September 26, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



389 



the shrubs often kill to the ground, and the bulbs are as often 

 as not rotted in the ground. 



A still better way is to grow all this class as tub-plants. 

 They can be ripened off with ease in this manner, and suffer 

 absolutely no check from lifting. But as every one cannot 

 procure the large, heavy flower-tubs that large specimens 

 require, or do not wish to take the added care of so many tub- 

 plants over summer, lifting them, if carefully done, will be 

 found a much safer plan than to leave them in the ground. 



Half-hardy vines, such as Passion-flower, Solarium Jasmin- 

 oides and Manettia Cordifolia, can usually be wintered in the 

 middle states out-of-doors, if too large to be taken up easily. 

 To begin with, they should always be planted in some shel- 

 tered spot where house- wall, piazza or bay-window will cut off 

 cold winds. After the leaves fall coil the vines to the ground 

 and cover with a deep and wide layer of mulching of some 

 k'nd. r „ _ ,. 



Pinevilie, Mo. l^Ora i. La Malice. 



Elm Trees in Central Park. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — In passing the lower end of the Mall in Central Park 

 recently I noticed that the Elms bordering that walk were 

 almost entirely without foliage, f could not determine by a 

 hasty glance from the driveway whether this was due to the 

 drought or the beetle. If to the latter, will you not add to the 

 suggestions in your editorial in the last issue on irrigation one 

 urging the benefits of spraying the Elms of the city parks ? 

 Our college Elms received the two necessary douches last 

 spring, and, in spite of thin soil and long drought, are now 

 green, while their neighbors are brown or bare. 



Rutgers College. Austin Scott. 



Recent Publications. 



The Trees of Nebraska. 



Third, Report on the Native Trees and Shrubs 0/ Nebraska. 

 By Charles E. Bessey. Extracted from the Annual Re- 

 port of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture, 1S94. 

 Pp. 98-127. 



Professor Bessey, of the University of Nebraska, and his 

 assistants are studying the forest-flora of that state in the 

 most thorough and comprehensive manner, and are grad- 

 ually mapping the distribution of the different ligneous 

 species which occur within the borders of the state in the 

 most accurate manner. Professor Bessey's Catalogue of 

 Nebraska Trees was first published as Bulletin No. 18 of 

 the Agricultural Experiment Station under the title of "A 

 Preliminary Report of the Native Trees and Shrubs of 

 Nebraska." This list was corrected and enlarged, and was 

 again printed in the Annual Report of the Nebraska State 

 Board of Agriculture for 1892. The present publication, 

 which the author tells us is not published " as a complete 

 or final report, but as a contribution to our knowledge of 

 the native woody plants of the state," embodies the in- 

 formation gathered in connection with a collection of 

 specimens of Nebraska trees exhibited last year at Chicago 

 and of various explorations made in the western and north- 

 western counties. 



The catalogue, as here published, contains sixty-four 

 trees and seventy-seven shrubs — a large number when it is 

 considered that Nebraska is one of the so-called treeless 

 states, but accounted for by the facts that the eastern border 

 is well wooded with eastern species, while several species 

 of the Pacific silva, descending from the Rocky Mountains, 

 find their most eastern home in the northern and western 

 parts of the state. 



Professor Bessey finds, in studying the distribution of 

 the ligneous species of the state, especially with reference 

 to the altitude above the sea-level of the regions they in- 

 habit, that: 



Nearly all have probably migrated to the plains from the 

 east. They have, in some cases, done no more than to get a 

 little foothold in the extreme south-eastern counties, to which 

 they have come from the heavy forests of Missouri. A few 

 have doubtless crossed the Missouri River from western 

 Iowa, although this number is evidently very small. Nearly 

 all our trees have come up from the Missouri bottoms and 



spread from the south-eastern corner of the state west and 

 north-west. Possibly a few may have come up the Blue River 

 from Kansas, but these must eventually be traced to the Mis- 

 souri River bottoms at the mouth of the Kansas River. 



The trees and shrubs which are found only in the western 

 part of the state unquestionably came from the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, and have spread eastward to their present limits. Only 

 one of these, the Buffalo-berry, has spread itself over the 

 whole state. There is a probability that a further examination 

 of the bluffs of the Niobrara, Platte and Republican rivers will 

 show several more of these Rocky Mountain plants which 

 have come down with the river currents. It is singular that 

 so few of the western trees and shrubs have come down the 

 streams, especially as prevailing winds are also from the 

 westerly parts toward the east. One certainly would have 

 supposed it much easier for the western trees to come down 

 stream, and with the wind, than for the Elms, Ashes, Plums, 

 etc., to have gone up the streams against the prevailing winds. 

 I suspect that the meaning of all this is that eastern conditions 

 are slowly advancing westward ; that such climatic and other 

 changes are slowly taking place upon the plains as favor the 

 eastern rather than the western trees. 



The Nebraska silva is of special interest ; in no other 

 part of the country are members of the Atlantic and Pacific 

 forests so mingled together as in some of the northern and 

 north-western parts of the state ; and certainly in no other 

 part of the country do trees so unlike in geographical range 

 as the Black Walnut and the Yellow Pine of the Pacific 

 forest (Pinus ponderosa) grow side by side in the same 

 grove. 



Professor Bessey's report is a model which we hope to 

 see the botanists connected with the other agricultural col- 

 leges adopt, for a complete knowledge of our forest-vege- 

 tation and the distribution of our forest-species can only 

 be obtained by recording year by year, as they are made, 

 the notes of trained field observers. 



Two years ago Professor Bailey published an account of 

 some of our native Bush Cherries, which have been recom- 

 mended for fruit. Since then he has made a wider study of 

 the matter from plants which he has been testing on the Uni- 

 versity grounds at Ithaca, and in Bulletin No. 70 of the Cornell 

 Experiment Station he gives the result of his latest studies. 

 Three species of native dwarf Cherries are spoken of, the first 

 being the Sand Cherry, Primus pumila, the second the western 

 dwarf Cherry, P. Besseyi, and the third the Utah hybrid 

 Cherry, which seems to be a hybrid between P. Besseyi and 

 the Sand Plum, P. Watsoni. The Sand Cherry is a variable 

 plant common along the Great Lakes, strictly erect when 

 young, but with reclined trunk as the plant becomes older. 

 The fruit is about half an inch in diameter, black, variable in 

 quality, but giving evidence that it may be improved so that it 

 can be used as a fruit-plant, especially in poor or arid re- 

 gions, where few other fruit crops can be grown with profit. 

 The second species, which Professor Bailey has named Prunus 

 Besseyi, is already in cultivation. The plant is dwarfer, more 

 compact, and has denser and better foliage than the Sand 

 Cherry. The fruits are variable in shape, often as large as 

 those of an Early Richmond Cherry, and very palatable. It is 

 a plant of great promise, and from the fact that it flourishes 

 over a large area of our interior plains, it will probably adapt 

 itself to sandy barrens and other trying soils and situations. 

 The Utah hybrid is hardy and productive ; the cherries are 

 very handsome, being of a deep mahogany color, with a light 

 plum-like bloom, and they ripen about the 1st of August at 

 Ithaca. The flesh is soft and juicy, but it lacks body, and the 

 skin is bitter. Altogether, the quality of this fruit maybe pro- 

 nounced as poor. The plant is a tree-like bush three or four 

 feet high, hardy, productive, and, although it is of no imme- 

 diate value, it indicates that there may be combinations of 

 dwarf Plums and Cherries which shall have distinct horticul- 

 tural merit for certain trying situations. In his earlier bulletin 

 Professor Bailey stated that weeping and variegated leaved 

 forms of our common Sand Cherry had been cultivated for 

 ornament. He corrects this by stating that these plants so 

 named by nurserymen are dwarf forms of the Cherry of 

 Europe and northern Asia, P. cham.necerasus. The Cherry 

 sold by nurserymen as P. Japonica pendula is the same Euro- 

 pean species. The bulletin is well illustrated with reproduc- 

 tions of photographs of the three species in fruit and of 

 branches which have been attacked by different fungous 

 diseases. 



