206 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 326. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Elliottia racemosa. 



ELLIOTTIA, a genus closely related to Rhododendron 

 and Ledum, is composed, as it is now usually 

 understood, of three species placed in three rather distinct 

 sections distinguished by the character of the calyx-lobes 

 and the bracts of the inflorescence, and by the number of 

 the petals and stamens. 



The type of the genus, Elliottia racemosa, of which a figure, 

 the first which has been published, appears on page 

 205, is a shrub four to ten feet high, with slender, virgate, 

 spreading branches covered with smooth, light brown 

 bark. The leaves are alternate, oblong, acute at both ends, 

 tipped with slender, glandular macros, and entire ; they 

 are thin and membranaceous, conspicuously reticulate- 

 venulose, dark green on the upper surface, pale and 

 covered with scattered hairs on the lower surface, especially 

 along the slender midribs, three to four inches long and an 

 inch to an inch and a half wide, with obscure veins and 

 slender grooved, hairy petioles, abruptly enlarged at the 

 base and about an inch in length. The flowers, which 

 appear in early spring, are produced in terminal racemes, 

 or racemose panicles, six to ten inches in length, and are 

 borne on slender pedicels two-thirds of an inch long and 

 furnished near the middle with two minute acute scarious 

 bractlets. The calyx, which is cup-shaped, is green, and 

 divided to the middle into four rounded apiculate lobes, 

 scarious and ciliate on the margins. The corolla is com- 

 posed of four thin white strap-shaped slightly obovate 

 petals rounded at the apex, half an inch long, an eighth of 

 an inch broad, and slightly united at the very base ; they 

 are imbricated in the bud, which is oblong-obovate, and 

 after anthesis are spreading and recurved. There are eight 

 introrse stamens which are inserted under the margin of the 

 thick pulvinatedisk, and are about half as long as the corolla ; 

 they are composed of broad flat filaments and of sagittate 

 erect anthers, which are attached on the back and below the 

 middle, and are two-celled with callous-tipped cells opening 

 longitudinally from the apex to below the middle. The ovary 

 is sessile, su'bglobose, four-lobed and four-celled, and is 

 abruptly contracted into an elongated slender declinate style 

 enlarged at the apex into a stout incurved capitate stigma. 

 The ovules, of which there are about six in each cell, are 

 inserted on a thick two-lobed placenta attached to the 

 inner angle of the cell and are flat and nearly orbicular. 

 The fruit is unknown. 



Elliottia racemosa grows in wet sandy woods and was 

 discovered early in the century at Waynesboro', on the 

 Savannah River, in Georgia, by Stephen Elliott. Later it was 

 found near Augusta, Georgia, and also near Hamburg, on 

 the South Carolina shore of the river. Of the station near 

 Augusta, in Columbia County, the only place where 

 Elliottia racemosa has been seen growing wild for many 

 years, Mr. P. J. Berckmans, of Augusta, writes that " it is 

 now entirely barren of Elliottia, the land having been 

 cleared. Unless another locality is found, I should not be 

 surprised if the species is now preserved only in my 

 grounds. We succeeded in propagating a few plants from 

 root-cuttings. The plants were kept in cold frames in 

 winter and started nicely in the spring of 1889, but every 

 one failed after they were planted in the open ground. I 

 have tried root-cuttings from both hard and soft wood and 

 root-grafts, but have only succeeded with root-cuttings. 

 Several years ago I gave Dr. Thurber several plants taken 

 from the woods ; these have been possibly kept alive ; if so, 

 my plants are not the sole visible representatives of the 

 species." 



It is not improbable that sooner or later this beautiful 

 shrub will be found growing in other localities in the 

 valley of the Savannah River, or that it will in time become 

 multiplied in gardens, where it should prove a most desir- 

 able addition to plants of its class. If, however, it is 

 destined to disappear, the generic type and the name of 

 the botanist it commemorates will be preserved in the two 



Asiatic species, which are both common inhabitants of the 

 forests of southern Yezo and of the mountain-regions of 

 northern and central Hondo ; they will soon be seen in 

 American gardens, although neither of them, unfortunately, 

 equals the American species in the size and beauty of their 

 flowers. C. S. S. 



Cultural Department. 



Notes on Trees and Shrubs. 



COME of the species of American Wild Plums have this sea- 

 *-* son flowered in great profusion, and have been much 

 admired by visitors to the Arboretum. It is not often that 

 these trees are planted for the beauty of the blossom alone, 

 but the almost regular annual abundance of the snowy white 

 bloom of such species as Prunus nigra and P. Americana 

 makes them very desirable shrubs or small trees for effective 

 planting in parks or large shrubberies. A plant or two is well 

 deserving a place in any large garden, or they may be set along 

 a fence, where a screen is desired, and prove quite as inter- 

 esting and beautiful as the ordinary Lilacs which are usually 

 allotted similar situations. Moreover, they may also be turned 

 to useful account, for the fruit of some of these plants will be 

 found quite palatable and available for culinary purposes. A 

 number of garden varieties have been named by horticul- 

 turists, and much attention is now given to their improve- 

 ment. 



The two species mentioned have long been considered as 

 one, under the name of Prunus Americana, and we find them 

 still so classified in the last (1890) edition of Gray's Manual of 

 Botany. They have, however, been divided and separately 

 figured and described in Professor Sargent's Silva of North 

 America. In the Arnold Arboretum P. nigra is usually distin- 

 guished by its first flowers opening about a week earlier than 

 those of P. Americana in the same situation. The date of first 

 flowering this year was April 27th. In 1893 it was May nth ; in 

 1892, May 3d, and in 1891, April 27th, these records being made 

 from the same individual plants. These observations seem 

 to show that near the end of April the season was as far ad- 

 vanced in 1 891 as it was this year, which is generally consid- 

 ered unusually early. 



The flowers of P. nigra are larger than those of P. Ameri- 

 cana, but the plant is better characterized by its more stiff or 

 rigid growth, thicker branchlets and spines, and by its larger, 

 broader and more bluntly serrated leaves. The fruit of P. 

 nigra is usually an inch or more in length and oblong-oval in 

 shape, while that of P. Americana is more commonly globose 

 than elongated. P. Americana also becomes a larger tree 

 than P. nigra, and it has much more slender and wider-spread- 

 ing, twiggy branches, the outer ends of which droop more or 

 less, so that some plants appear almost pendulous in habit. 

 Plants of P. Americana just twenty years old from seed are 

 now eighteen or twenty feet high, and have branches spread- 

 ing over about as great a diameter. These seeds came from 

 Ohio, and the range of the species is western and south-west- 

 ern, while P. nigra appears to be the Wild Plum of the north 

 and north-west. The fruit of P. nigra is usually yellowish red 

 or red in color, while that of P. Americana is usually dark 

 red, sometimes inclining to purplish, and is often sprinkled 

 with numerous minute whitish dots and covered with a 

 whitish or purplish bloom. 



The fruits and other characters of both species vary much 

 in different individuals ; but as seen in the Arnold Arbore- 

 tum, however, the constant differences between the plants 

 raised from Vermont and from Ohio seeds are quite as 

 marked as are to be found between Black and Scarlet 

 Oaks, or White and Red Ashes. For ornamental planting 

 the long drooping-branched P. Americana is to be preferred, 

 as it also appears to be more floriferous, although both spe- 

 cies bear a great profusion of flowers. 



Prunus Allegheniensis, which was figured in the third volume 

 of Garden and Forest, p. 429, blossoms about the same date 

 as P. Americana, and in some respects it appears like a 

 dwarfed form of it. Where a smaller plant than P. Americana 

 is desired P. Allegheniensis would be a good one to use, 

 although it does not appear to blossom as freely. Its leaves and 

 flowers resemble those of P. Americana, but are smaller, and 

 as the flowers fade away they change to a deep pinkish color. 

 As grown in the Arboretum, from plants collected in Pennsyl- 

 vania, the fruit is small, round, with a heavy bloom, which 

 gives it a bluish color, and when fully mature it is of a pleas- 

 ant, though slightly bitter, acid flavor. All of these Plums are 

 very hardy, and they seem less liable to be affected by black- 

 knot than most of the imported species and varieties. Any 



