220 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 168. 



Now, can my correspondent tell me what is the proper pun- 

 ishment for that ? 



Of the perversity of Hemlocks I could write a volume. I 

 knew something of their waywardness in the state of Maine, 

 but even in Massachusetts, where everything is regulated by 

 law, they show no higher sense of duty. 



In vain do you coax along a beautiful little tree, carefully 

 raised in a nursery till it has a fine ball of roots, to live and 

 thrive for several seasons ; at the end of that time you find it 

 in the spring yellow and brown and bare, with every sign of 

 premature decay about it. In a clump they may condescend 

 to grow, or in a swamp, but if you don't want a clump, or a 

 swamp on the lawn, what then ? 



Any one who has ever set his affections on a Peach-orchard 

 knows something of the shameless coquetry of its behavior ; 

 and in the course of these papers I shall be compelled to 

 record instances of misconduct even in the most innocent and 

 carefully brought up trees, as well as in the wild and unsophis- 

 ticated ones. Even the common White Birch, which will live 

 anywhere and everywhere, and thrive on a sand-bank, goes 

 and gets itself eaten up with Hessians the minute we try to 

 utilize it on a lawn. Lombardy Poplars, too, in sprte of much 

 specious promising, behave shamefully ; and I have known a 

 Catalpa to grow undaunted in an enclosure for twenty years, 

 and then succumb in a cowardly way to one cold winter. The 

 fact is, though I am loath to say it, as a class you cannot abso- 

 lutely depend upon trees, and when you say that— why, you 

 say everything ! 



I have also a question to answer concerning our grove of 

 Chestnut-trees, an inquirer wishing to know how we came to 

 move such tall ones, and whether they came from the woods 

 or from a nursery ? 



They were taken from a plantation of trees in our neighbor- 

 hood, which had been made some years ago, on one of the 

 neglected places hereabout. They had been set out when 

 small, and left to take their chances without cultivation for 

 certainly ten years. How much they had received when very 

 young I cannot say, for their gardener has long since moved 

 away. When we got them they were some three inches in 

 diameter one foot from the ground, and slim and stately, with 

 fairly good roots, but not like those of frequently moved nur- 

 sery trees. We topped them when they were set in the 

 autumn, and as they did not seem very vigorous, the next year 

 we cut them back very severely, of different lengths, as an ex- 

 periment. Some of them we left ten feet high, and one of 

 them which had poor roots and looked sickly we cut down to 

 within two feet of the ground. 



Last summer they all put out vigorous tops with enormous 

 leaves, but they are much beset by the aphis, which makes 

 havoc with the first growth, and later by the insatiable rose- 

 bug ; yet, in spite of these drawbacks, they thrive in the rich 

 deep soil of the swale, sheltered by the hill from the sun and 

 the burning south-west winds. They are planted about fifteen 

 feet apart, as we thought they would do better in close com- 

 pany, and they can be trimmed out when they are larger if it 

 seems desirable. Smaller ones are set on the hill-side, where 

 they seem to flourish, and some future generation mayseeour 

 hill-side, like those noble slopes of the Connecticut valley, 

 waving with their splendid foliage. 



Since I have given up so much of this letter to answers to 

 correspondents, I may as well also reply to the gentleman who 

 inquires what books we found useful in planting our trees. 



The public library of our small town, though it is full of 

 excellent works on fruit-trees and horticulture, only afforded 

 one book, " Elements of Forestry," by Franklin B. Hough, 

 which treated solely of that subject in a large way ; but it had 

 also a late edition of Downing's " Landscape Gardening," in 

 the appendix to which is a valuable paper by Mr. Henry 

 Winthorp Sargent, in which he gives an interesting account 

 of the way in which his own country-seat at Fishkill, New York, 

 and that of Mr. Hunnewell, at Wellesley, Massachusetts, 

 had been laid out, by two precisely opposite methods : Mr. 

 Sargent having started in the midst of a forest, which he 

 gradually cut away and adapted to his uses in the landscape ; 

 and Mr. Hunnewell having laid out his grounds in a region 

 barren of trees, which he gradually developed into its present 

 exquisite fertility. Some of Donald B. Mitchell's books — " Out- 

 of-Town Places," " My Farm at Edgewood" and " Rural Stud- 

 ies" — also afforded valuable suggestions. The Massachusetts 

 Agricultural Reports had many interesting statistics about the 

 planting of Pines on a large scale in Plymouth County, and the 

 books of the National Department of Agriculture have given 

 additional details as we went along. Garden and Forest 

 held up our fainting hands, and also made us suffer by pub- 

 lishing articles the day after the fair, which showed us how 



much better we might have done had we had the information 

 a year or two earlier. In fact, we had reason to think our- 

 selves among those 



Mountainous minds that were awake too soon, 



Or else their brethren slept too late, 



for no sooner had we evolved an idea and put it in practice 

 than at every turn the public press was crammed with views 

 on this very subject which it had never seen fit to express 

 previously. 



Overlea labored under the enormous disadvantage of being 

 born the year before Garden and Forest. 



Hinc illas lacrimse. 

 Had the periodical only been the elder, how much easier 

 everything would have been ! But, also, how afraid we should 

 have been to undertake anything, having learned from it that 

 we ought never to build without a landscape-architect, never 

 to plant without the advice of an experienced landscape-gar- 

 dener, never to suffer from mistakes that could so easily be 

 avoided by proper appeals to a professional ! But all this wis- 

 dom might as well have come in the next century as just a 

 year too late, and so here we are, with all our blood upon our 

 own heads, because we chanced to dig our cellar and make 

 our contract in 1887. 



As it was, we went to some scientific neighbors, who had 

 done the same thing we were doing thirty years before with 

 very distinguished success ; and some of them gave us advice, 

 and others gave us trees, which were even more to the pur- 

 pose, and they kindly encouraged our efforts and took an inter- 

 est in what we were doing, that sustained and cheered us on 

 our way. 



No one's experience, either in books or in real life, proved 

 to be exactly like our own, so that we feel that we have had 

 the benefit of an original experiment. Only time can fully 

 reveal where our mistakes lie, for it alone can show whether 

 we have planted not wisely or too well. 



Hingham, Mass. M. C. Robbins. 



New or Little Known Plants. 

 Ilex laevigata. 



THE smooth Winter-berry, Ilex laevigata, of which a 

 figure appears on page 221, although one of the 

 most beautiful shrubs of the eastern United States, is one 

 of the least-known and least-appreciated plants in all our 

 eastern flora. It is nowhere very common, although it 

 may be found from Maine to the mountains of Virginia, 

 growing in low, wet, sphagnum-covered bogs, where it 

 associates with the Cassandra, the Nemopanthes, and 

 other water-loving plants. It is little known to people 

 whose powers of botanical observation have not been 

 trained, and is usually confounded by them with the much 

 more common Black Alder {Ilex verticillala), which it re- 

 sembles in many of its general features. It grows, how- 

 ever, in wetter situations than that plant. The fruit, 

 which is bright red and not scarlet, ripens early, and 

 falls in the autumn, while the fruit of the Black Alder 

 remains on the branches during the winter months. But 

 the two species can be most easily distinguished in the 

 autumn by the foliage ; that of the smooth Winter-berry 

 turns, rather early, bright yellow, while the leaves of the 

 Black Alder remain green until they are blackened and 

 destroyed by severe freezing. Another character which 

 separates the two plants is found in the pedicels of the 

 sterile flowers, which are long in Ilex laevigata and very 

 short in Ilex verticillala. The leaves of the former are 

 lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, pointed at the two ends 

 with small appressed teeth on the slightly revolute mar- 

 gins ; they are two or three inches long, and are bright 

 and lustrous on the upper surface, rather paler and usually 

 quite glabrous on the lower surface, with the exception of 

 a slight pubescence along the midrib and principal veins. 

 The sterile flowers are produced on slender stems, 

 varying from a third of an inch to an inch in length. 

 The fertile flowers are sessile or short-stalked. The 

 flowers are pearly white, a quarter of an inch across when 

 expanded, and appear about the middle of June. The 

 fruit ripens in September, and is from a quarter to a third 

 of an inch in diameter. 



