68 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 312. 



to be well cultivated, in rows nine to twelve inches apart. 

 A good mulch of manure will be helpful, and they should 

 never surfer for lack of water. The ordinary varieties re- 

 quire staking. They have usually two insect pests, a white 

 grub, which attacks the roots and quickly ruins the plants at- 

 tacked, and a black beetle, which devours the flowers as rap- 

 idly as they expand. The latter may be exterminated by 

 patient hand-picking, but there should be no delay. As to 

 varieties, one cannot go amiss in cultivating " Truffant's Pseony- 

 flowered," with incurved petals, and the "Improved Victo- 

 rias," with reflexed petals. These are to be had in six different 

 colors, and it is more satisfactory to buy the colors separately. 

 Most of the other strains have some merits, and the dwarf ones 

 are admirable for garden decoration in the front of borders. 

 The Comet Asters are a beautiful strain, with petals twisting 

 and less formal than others of the family. The pink variety 

 of this is a fine flower, but the gem of the strain is the " Large 

 white," introduced last year by Vilmorin, which is a grand 

 flower. The French florists now offer Comet Asters in all 

 the colors through which the species ranges. The branching 

 Aster, or Candelabrum, is a fine-flowered plant with long branch- 

 ing stems, which are specially useful for cutting, though the most 

 effective way to use Asters is to cut the plant at the base and 

 treat it as a bouquet. It is curious that one seldom or never 

 finds a single Aster among the seedlings, yet self-sown seed- 

 lings, which often come up in gardens, are seldom other than 

 perfectly single. Some of these are beautiful flowers, and 

 probably would be much appreciated if they were rare. 

 Elizabeth, N. J. J. Af. Gerard. 



Single White Pjeonies. 



IN the last volume of Garden and Forest, page 305, there 

 was a beautiful illustration of a white-flowered variety of 

 the Siberian Pasonia albiflora, and though I had never seen it, 

 it was very evident that the great pure white petals, with their 

 central cluster of yellow stamens, gave the flowers a singular 

 delicacy and grace, and that, in spite of its large size, it had not 

 a single element of coarseness. I have found since then that 

 it is very difficult to secure these plants, although it was called 

 an old-fashioned flower. In a late number of the London 

 Garden I observe a colored plate with the description of an- 

 other single-flowering Pseonia, P. Emodi, an Indian species. 

 It looks as if it wereclosely related botanically to the Siberian 

 plant, but it is described as quite distinct in habit and as espe- 

 cially valuable for its earliness, since it blooms in England 

 some two or three weeks before the varieties of P. albiflora. 

 The flowering shoots are described as from three to three 

 and a half feet high, having one to five buds on each shoot, 

 according to its strength, although it is rarely the case that 

 more than two of them open together. The pure white flowers 

 are from four to six inches in diameter, with a bunch of golden 

 yellow stamens, and when the fruit is ripe the persistent 

 calyx turns to a bright red, which later on dehisces, exposing 

 bluish purple seeds and making a very pretty object. Since it 

 is found at high altitudes in the western Himalayas, it ought 

 to be hardy here, although it is said to succeed best in England 

 against a south-east wall. 



The article in Garden and Forest, before alluded to, calls 

 attention to the fact that a single white-flowered variety of 

 Pseonia officinalis was exhibited by the elder Thomas Hogg in 

 New York as early as 1826, and a plant of this kind, under the 

 name of P. officinalis alba, is described in The Garden. It 

 would be interesting to know if any descendants of this Paeony 

 still remain in cultivation in America. Among the other white- 

 flowered Paeonies named is P. villosa, a little plant with stems 

 not more than eighteen inches high, carrying a daintily cupped 

 white flower on a short peduncle, surrounded by a collar of 

 dark green leaves. Our plantsmen are beginning to give some 

 attention to single-flowered Paeonies, and it seems certain that 

 any one who secures a stock of these white-flowering va- 

 rieties will find a ready demand for them. As cut flowers 

 for decorative purposes, and for masses in the garden they 

 have few superiors. 



Brooklyn, N. Y. 5. 



Hardy Carnations. — What the English call border Carna- 

 tions are comparatively rare in cultivation here, although our 

 growers have made a striking success in getting improved types 

 of the varieties used for winter-forcing and have acquired 

 wonderful skill in the cultivation of these plants. These Car- 

 nations, which bloom so well in glass-houses, have been 

 derived from the hardy type, and there is no reason why the 

 hardy ones should not grow as well here as they do in Europe. 

 Gardeners who come here from abroad find our climate hot 



and dry, and they are therefore inclined to consider it unsuit- 

 able for these Carnations, and this is undoubtedly to some 

 extent true ; but it is also true that many of them will succeed 

 here with ordinary care. A few people have grown them with 

 great satisfaction for years, and visitors to the World's Fair in 

 early August remember the bed of these plants which glowed 

 upon the wooded island. This note is suggested by a para- 

 graph in a late bulletin from Cornell University, where an 

 account is given by the Professor of Horticulture of some trials 

 with the seed which he secured in the spring of 1892. The 

 varieties tried were Early Marguerite, Self-colored, Early 

 Dwarf, Mixed Vienna, Red Grenadine, Splendid Rose-leaved, 

 Picotee and a few others. The seed was sown in boxes in the 

 greenhouse on the 8th of March, but it is stated that they 

 might have been sown later and with equal success out-of- 

 doors. The plants were set out in the field as the season 

 advanced, and a few of them bloomed that autumn. They 

 passed safely through a severe winter on a bleak hill-top with- 

 out any protection whatever ; they began to bloom about the 

 middle of June, and kept up an uninterrupted display of bright 

 and interesting flowers until late in August. Although this 

 was a mixed collection from seeds of many varieties, all the 

 strains were interesting, and the single flowers were especially 

 so. The so-called Mixed Vienna seemed to be rather more 

 attractive than the others, the color of its single and semi- 

 double flowers ranging from ivory-white to rose-red, be- 

 ing very pure and dainty. Some of the plants, taken up in 

 the fall and removed to the house for winler-blooming, proved 

 very attractive. These hardy Pinks will live on from year to 

 year, although it would be better to raise new plants from 

 seed than to trust the old ones for a second season of bloom. 



Ithaca, N. Y. R. A. 



Correspondence. 

 Mandarin and Tangerine Oranges. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — In your notes on the fruit-markets of New York you 

 often speak of Mandarin and Tangerine oranges as distinct 

 fruits. Will you please tell me if they belong to different spe- 

 cies, or are they varieties of the common Orange ? 



Buffalo, N. Y. 5. 



[Mandarin and Tangerine have come to be the accepted 

 names in the market of two varieties of Citrus nobilis, a 

 species which differs from the common Orange in the more 

 diffuse manner of its growth, narrow leaves and wingless 

 petioles, and especially in the fruit, which is, as a rule, 

 smaller and flatter at the ends, with the rind loosely at- 

 tached to the dryish carpels, which are not so numerous as 

 in the common orange, and separate more easily. The 

 King orange, the Satsuma or Oonshin and the Bouquet des 

 Fleurs are all varieties of the same species, and Kid Glove 

 orange and sometimes Tomato orange are common names 

 applied to all. In some places the terms Mandarin and 

 Tangerine are used to include the whole class, but Pro- 

 fessor Clute, of the Florida Experiment Station, who has 

 kindly sent us some notes on the varieties as they are 

 known in Florida, says that they are no longer used in this 

 generic sense in that state. Mikan appears to be the 

 generic term for all these fruits in Japan, while Kan is the 

 Chinese term. 



The King orange, which does not mature until May, is 

 highly prized for this lateness of ripening, as well as for 

 its excellent flavor. The fruit is large and knotty, and 

 could hardly be described as beautiful. The Satsuma ripens 

 even earlier than the Mandarin or Tangerine, that is about 

 the middle of October, and it usually commands a high 

 price on account of its extreme earliness, although it is not 

 as sweet as the other varieties of this species. The fruit 

 is about the same size as that of the Tangerine. The color 

 of its rind is somewhat intermediate, between that of the 

 Tangerine and Mandarin, but its shape is more nearly that 

 of a common orange, being round rather than flattened. 

 As between the Mandarin and Tangerine, the formerripens 

 earlier, or about the middle of December ; the latter ripens 

 a month later. The Mandarin is larger, is of a lighter 

 orange color, it has a coarser pulp, its stem is surrounded 

 by a larger knobbed eminence, its rind is more flabby, and 

 the proportion of rind to pulp is larger. It is considered 



