7 6 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 156. 



otherwise not readily distinguishable. While there is no 

 difficulty in distinguishing the extreme forms, these are 

 connected by so many intermediate forms that it does not 

 seem practical to characterize them specifically or even to 

 find satisfactory varietal characters except in the case of 

 the plant of the Mexican boundary region, which is dis- 

 tinct in the character of the tomentum which covers the 

 branches and lower surface of the leaves. 



In the humid atmosphere of the north-west coast-region 

 and of the northern Rocky Mountains, where Rhamnus Pur shi- 

 ana grows in the dense shade of coniferous forests, it becomes 

 a tree with slightly pubescent bright red or green branchlets 

 and large, thin, broadly elliptical, obtuse or abruptly pointed 

 deciduous leaves, sometimes hairy on the upper surface 

 and on the principal veins below, with short pubescent 

 petioles and prominent veins. In the less humid climate 

 of central California the leaves are semi-persistent, usually 

 thicker and smaller, sometimes lanceolate and acuminate. 

 The pubescence increases as humidity decreases, the prin- 

 cipal veins appear less prominent and their reticulation is 

 more apparent ; but in central California individuals occur 

 in favored localities with the large thin leaves with the 

 prominent straight veins of the northern plant, while near 

 them are found others with the narrow coriaceous leaves 

 of the more common California form. The California- 

 mountain plant, with slender virgate branchlets and nar- 

 row, rather thin leaves, appears to pass, on the one hand, 

 into the broad-leaved form of the north, and on the other 

 into that of the California coast-region. With so many and 

 so closely connected forms to be disposed of, the only way 

 seems to be to consider them climatic varieties of the same 

 species. 



The species considered in this way serves to illus- 

 trate the influence of climate upon the gradual develop- 

 ment of different closely connected forms. Altundant 

 humidity produces arborescent habit and large thin de- 

 ciduous, nearly glabrous, leaves which, as the climate 

 becomes drier, are thicker, more persistent on the branches, 

 smaller and more generally protected with a pubescent 

 covering which increases in density as the amount of hu- 

 midity decreases, the size of the plant decreasing also in 

 proportion as humidity is withdrawn from it, the essential 

 organs of reproduction being left unchanged. Very few 

 of our trees, with the exception of certain western conifers, 

 which seek high elevations as their range extends south- 

 ward, and therefore are not subjected to very great 

 diversity of climate, grow over as wide a range of 

 territory of varied climate as Rhamnus Purshiana. Ex- 

 ceptions are the Negundo and the Celtis, both of these 

 varying in different parts of the continent as remarkably 

 as the Pacific coast Rhamnus in foliage and in pubescence. 



Rhamnus Purshiana was discovered in 1805 or 1806 in 

 what is now Montana by the members of the Transconti- 

 nental Expedition under command of Lewis & Clark. It 

 was first described as Rhamnus alnifolia by Pursh. De 

 Candolle first noticed that it was distinct from the eastern 

 plant and described it in the second volume of the " Pro- 

 dromus," published in 1825. The California plant was de- 

 tected by Eschscholtz on the shores of the Bay of San 

 Francisco in 18 16, and was described by him in the tenth 

 volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of St. Petersburg, 

 published in 1826, so that the two plants being considered 

 specifically the same, De Candolle's name of Rliamnus 

 Purshiana, being the older by one year, would have to be 

 adopted for the species thus enlarged. 



In 1838 Rafinesque describes in the " Sylva Telluriana " 

 his Personon laurifolium, his description being drawn from a 

 plant which he found in Bartram's Botanic Garden, in Phila- 

 delphia. It is a tree, he says, from the Oregon Mountains, 

 with elliptical acute subentire shining, glabrous leaves ; 

 pubescent on the lower surface when young, reniform 

 petals, and a slightly emarginate stigma. The plant in 

 Bartram's Garden was twenty feet high, and the "berries 

 form fine clusters and assume three colors, being by turns 

 green, red and black when fully ripe." This is the earliest 



record of the cultivation of Rhamnus Purshiana, for there 

 does not seem to be much doubt that it was this plant 

 Rafinesque had in mind. Certainly there is no other tree 

 from the mountains of Oregon which could be made to 

 answer to the description. If Lewis & Clark, as is possible 

 in the case of a plant of whose medicinal value they must 

 have learned from the Indians, had brought home seed, 

 these might very well have produced by 1838 plants 

 twenty feet in height. 



C. S. Sargent. 



New or Little Known Plants. 

 Viola hastata. 



THERE are several species among our American 

 Violets which are rarely seen in . gardens, although 

 they possess much charm and beauty as garden-plants. 

 Our common northern Viola cucullata, Viola peda/a, the 

 Birds-foot Violet, the charming little yellow-flowered Viola 

 pubescens, and the white-flowered Viola Canadensis, one of 

 the best plants which can be grown in a rock-garden 

 sheltered by overhanging trees, are all excellent subjects 

 to naturalize in the garden. Equally attractive, although 

 much less well known, is the Halbert-leaf Violet ( V. hastata, 

 Fig. 16), which grows very locally in northern Ohio, and is 

 found in the forests of the Alleghany Mountains from Penn- 

 sylvania to the northern borders of Florida. It is a yellow- 

 flowered, slender, nearly glabrous species, distinguished by 

 its halbert-shaped stem-leaves, which in one remarkable 

 southern form are three-lobed, or even trifoliate (var. 

 tripartita). This pretty plant will doubtless thrive in culti- 

 vation under the conditions which are favorable to the 

 growth of Viola pubescens, to which, botanically, it is very 

 closely related. 



Plant Notes. 

 Barbacenias and Vellozias. 



T^ROM the number of enquiries recently made with refer- 

 -*- ence to the cultivated species of these two genera, it 

 would appear that they are attracting the notice of horticultur- 

 ists, and as many of them, particularly the uncultivated spe- 

 cies, are of quite exceptional interest and beauty, some notes 

 upon them may be acceptable. 



They form a section or suborder of Amaryllida.ee ce, but in 

 general characters they differ widely from the common garden 

 representatives of that order. Their most characteristic fea- 

 tures are thus described by Lindley in his "Vegetable King- 

 dom " : 



" In Brazil, southern Guiana, and also in the Mascarene 

 Islands, there occurs a race of plants which may be compared 

 to Conestyles, of New Holland, on a gigantic scale. Martins, 

 who calls them Vellozias, describes them as perennial Lilies, 

 with their trunks closely covered by the withered remains of 

 leaves, branching by forks, and bearing at their points tufts of 

 leaves in the manner of a Yucca or Dracaena ; some of them 

 are from two to ten feet high, with a trunk sometimes as thick 

 as a man's body. I find the structure of their trunks most 

 curious. It consists of a central slender subcylindrical col- 

 umn, which never increases in diameter after its first forma- 

 tion, and which has the ordinary monocotyledonous structure. 

 Outside of the column are arranged great quantities of slender 

 fibrous roots, which cohere firmly by their own cellular sur- 

 face, and form a spurious kind of wood, which is extremely 

 like that of some kinds of Palm-wood, only it is developed by 

 constant additions to the very outside of the stem." 



Living plants of several species at Kew exhibit this remark- 

 able stem growth, and in the Museum there are fine specimens 

 of large stems. 



The flowers of the cultivated species are large, elegant and 

 richly colored, but they are small and unattractive when com- 

 pared with some of the Brazilian species of Vellozia, which 

 are described by collectors as forming beautiful plants with 

 elegant foliage and Lilydike flowers from four to six inches 

 across, their color purple, yellow, blue or white. Gardner 

 collected specimens of some of the finest of them in Minas 

 Geraes, and both he and other collectors state that they are 

 common on the mountains of Brazil. 



Seeds of these plants are freely ripened when in cultivation, 

 and they may be kept at least six months without losing their 



