August 29, 1S94.] 



Garden and Forest. 



345 



are borne on slender, slightly grooved red pilose petioles a 

 quarter of an inch in length. The flowers are perfect, and 

 are produced in compound villose-pubescent corymbs ter- 

 minal on leafy branches of the year and furnished with 

 subulate foliaceous bracts ; they are borne on slender 

 pedicels varying from one-eighth to one-half of an inch in 

 length and bibracteolate at the apex. The calyx is dark 

 green and puberulous, with deltoid acute entire divisions 

 about half as long as the rotund pure white petals. The 

 stamens are inserted on the incurved margin of the purple 

 crenate disk, and are two or three times as long as the 

 petals. The carpels are broadly ovoid, divergent, exserted, 





Plant Notes. 



Hibiscus Moscheutos. — This Swamp Rose Mallow is the 

 most common species of the genus in this part of the United 

 States, and is a familiar plant beside our larger rivers, and 

 more particularly in salt-marshes along the coast, it is 

 sometimes called the Wild Hollyhock, which is a fairly 

 good name for it, because its flowers resemble those of a 

 single Hollyhock in shape and appearance and the plants 

 are not dissimilar in form. The broad, numerous leaves, 

 smooth above and hoary beneath, contrast prettily with the 

 showv flowers, which are rose-colored at first and then 



Fig. 56. — Spiraea longigemma. — See p.ige 244. 



and pilose except at the apex, and are crowned with slender 

 terminal persistent styles. 



Spiraea longigemma was discovered on the high moun- 

 tains of the province of Kansu, in north-eastern China, 

 by the distinguished Russian traveler, Przewalski, and 

 was first described by Maximowicz in 1879.* Later 

 it was found in the southern part of the same province by 

 Piasezki. It was sent to the Arnold Arboretum in 1892 

 from the Forest School at Munden and flowered here for 

 the first time in June, 1893. C. S. S. 



* Act. Hort. Petrop., vi., 205. — Forbes & Hemsley, Jour, Linn. Site, xxiii., 226. 

 — Zarbel, Die Stranchigen Spu-sen der Deutschen Garten, 57. 



change to a paler tint. Plants with pure white flowers are 

 not rare. Like many other species which are naturally 

 found in low swampy ground, this Rose Mallow does well 

 when grown in ordinary gardens, and in rich soil it reaches 

 a height of six feet or more. After all, like certain others 

 of our wild flowers, it never shows to quite as good advan- 

 tage as it does in its native habitat. Just now the Hacken- 

 sack.meadows are gay with these flowers, which are sin- 

 gularly beautiful in the tall grass which surrounds them. 

 Persons seeing these flowers from the car-windows of 

 one of the many railroads which cross these mead- 

 ows often mistake them for large wild Roses, an error 



