May 9, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



185 



tinged with pink, and are inserted remotely on the glandular 

 disk. The stamens are orange color, exserted, and about 

 a third longer than the slender glabrous style, which is 

 thickened at the apex into a truncate stigma. The fruit, 

 which ripens in the middle of September, and is produced 

 rather sparingly, is globose, an inch in diameter, and hangs 

 on a stout rigid stalk half an inch long ; it has a thick, very 

 dark blue, or nearly black, skin covered with a glaucous 

 bloom ; thick, juicy, yellow flesh of goodflavorandquality, 

 and a flattened, oval, or nearly orbicular, obscurely rugose, 

 stone, deeply grooved on the dorsal edge, and conspicu- 

 ously ridged and rounded on the other. 



Prunus orthosepala is a true Plum, rather closely related 



Fig- 33- — Begonia Gloire de Sceaux. 



to Pranus hortulana, from which it can be distinguished by 

 the smaller number of glands on the petioles, by the eglan- 

 dular calyx-lobes, the dark-colored fruit and smoother 

 stone. C. S. S. 



Plant Notes. 

 Begonia Gloire de Sceaux. 



THIS is a choice winter-flowering plant, introduced 

 some ten years since by Thibaut & Keteleer, nur- 

 serymen, at Sceaux, France. It was announced then as a 

 cross between Begonia Socotrana and B. subpeltata. It is 

 fibrous-rooted and not deciduous, readily increased by 

 slips, and requires no special treatment, except generous 

 culture during the summer. It scarcely flowers before 



Christmas, but its ample racemes of fair-sized rosy pink 

 flowers are very persistent, and the variety is one of the 

 best of winter-flowering Begonias. The leaves are peltate, 

 and of a shining reddish bronze, quite distinct from those 

 of any other variety. The illustration on this page is 

 from the photograph of a specimen growing at Kew, but 

 it hardly represents the plant when at its best. Complaint 

 has been made in England that this Begonia is rather 

 troublesome to grow, but it does not seem to be exacting 

 in its demands on cultivators in this country, where it 

 constantly grows in favor on account of its good habit and 

 the sprightly color of its flowers. 



Cultural Department. 



How Not to Judge an Apple. 



I HAVE been long convinced that many of the opinions 

 given in print upon the quality of apples are from persons 

 who do not know how to judge any fruit fairly. An apple dif- 

 fers from most fruits in not having its maturity for eating indi- 

 cated clearly by outward appearances. Every dessert variety 

 of this fruit has its proper time for eating out of hand, which 

 may be long or short, according to its season. Tested at any 

 earlier or later time, no fair judgment is possible. As regards 

 summer and early fall fruit, the time at which an apple is at its 

 best is necessarily short ; and even with winter fruit there are 

 not many varieties which are at their best for many weeks. 



It is not too much to say that one must have time in order 

 to decide justly upon the dessert quality of an apple ; and this 

 aside from the fact that apples, even the best, are not as good 

 in some seasons as in others. A year like the past, in which 

 the crop was small, and much injured by unfavorable condi- 

 tions, would not be likely to give any really fair samples for 

 testing the general quality, nor, even in favorable seasons, are 

 the few first fruits on a young tree or graft likely to represent 

 the true quality of the variety. Nor are fruits on the exhibi- 

 tion tables at fairs and fruit meetings, no matter how hand- 

 some and externally perfect such fruit may be, orappear to be, 

 in the best state for testing their quality, and yet that is the 

 time when a great many snap judgments are made, and find 

 their way into print. A succession of judgments so made and 

 printed are often quite enough to give a fruit a bad name, 

 which it will be long getting free from, however unjust it 

 may at last prove to be. No doubt, a good apple, with marked 

 marketable qualities, will outlive all such mistakes and mis- 

 representations ; but it is an injury to the fruit-growing as well 

 as the fruit-consuming public that such mistakes should ever 

 become current as expert judgments. 



Probably no fruits have suffered more in the public estima- 

 tion from such causes than the fruits of Russia during the 

 twenty years since they were extensively introduced into this 

 country. The minds of all those interested seem to have been 

 made up in advance, and to be essentially based on what was 

 known of the earlier importations of Russian apples by the 

 way of England, some forty years ago. Nothing could have 

 been more unfair or misleading. Russian tree-fruits vary and 

 differ among themselves quite as much, and in as many ways, 

 as our longer-known varieties ; and no man could estimate 

 them fairly who relied on what was learned at exhibitions 

 where no heed was taken by exhibitors except to external char- 

 acteristics. These fruits, like all others, must be carefully 

 studied under fair conditions and with deliberation ; and, so 

 far, there are probably not yet an average of more than 

 two or three orchards to a state, along our northern boundary, 

 where the material exists for satisfactory study of them at this 

 time. When we consider that considerably over three hun- 

 dred varieties of these tree-fruits have been introduced, it must 

 be clear to any intelligent mind that he who condemns them 

 all demonstrates his own incapacity to judge any of them 

 rightly. 

 Newport, vt. T. H. Hoskins. 



The Rock-garden. 



A S the annual overhauling of the garden comes round 

 -**- there is the customary record to be made of the exotic 

 plants which have survived, and of those found dead. Tin- 

 pretty little rose-flowered Glacial Pink, Dianthusglacialis, from 

 the Alps of Dauphiny and north Italy, is all but gone. Last 

 winter it stood well. I am still of opinion, however, that it is 

 not the extreme low temperature, but rather the high tem- 

 perature, which it was unable to endure. Salvia argentea 



