220 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 327. 



recognize Sunday by the peculiarly golden look of its sun- 

 light, and by the long, still slant of its shadows in the 

 orchard"? In looking back upon the past, it seems that, in 

 spite of its restraints and tedium, something of the sacred- 

 ness of that Puritan Sabbath had stolen into childish hearts, 

 and consecrated even the commonest surroundings with 

 "the liirht that never was on«ea or land." 



Notes. 



Azalea mollis is the earliest of the hardy foreign Azaleas to 

 flower in this country, and, like some of the plants of its class, 

 does better in partial shade, where the flowers persist longer 

 than in the full sunlight. 



After all the wealth of May bloom no flowers are sweeter 

 in the garden now than Lilies-of-the-valley. It does not seem 

 to be generally known that the odor of this flower is only sec- 

 ond in popularity to that of the Violet, and under other names 

 for the Lily-of-the-valley the perfumer distributes about as 

 much of the one as of the other. 



Good pink flowers are always scarce, and this gives an 

 exceptional value to Rhododendron Vaseyi, which has been 

 covered with flowers of the most distinctly dainty pink. The 

 plant, too, is absolutely hardy, and it begins to bloom when it 

 is hardly more than a foot high, and has the advantage of 

 flowering earlier than any American Azalea. 



As a rule, the double-flowered Lilacs are less beautiful and 

 desirable than those with single flowers, but, on account of the 

 peculiar color of its flowers, an exception to this rule will be 

 made by many people in the case of Syringa Verginite\ a 

 delightful plant with great clusters of large semi-double, pale- 

 rose or flesh-colored flowers. This is certainly one of the 

 most distinct and attractive of all Lilacs. 



The nave of the church at Greenstead, or Greenstead-Ongar, 

 one of the most ancient churches of Britain, is extremely curi- 

 ous, being composed of the half-trunks of Oaks, set upright 

 and close to one another. The trunks, about one and a half 

 feet in diameter, have been split through the centre and 

 roughly hewn at each end to let them into a sill at the bottom 

 and into a plank at the top, where they are fastened by wooden 

 pegs. The nave is twenty-nine feet nine inches long by four- 

 teen feet wide, and is believed to have been erected about 

 1013 as a shrine for the reception of the body of St. Edmund, 

 king and martyr. 



An interesting hybrid of Spiraea Thunbergii with another 

 hybrid has been called Spir;ea arguta by Dr. H. Zabel of the 

 Forest School at Miinden, in Hanover. A plant received from 

 this establishment flowered prof usely in the Arnold Arboretum, 

 and was in finest bloom the first week in May. It prom- 

 ises to be a valuable addition to the earlier-flowering kinds. 

 The branches are slender and gracefully recurved, and are 

 thickly covered with sessile umbels of flowers, as in S. Thun- 

 bergii, but the foliage is not so interesting inasmuch as 

 the leaves are shorter, broader, less abundant and do not 

 assume bright autumnal colors. 



The origin of the name " Excelsior" as applied to wood- 

 shavings used to stuff furniture must have puzzled many 

 people. According to the American Cabinet-Maker, in i860 

 the representative of a factory in Maine, where this mate- 

 rial was first made, showed samples of it to Manning, 

 Glover & Company, dealers in bedding and upholstery supplies 

 in Boston. A member of the firm, becoming impressed with 

 the possible value of the article, asked what it was called. It 

 had no name. The evening previous Mr. Glover, having 

 attended a concert where he had heard Longfellow's poem, 

 "Excelsior," recited for the first time, exclaimed, "We will 

 call it Excelsior," and by that name it has been known ever 

 since. Excelsior was first made of poplar, and during the war 

 sold as high as $120 a ton. Now all kinds of soft wood are cut 

 up into this material, which is selling at $15 a ton. 



The May 1st issue of Le Journal ties Orchidees is devoted 

 to a list of all the described Cypripediums, including natural 

 species and those obtained artificially in cultivation, prepared 

 by Monsieur Otto Ballif. In 1839 the Loddiges, of Hackney, the 

 principal nurserymen of their time, included three species of 

 Cypnpedium in their catalogue— C. insigne, C. purpuratum and 

 C. venustum. Ten years later eleven species were found 111 

 their catalogue. In 1861 the Consul Schiller, who possessed, 

 at Hamburg, one of the richest collections of exotic plants in 

 existence at that time, mentions nineteen species in his cata- 



logue. As early as 1857, however, John Dominy, a foreman 

 in Veitch's nursery, had crossed C. barbatum and C. viilosum, 

 the offspring, the first artificially obtained Cypripedium, 

 named C. Harrisianum, flowering in 1869. It was not, how- 

 ever, until about 1880 that lovers of Orchids became particu- 

 larly interested in Cypripediums; and in 1887 Monsieur Ballif 

 was able to enumerate in the Monitcur d' Horticulture nearly 

 350 species and forms. In the present list he enumerates no 

 less than 1,100 forms, although, as different names have been 

 given by different raisers to hybrids of the same parentage, it 

 certainly contains numerous duplicates. 



The first Spiraea to produce flowers in spring, as well 

 as one of the foremost in point of beauty and general 

 ornamental value, is Spiraea Thunbergii. This is one of the 

 species more recently introduced from Japan, but is rapidly 

 winning popularity and becoming common. It is one of the 

 few shrubs which maintain an attractive or even beautiful 

 appearance from the month of May until November. In this 

 climate it is usual to find a good many of the snow-white 

 blossoms expanded in the last week of April, the fullest and 

 best bloom appearing in the first and second week of May. 

 After this the plants become densely covered with small, nar- 

 row, willow-like foliage which maintains a clean, pleasant 

 green color throughout the summer ; and in the autumn 

 changes to brilliant orange and scarlet colors, and as the 

 leaves persist until quite late, this little shrub remains showy 

 long after most others have become leafless. The branches 

 are very slender, which gives the plants a graceful, drooping 

 aspect, but, although the stems at first appear slight and weak, 

 they become stouter annually until the plant may be five or 

 six feet high. Although the flowers are small, they are pro- 

 duced in such great profusion that the whole plant seems a 

 mass of white. 



The fragrant Wild Crab, Pyrus coronaria, should not be for- 

 gotten by those who wish to introduce beautiful plants into 

 their grounds. Less showy, perhaps, when in flower than 

 some other Apple-trees because it does not bloom until the 

 leaves are large enough to partly conceal the flowers, the 

 Wild Crab has the great merit of flowering later than any other 

 Apple-tree. The flowers, which are sometimes nearly two 

 inches across when fully expanded, are white or rose-color and 

 emit a delicate and delightful penetrating fragrance. The 

 beauty of the green waxy fruit, as it hangs on its slender grace- 

 ful stems, is also very great. P. coronaria, which, under favor- 

 able conditions, attains a height of twenty-five to thirty feet, is 

 a native of forest-glades in the region south of the Great Lakes 

 and among the Alleghany Mountains, and is everywhere per- 

 fectly hardy. Planted along the margins of a natural wood it 

 appears to advantage ; and when allowed to grow without the 

 influence of other trees it forms a shapely round head of stout 

 rigid branches. Formerly the Wild Crab was a good deal 

 used as an ornamental plant in the middle states, where it 

 was planted, also, on account of the excellent jams and cider 

 that can be made from the fruit, but of late years it has been 

 too much neglected for foreign species — all very beautiful 

 plants, although they do not possess the peculiarities which 

 make the Wild Crab valuable. 



Cherries are now coming from Maryland, and gooseberries 

 and blackberries from Georgia. Other fruits seen in some 

 of the fancy-fruit stores are hot-house nectarines from 

 Connecticut, which sell for a dollar each, and new limes from 

 Jamaica. A few boxes of California apricots reached this city 

 by express last week, but the fruit was small and unattractive. 

 Selected Bidwell and Honey Dew peaches from Florida bring 

 forty to fifty cents a dozen ; these varieties and Peen-to peaches 

 are plentiful enough to be offered on the street fruit-stands at 

 much lower prices for the lower grades. Strawberries have 

 been plentiful and of fairly good quality, notwithstanding the 

 persistent rains of last week, and large berries from Maryland, 

 Delaware and southern New Jersey were offered in the re- 

 tail markets on Saturday at ten and fifteen cents a quart box. 

 The stock of Florida oranges held in cold-storage by New 

 York dealers is now closed out, and, except a few boxes of 

 this fruit which have been kept back by Florida shippers until 

 now, the season for these oranges is ended. Bright-colored 

 Florida oranges of good quality have recently commanded 

 fancy prices, but the russets came into competition with the 

 large stock of Mediterranean oranges, and these have both 

 sold at low prices. The first Rodi oranges of this season, a 

 famous summer orange from the Mediterranean, were 

 quickly bought up at the wholesale auction on Monday. 

 According to the Journal of Commerce 326,860 boxes and 

 11,066 cases of oranges, and 1,063,761 boxes of lemons have 

 been imported into New York since the first of last September. 



