 

 water, where it was raised, and so highly did Mr. Ames 



