March 25, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



133 



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, MARCH 25, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The Silver Maple. (With figure.) 133 



The "Value of Good Roads 134 



Memorial Trees 134 



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



IV. Bolting- Hemsley. 135 



The Arborescent Yuccas of California S. B. Parish. 135 



Plant Notes : — The Fruit of Akebia quinata. (With figure.) C. S. S. 136 



Some Recent Portraits 136 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 138 



Cultural Department : — Rose Notes W. H. Taplin. 139 



Hardy Narcissus . . O. Orpet. 139 



Spring Flowers J. N. Gerard. 141 



Notes from the Harvard Botanical Garden M. Barker. 141 



Chrysanthemum Queries. — II John Thorpe. 141 



The Influence of Pollen upon Fruit C. W. Mathews. 142 



Saxif raga Burseriana major % W. J 4 2 



Correspondence : — Protection from Field Mice O. O. 142 



" Insect Lime" for the Gypsy Moth B. B. Fernow. 142 



Exhibitions: — Spring Flower Show at Philadelphia 143 



Recent Publications 143 



Notes 144 



Illustrations : — A Fruit of Akebia quinata, Fig. 25 137 



The Silver Maple, Fig. 26 140 



The Silver Maple. 



THE Silver Maple is one of the largest and most beau- 

 tiful trees in a genus peculiar for the beauty of its 

 species. To many people, perhaps, who know it only as 

 a shade or street-tree, the Silver Maple does not always 

 appear to be a handsome or desirable tree. Planted, as it 

 has been very generally, for such purposes it often has a 

 weak and overgrown appearance, as if it had outgrown 

 its strength ; the branches are brittle and easily broken by 

 wind and snow, the foliage is often thin, and the leaves 

 fall early. This is the Silver Maple to people who know 

 it in towns only and who see a tree in the wrong place, 

 and where all the conditions are unfavorable to the devel- 

 opment of its beauty. There are trees, like the Scarlet 

 Maple, the River Birch and our eastern Larch, which seem 

 to flourish as well when they are placed in unnatural con- 

 ditions of soil and surroundings as in the situations in 

 which they grow naturally, and which thrive as well on 

 a hillside as in their native swamps. The Silver Maple 

 is more fastidious. Unfortunately, it grows very rapidly, 

 and even in unfavorable situations few trees will attain a 

 greater height or a thicker stem in the first forty or fifty 

 years of their existence. It is this rapidity of growth that 

 has made the Silver Maple a favorite with people who are 

 in a hurry to obtain immediate effects and do not care to 

 look very far ahead ; and at one time it was planted in 

 the northern states, especially in cities and their suburbs, 

 in immense numbers, without much regard being paid to 

 the fitness of the position selected for it. 



The Silver Maple is an inhabitant of low, sandy river- 

 banks, and it is on river-banks only or in low meadows 

 that it displays its beauty ; and the lover of trees, if 

 he would see it at its best and would realize what the 

 Silver Maple becomes when . all conditions favor it, 

 should float down one of the large streams which flow 

 into the tributaries of the lower Ohio. Here may be seen 

 the river-forests of the Mississippi-basin in their full rich- 

 ness and beauty, and Maple-trees unequaled in majesty 



and grace by those of any part of the world. In the rich 

 alluvial soil which forms the low banks of such streams, 

 the Silver Maple rises sometimes to the height of a hun- 

 dred and twenty feet, with a trunk three or four feet in 

 diameter. Ten or fifteen feet from the ground this divides 

 usually into three or four stout, upright, secondary stems, 

 which are destitute of branches for a considerable height 

 above the division of the main trunk and then ultimately 

 separate into many slender branches with slender, pendu- 

 lous branchlets, the whole forming a wide and majestic 

 head. The bark of the trunk on the old trees is bright 

 reddish brown, more or less furrowed by deep, longitudi- 

 nal fissures, while the surface separates easily into large, 

 thin scales. On trunks of young trees and on the branches 

 of old ones the bark is quite smooth and light gray, faintly 

 tinged with red. The young branchlets are bright chest- 

 nut-brown, with a smooth and lustrous surface, and are 

 marked with large, pale spots. The winter-buds are rather 

 small and are covered with bright red, imbricated scales, 

 with a conspicuous fringe of pale hairs on the margins. 

 The ample leaves are often six or seven inches in length, 

 rather less in width, and are deeply five-lobed by narrow 

 sinuses, with acute, irregularly toothed divisions, the middle 

 division being often larger than the others and somewhat 

 lobed. They are thin and membranaceous, and borne on 

 long, slender, bright red petioles they dance with the 

 slightest breath of wind, displaying in turn the bright and 

 cheerful green of their upper surface and the silvery white- 

 ness which clothes their lower surface. In autumn they 

 turn pale yellow. 



The flowers of the Silver Maple, like those of our Red 

 Maple, appear late in the winter, or in very early spring, 

 long before the leaves ; they are produced in sessile axil- 

 lary fascicles on the shoots of the previous year, or on 

 short spur-like branchlets developed the year before from 

 the wood of the preceding season. The sterile and fertile 

 flowers appear in separate clusters, sometimes together 

 on the same tree, but more frequently on different trees. 

 The buds from which they open are aggregated into com- 

 pact clusters, and are covered with thick red and green 

 scales fringed on the margin with long rusty brown hairs. 

 The flowers are greenish yellow and have no petals ; the 

 calyx, which is five-lobed, is slightly hairy on the outer 

 surface and is long and narrow in the sterile, and short 

 and broad in the fertile flower. There are from three to 

 seven stamens ; in the sterile flowers the slender filaments 

 lengthen until they become two or three times as long as 

 the calyx when the pollen is discharged from the anthers, 

 while in the fertile flowers the filaments do not lengthen 

 after the bud opens, and the anthers wither or fall off with- 

 out opening. The ovary, which is reduced to a minute 

 point in the staminate flower, is covered with hairs. It is 

 possible that perfect flowers with a fully developed ovary 

 and stamens may be found, as such is the usual order of 

 nature in the case of flowers which have become generally 

 unisexual by the abortion of one of their organs, but if such 

 flowers exist, they are uncommon. The ovary of the fer- 

 tile flower develops into a large fruit with long broad 

 wings, which are sometimes nearly straight and some- 

 times shaped like a scythe. The fruit ripens at the end of 

 a few weeks after the flowering period, if it is not destroyed 

 by spring frosts, as is often the case, for the Silver Maple, 

 enticed into opening its flower-buds by the succession of 

 a few warm days in late winter, pays for its temerity with 

 the loss of its fruit. Sometimes only one of the two samara, 

 of which the fruit of the Maple is made up, is developed, 

 and it is not an uncommon thing to find a tree producing 

 one-sided fruit, the second and undeveloped ovary appear- 

 ing as a rudiment at its base. The seed of the Silver Maple, 

 if it happens to fall on moist open ground, germinates im- 

 mediately, and produces plants which grow sometimes to 

 be nearly a foot high before winter and strong enough to 

 have in their favor the chances of surviving the hardships 

 to which all seedling plants are subjected. In this habit of 

 early flowering and quick development of the seed of 



