February 25, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



85 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



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, FEBRUARY 25, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles :— The " Tree of the Janissaries." (With figure.) 85 



Plants which Grow about Lynn, North Carolina P. H. Hors/ord. 86 



The Perfume Industry in the United States J. N. 86 



Our Trees in Ice-storms J.G.Jack. 87 



.Recent Botanical Discoveries in China and Eastern Burma. — II., 



W. Dotting Hemsley. 88 



New or Little Known Plants :— Aster macrophyllus. (With figure.) 88 



Foreign Correspondence:— London Letter W. Watson. 90 



Cultural Department :— Notes from the Harvard Botanic Garden../!/. Barker. 90 



Flowering Plants in the Hot-house TV. H. Taplin. 93 



Plants for Shadv Places E- O. Orpet. 92 



Sciadopitys ver'ticellata Joseph Meehan 93 



The Forest :— Forestry on the Prairies C. E. Kesslcr 93 



Correspondence :— The Fruit Interests of California Charles Howard Shinn. 94 



Flowers and the Perfume Industry Mrs. J. S. R. Thomson. 94 



Periodical Literature 95 



Notes 9 6 



Illustrations :— Aster macrophyllus, Fig. 18 89 



Ancient Plane-tree in Constantinople, Fig. 19 91 



The " Tree of the Janissaries." 



THE famous tree, of which a picture is given on page 

 91, is an ancient Plane that stands in the so-called 

 Court of the Janissaries in the Old Seraglio at Constan- 

 tinople. 



From the time of Mahomet II., in the fifteenth century, 

 until the middle of our own century, the Old Seraglio was 

 the residence of the sultans, and at once, says De Amicis,* 

 "a royal palace, a fortress and a sanctuary. Here were 

 the brain and the heart of Islamism. It was a city within 

 a city, inhabited by a people and guarded by an army, 

 embracing within its walls an infinite variety of edifices, 

 places of pleasure and of horror." It stands, he continues, 

 "upon the most eastern of the hills of Stamboul, which de- 

 scend gently toward the Sea of Marmora, the mouth of the 

 Bosporus and the Golden Horn, on the spot anciently 

 occupied by the acropolis of Byzantium, by a portion of 

 the city and a wing of the palace of the emperors. The 

 whole hill is encircled at its base by a battlemented wall 

 with towers, and along the sea this wall is also the city 

 wall. This is the external boundary of the Seraglio. The 

 Seraglio proper stands on the summit, surrounded in its 

 turn by high walls, forming a sort of central redoubt in the 

 great hill fortress." Formerly, when one looked down upon 

 the hill from its upper battlements or from a minaret of St. 

 Sophia, it looked like "a green forest composed of enor- 

 mous trees, encircled by walls and towers and crowned 

 with cannon and sentinels. Upon the highest point ex- 

 tended the vast rectangle of the Seraglio buildings, divided 

 into three great courts, or rather into three small cities 

 built around three unequal squares, from which arose a 

 multitude of variously colored roofs, gilded domes and 

 white minarets half-concealed in groves and gardens — a 

 little metropolis, brilliant and irregular— at one point full of 

 life and movement, at another mute and solitary ; here all 

 gilded and open to the sun ; there inaccessible to every eye 

 and plunged in perpetual shade ; gay with infinite foun- 



*" Constantinople." By Edmondo De Amicis. Translated from the Seventh 

 Italian Edition by Caroline Tilton. 



tains, embellished with a thousand colors and silvery re- 

 flections in the marbles of the colonnades and in the 

 waters of the little lakes." 



The Old Seraglio was abandoned almost forty years 

 ago by the son of Mahmoud II., with whom the history of 

 our Plane-tree is most strikingly connected, when he built 

 himself a new palace further westward oh the Bosporus ; 

 and to-day its aspect is very different from that of old. It 

 has been ravaged by fire and neglect, a railway bisects it, 

 and bald new buildings for military use have been erected 

 in its desolate courts. But certain parts are fairly wellpre- 

 served, and among them the first enclosure of all, the 

 Court of the Janissaries. This lies near one end of the 

 ancient Hippodrome, and forms a long space, flanked on 

 one side by the Church of St. Irene, which was founded by 

 Constantine and converted by the Turks into an armory ; 

 and it is shaded by groups of large Plane-trees, among 

 which the most conspicuous is the "Tree of the Janissa- 

 ries." The court is entered by the Bab-Umaium, or August 

 Gate, on either side of which is a niche where, hang-ins: 

 from nails, were exposed each morning for the edification 

 of the people the heads of such notabilities as, in the 

 twenty-four hours gone by, might have excited the ani- 

 mosity of the Sultan. And under the great Plane-tree still 

 stand two small columns on which decapitations took place, 

 while, according to local story, the janissaries were fond 

 of hanging their victims from its branches. But the court 

 and the Plane-tree get their modern names from the awful 

 day — June 15th, 1826 — which saw the annihilation of these 

 terrible guards. 



In the year 1808 Mahmoud II. became Sultan after his 

 predecessor had been slain by the janissaries, and, to les- 

 sen the chances of another revolt, promptly assassinated 

 his own brother. The reign jthus begun in blood continued 

 in disaster. A war with Russia cost Mahmoud some of 

 his fairest European provinces, the Greek Revolution fur- 

 ther contracted his territories, and he is chiefly remembered 

 for the most extensive massacre that modern history records. 



The whole corps of the guards had risen in insur- 

 rection and threatened to fire the four quarters of Con- 

 stantinople. Gathering around him the troops that still 

 were faithful, Mahmoud displayed from the Mosque of 

 Achmet the "Standard of the Prophet," which is never 

 unrolled save when the empire is in danger, and sol- 

 emnly decreed the annihilation of the janissaries. His 

 followers were then engaged in a "sacred war," in which 

 the most murderous would be held the surest of heaven. 

 The first cannon-shot tore a bloody furrow through the 

 closely crowded guards, and from the beginning it was less 

 a conflict than a slaughter. Fire was set to the barracks 

 where many of the janissaries took refuge, and those who 

 survived flame and sword were murdered singly at closer 

 quarters until not one of the whole corps remained, while 

 Mahmoud himself stood behind the railing of the Mosque 

 of Achmed, in the Hippodrome, and from this safe dis- 

 tance directed the massacre, until some 20,000, or, as some 

 say, even more had been slain. 



The great Plane-tree which, in its fresh garment of June 

 leafage, witnessed this horrible scene, is believed to be 

 about 400 years old, and, despite its hollow trunk, is still a 

 fine and vigorous specimen of the characteristic shade-tree 

 of the East. Measurements taken last summer, when the 

 photograph from which our illustration has been made was 

 procured, give its girth as thirty-nine feet at three feet 

 above the ground, so we must allow for a little exaggera- 

 tion in the statement of De Amicis that "it takes ten men 

 to embrace its trunk." These dimensions are not remark- 

 able when compared with those given of some of the fa- 

 mous Plane-trees of antiquity. But, perhaps, we may also 

 allow for a little exaggeration where the tape-line was not 

 used to verify the descriptions of the giants associated with 

 the names of Godfrey, Xerxes and Menelaus. The Tree 

 of the Janissaries is nearly as large as the great American 

 Plane on an island of the Ohio River, the measurements of 

 which were put on record by Washington and Michaux. 



