136 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 161. 



derivation of which are alike unknown. It is more properly 

 known in California as the Tree Yucca. It has nothing to 

 recommend it for cultivation, and does not succeed even in 

 the San Bernardino Valley, only a score of miles from its 

 native home. 



Yucca baccata, the second arborescent species of the state, 

 shares with several others the popular name of Spanish Bay- 

 onette. The territory it occupies includes the region to which 

 Yucca briarfolia is confined, and extends beyond it both east 

 and west. In the former direction it reaches well into Texas, 

 while in the latter it extends over most of the four southern 

 counties of California. With this wider territorial range it also 

 nourishes under a greater diversity of altitude and climate, but 

 is, withal, strictly confined to the zone of aridity. It is reported 

 to form extensive open forests in some parts of Texas ; but this 

 is not the case in California, where it is solitary, or, at most, in 

 small groups. It reaches its best development in the deserts, 

 both as respects size and numbers. The trunks are either single, 

 or two or more form a common base, and are from five to fifteen 

 feet high and a little over six inches in diameter. The branches 

 are few and short, and, like the trunks, clothed with the dead 

 and reflexed leaves. Only those at the extremities are living, 

 as is the case with most tree Yuccas. The leaves are two or 

 three feet long and nearly two inches in width, and have on 

 their edges a few coarse loose fibres. Sometimes the plant is 

 acaulescent, but, perhaps, never truly so in mature specimens. 



The flowers are produced in the month of March, or even 

 earlier, near the ends of the branches, in a nearly sessile, broad 

 panicle. They are large, campanulate in shape, of a white 

 color, often shaded with purple, and of a peculiarly wax-like 

 texture. They are very beautiful, either when seen in moss 

 or more closely examined as individuals. Thus examined, they 

 are found to derive an added elegance from the thick, snow- 

 white filaments and ovary, the former tipped with bright yellow 

 anthers, and the latter with the green stigmatic appendages. 



This Yucca seldom ripens its fruit in this region. It is bac- 

 cate in structure, cylindrical, and four or five inches long when 

 mature. It is said to be sweet and edible. The Indians obtain 

 a coarse fibre by macerating the leaves, which they use to 

 manufacture mats and cordage. In time it may come to be 

 utilized by civilized man for similar purposes. Although pro- 

 ducing a beautiful flower and growing readily in cultivation, it 

 has little value for that purpose, because of the extreme slow- 

 ness of its growth— many years, probably, being necessary for 

 a plant to attain a blooming size. S. B. Parish. 



Plant Notes. 

 The Fruit of Akebia quinata. 



THE handsome and hardy Japanese climbing plant, 

 Akebia quinata, has become common in our gar- 

 dens, where it is admired for its abundant dark green, 

 digitate leaves, which are peculiarly noticeable in the late 

 autumn and in the early winter, as they remain on the 

 stems with little change of color until long after nearly 

 all other deciduous plants have lost their foliage ; and 

 for the abundant and curiously formed rosy purple flow- 

 ers. But very few people in this country or in Europe 

 have ever seen the fruit of the Akebia or realize what 

 a beautiful object it is. The illustration on page 137, 

 made from a specimen which was produced last year in 

 the Arnold Arboretum, will give an idea of the shape and 

 size of the fruit, but will not, unfortunately, convey any 

 idea of the beauty of its color. 



The flowers of Akebia are unisexual, but are produced 

 together in the same pendulous raceme. The females, 

 which vary in number from one to three on each raceme, 

 are borne on long, slender pedicels from its base, and are 

 two or three times as large as the males, which are more 

 numerous and are collected together on very short pedi- 

 cels at the apex of the raceme. The long stems of the 

 female flowers cause them to hang with or below the 

 males an arrangement which seems admirably suited to 

 insure their fertilization by pollen carried from the adjoin- 

 ing male flowers, either by the wind or by insects. But, 

 for some reason or other, fruit is very rarely produced and 

 only on certain individual plants which continue fruitful 

 year after year, while other plants growing with them un- 

 der exactly similar conditions remain barren. In 1864 

 Akebia quinata produced fruit with the aid of artificial fer- 



tilization in the arboretum at Segrez, in France, for the first 

 time it was claimed in Europe, and a figure of it was after- 

 ward published by Monsieur Lavallee in his Arboretum 

 Segrezianum (t. 28). 



The first record of this plant having fruited in this coun- 

 try appeared in the Gardeners' Monthly in 1876 (xviii., 324), 

 where it is stated that one of the two plants placed a few 

 years previously by Mr. William M. Canby, of Wilmington, 

 Delaware, in front of his house had produced fruit. Two 

 years afterward fruit appeared on a plant in the garden 

 of Captain H. D. Landis, at Chestnut Hill, near Philadel- 

 phia {Gardeners Monthly, xx., 326) ; and plants are known 

 on Long Island which have fruited every year for a num- 

 ber of years, and the fruit has been exhibited at the county 

 fairs on the island, as I have been informed by Mr. William 

 Falconer, of Glen Cove, who sent the fruiting plant to the ar- 

 boretum. It is part of a plant in Mr. Charles A. Dana's gar- 

 den, and was obtained by division. It is interesting that the 

 fruitfulness of this individual appeared the year it was 

 planted in the arboretum. Mr. Canby writes : " There are two 

 Akebia-vines growing over the porch in front of my house ; 

 they have been there for nearly twenty years, and have 

 had more or less fruit on them every year from the time 

 they were well grown until this last year, when the flow- 

 ers were destroyed by the late frosts. Very frequently 

 there is no fruit, but usually each vine has from half a 

 dozen to twenty each year. The baccas which develop 

 are most frequently one, often two, less commonly three 

 or four, and rarely five. In the latter case, when they be- 

 come ripe and open, the whole object has a striking 

 appearance. 



The fruit of Akebia is technically a berry or a collection 

 of berries, slightly joined at the base, each developed from 

 a free ovary. The individual berry is oblong, four to six 

 inches long, cylindrical, and not unlike the fruit of the Pa- 

 paw in shape. It is dark purple, mottled with a beautiful 

 shade of blue, and covered with a glaucous bloom. The 

 flesh is thin and dry, and splits open when fully ripe on its 

 inner face, disclosing a fleshy placental mass of semi- 

 transparent whitish pulp, in which the showy black oval 

 seeds are imbedded in great numbers. This is attached at 

 the back by a line following the dorsal suture, and in 

 drying rolls up. The cylindrical, pulpy mass is the 

 edible part of the fruit, and is eaten in Japan ; it is insipid, 

 however, and not very palatable, and Akebia-fruit will 

 probably never be valued in this country except as an 

 ornament. It is, however, so very showy that nursery- 

 men should take advantage of the fruit-producing tendency 

 of certain individuals and propagate from them rather 

 than from those which are not fruitful. C. S. S. 



Some Recent Portraits. 



EjMGURES of the cone and foliage (t. 7162, 7163) of Encepha- 

 J- lartos Altensteinii open the March issue of the Botanical 

 Magazine. This is a noble south African species said to be- 

 come sometimes arborescent. The orange-brown cone pro- 

 duced in the garden of Mr. W. H.Tillett, of Norwich, described 

 as eighteen inches long and thirty inches in circumference, is 

 extremely ornamental, as is the habit of the plant with its 

 graceful pinnate leaves. 



Two species of Masdevallia are figured in this issue, M. 

 viacrura (t. 7164) and M. punctata (t. 7165). The former is a 

 discovery of Roezel's in New Granada, and was described 

 many years ago; the flowers are purple on the exterior, 

 orange or yellow within, and remarkable for the presence of 

 prominent nerves covered with numerous dark purple warts 

 in the interior of the perianth. The narrow yellow tails of the 

 sepals vary from four to six inches in length. Masdevallia 

 punctata is a small plant with small orange-brown flowers, and- 

 is most nearly allied to M. swerticefolia, belonging to a small 

 group of the genus in which the lip is superior. The native 

 country of this plant is unknown, although it is supposed to 

 be from the mountainous regions of New Granada. The re- 

 maining plate is devoted to Clematis Stanleyii, already figured 

 in our columns. 



A fruiting branch, with figures of the scales and a section 

 of the leaf of the beautiful Abies religiosa, accompanied by a 



