May 30, 1S94.] 



Garden and Forest. 



21 1 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY EY 



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, MAY 30, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — The Sassafras. (With figure.) 211 



Flower-thieves 212 



The White Grub 212 



A New Jersey Garden in Spring Mrs. Mary Treat 212 



Redlands V. H. P. :ii 



A Ricli Field for the Plant-collector A. B. Westland. 214 



Cultural Department: — Seasonable Garden Notes J.N. Gerard 216 



Some Hardy Plants in Vermont F. H. Horsford. 217 



Good Varieties of Hyacinths A. M. Kirby. 217 



Sobralia macrantha F. O. Or pet. -zi-j 



Pruning Grape-vines Joseph Meehan. 217 



Correspondence : — Transplanted Trees D. G. 21 8 



Gardens in Wellesley, Massachusetts IV. N. Craig 21S 



The Forest: — Mixed Oak and Beech Forests of the Spessart. — 1. . ..D. Brandts. 21 S 



Recent Publications 219 



Notes 220 



Illustration : — An old Sassat'ras-tree on Long Island, Fig. 3S 215 



The Sassafras. 



THE Sassafras is one of the most interesting trees of the 

 forests of eastern North America. The last survivor of 

 a race which at an earlier period of the earth's history was 

 common to the two hemispheres, it is the only tree in a 

 large and important family of plants which has been able to- 

 maintain itself in a region of severe winter cold. The 

 structure of the flowers, like those of other plants of the 

 Laurel family, to which the Sassafras belongs, is curious 

 and not easily explained with reference to special adapta- 

 tions to special ends ; while the extraordinary virtues which 

 were credited to this tree for nearly two centuries after its 

 discovery have thrown a certain glamour of romance about 

 its history. 



Toward the middle of the sixteenth century the French 

 in Florida heard from the Indians wonderful accounts of 

 the curative properties of a tree which they called Pavame, 

 and which, for no obvious reason, the Europeans called 

 Sassafras. The tree and its virtues were first described by 

 the Spanish physician, Nicholas Monardes, in his Natural 

 History of the New World, published in Seville in 1569. 

 The reputation of the roots and wood of the Sassafras as 

 a sovereign cure for most human maladies soon spread 

 through Europe, and extraordinary efforts were made to 

 obtain them. To collect Sassafras was one of the objects 

 of the English expedition which landed on the Elizabeth 

 Islands, at the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, in Massachusetts, 

 in 1602 ; and eight years later Sassafras is mentioned 

 among the articles to be sent home in the instructions of 

 the English Government to the officers of the young colony 

 in Virginia. 



For nearly two centuries the reputation of Sassafras was 

 maintained, and many medical treatises have extolled its 

 virtues, although now it is generally recognized as simply 

 a mild aromatic stimulant ; recently the thick pith of the 

 young branches has been found to yield a mucilage useful 

 to oculists, as it can be combined with alcohol and sub- 

 acetate of lead without causing their precipitation. The 

 oil of Sassafras, obtained from the wood and roots by dis- 

 tillation, is used to perfume soap and other articles, 



although synthetical oils now replace it for most ordinary 

 purposes ; and perhaps, after all, the most useful product 

 of the Sassafras-tree is the yellow powder prepared from 

 the leaves by the Choctaw Indians of Louisiana, used to 

 give peculiar flavor and consistency to gumbo file, one of 

 the best products of the Creole kitchen. The Sassafras is 

 one of the common trees of our eastern forests, and is 

 found from the shores of Massachusetts Bay to central 

 Florida, with a western range which extends to beyond 

 the Mississippi, reaching its greatest size in southern 

 Arkansas and the Indian Territory, where individuals, fully 

 eighty feet tall, with trunks six or seven feet in diameter, 

 are occasionally seen. Usually, however, it attains more 

 modest proportions, and trees exceeding a height of forty 

 or fifty feet are not common ; and in the north the Sassa- 

 fras is usually even smaller, and is often shrubby in its 

 manner of growth. 



The bark on the trunk of a fully grown tree is often an 

 inch and a half thick ; it is dark red-brown and deeply 

 divided into broad ridges which separate on the surface 

 into thick appressed scales. The branches are short and 

 stout and often somewhat contorted ; placed nearly at right 

 angles with the stem, they form a narrow, rather flat- 

 topped picturesque head. The beauty of the Sassafras is 

 increased by the lustrous green color of the young 

 branches, which they do not lose until the end of two or 

 three years, when the bark gradually turns rather light red- 

 brown and begins to display the shallow fissures which 

 mark the older branches and young trunks. The winter- 

 buds are covered with loosely imbricated scales ; of these 

 the three outer enlarge but slightly when the branch begins 

 to grow, and soon fall off; they immediately surround 

 four or five scales which begin to grow with the opening 

 of the bud, and at maturity are obovate, rounded at the 

 apex, concave, coated with silky pubescence, light yellow 

 and much reflexed, forming when expanded a sort of invo- 

 lucre. In the axils of these scales the flower-clusters 

 appear, and inside and above them are two erect lanceo- 

 late scales infolding the leaves and falling when these 

 begin to unfold. The bright color of the involucre, which 

 gradually turns red in fading, makes the Sassafras con- 

 spicuous and attractive in early spring. 



The flowers appear almost immediately after the opening 

 of the bud, and are borne in slender drooping racemes two 

 or three inches long, the males and females usually on 

 separate trees, although perfect flowers may sometimes be 

 found. The perianth or calyx is about an eighth of an inch 

 across when fully opened, pale yellow-green, and divided 

 nearly to the base into six obovate, narrow, concave lobes 

 in two ranks, those of the inner rank being a little larger 

 than the others ; after the flower opens, the lobes spread 

 and finally become much reflexed. There is no corolla ; 

 and in the sterile flower there are nine stamens arranged 

 in three ranks and inserted on the short, slightly thickened 

 calyx-tube ; the filaments are flattened, elongated, slightly 

 enlarged toward the apex, incurved and light yellow, those 

 of the inner rank being furnished near the base with two 

 conspicuous orange-colored stalked glands ; the anthers 

 are orange-color, fixed on the summit of the filaments, and 

 four-celled, with cells superposed in pairs, facing the cen- 

 tre of the flower and opening from below upward by per- 

 sistent lids ; in the pistillate flower the stamens are reduced 

 to minute, flattened, ovate, pointed slightly, two-lobed, 

 orange-colored, stalked staminodia, or are rarely perfectly 

 developed. The ovary, of which there is no trace in the 

 staminate flower, is one-celled, light green and glabrous, 

 with a single ovule and a simple elongated style crowned 

 with an oblique, slightly lobed, stigma. The leaves, which 

 begin to unfold as the flowers open, are involute in the 

 bud, the lowest enfolding all those above it; they are 

 ovate or obovate, entire, or often one to three lobed at the 

 apex, the lobes being broadly ovate, acute and divided by 

 deep broad sinuses; at the base they are narrowed into 

 long slender petioles. When the leaves first unfold they 

 are light yellow-green, and clothed on the lower surface 



