May 27, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



243 



Native Shrubs of California. — V. 



ALTHOUGH the cultivated Cherries, natives of the Old 

 World, thrive better on the Pacific than on the Atlantic 

 slope of our continent, the Atlantic side is richer in native 

 species, for while, between Canada and the Carolinas, as many 

 as seven or eight kinds of wild Cherries are indigenous, an 

 equal extent of Pacific coast territory yields but four or five, 

 and all of these are found within the limits of California. 

 Cerastes emarginaia, Dougl. (Hook. "Fl. Bor., Am.," i., 169), 

 our best native type of the Cherry genus, is, however, limited 

 in California to the northern counties, and even there fails to 

 attain those tree-like dimensions and that symmetry of outline 

 which it develops in the wooded country of Oregon and 

 Washington. But, whether great or small, the species no- 

 where degenerates into a scraggy or shapeless bush. Seldom 

 less than fifteen feet high, the branches are ascending, and the 

 general outline of the head is more or less conical. The 

 very finest specimens of this species which I have seen are on 

 one of the streets of Portland, Oregon, where they were planted 

 years ago for shade and ornament. Some of these are about 

 forty feet high, and are so much like the cultivated Cherry-tree 

 in foliage and form that I should perhaps have passed them 

 by as exotic trees had not the ground beneath been strewn 

 with the fallen fruit, which revealed at a glance the native 

 species. The fruits are small for true cherries, of a dark dull 

 red, and intensely bitter. The flowers are borne in umbels, 

 but are small. At Lake Pend d'Oreille, in north-eastern Idaho, 

 where, in a somewhat reduced state, the species is common, 

 I observed that many of the flowers had been bipistillate, and 

 that the drupes were often two to each flower ; a circum- 

 stance, perhaps, not rare in cultivated Cherries, but which, 

 occurring spontaneously in a wild tree of western America, 

 cannot but suggest a still closer relationship between our 

 western Cherries and their curious relative, the Oso Berry 

 (Nuttallia), in which the drupes are normally from two to five 

 to the flower. 



Some years ago Dr. Kellogg, 

 under a misunderstanding, made 

 a synonym for the species, calling 

 it C. glandulosa. He had been 

 taught by authority that the fol- 

 lowing, much more common in 

 California, was the true C. emar- 

 ginata : 



Cerasus Californica, Greene (" Fl. Fr.," 50). A mereshrub of 

 unsymmetrical habit, often six or eight feet high, with a very 

 smooth and shining brown and dotted bark ; it is entirely dis- 

 tinct from C. emarginata in size, habit, and, more particularly, 

 by the characters of its foliage. Its fruit is very small, of a clear 

 and almost translucent bright scarlet, the flesh so keenly bitter 

 — the bitterness so penetrating and permanent in one's organs 

 of taste — that no one is likely to make a second experimental 

 test of- its qualities. The bush is common in middle California, 

 among the hills of the coast range and of the Sierra, extending 

 northward beyond Mount Shasta. 



Cerastes demissa, Nutt. (Torr.andGray,"Fl.,"i.,4ii). This, the 

 western Choke Cherry, very nearly allied to the Atlantic coast 

 shrub or tree known as Choke Cherry, is not very prevalent in 

 many parts of California. The acidulous fruit, hanging in 

 somewhat inviting rich red racemes, is astringent when fresh ; 

 but cooking dispels this unpleasant quality, and a marmalade, 

 entirely palatable, with a fine cherry flavor, is commonly made 

 from it in most places where it is at all plentiful. 



Cerasus ilicifolia, Nutt. (Hook. & Arn. " Bot. Beech.," 340). We 

 seem to have on the American continent only two representa- 

 tives of the Old World Laurel-cherry group of trees. C. Caro- 

 liniana is the Atlantic one, C. ilicifolia the Pacific. In its 

 distribution, ours, like its eastern analogue, is southern. C. 

 ilicifolia does not appear to extend to the northward of San 

 Francisco Bay, and here, at its northern limit, it does not 

 make much of a tree, but is low and shrubby. Its broad, 

 shining, spinose-toothed, evergreen leaves render it useful, as 

 well as ornamental, for hedges, and it has here and there been 

 planted for that purpose. Southward, in the counties of 

 Monterey and San Luis Obispo, it becomes a low, well-rounded 

 tree of compact habit, with a clean trunk, showing a rough 

 very dark bark. The fruit of the species is nearly an inch in 

 diameter, of round outline, but distinctly compressed laterally. 

 The sweet and agreeable pulp is very thin, the stone large, 

 thin and soft for that of a cherry, and the kernel is of so mild 

 a bitter as to be scarcely unpalatable — quite comparable, with 

 that of the Bitter Almond. On the island of Santa Cruz, off 

 Santa Barbara, and elsewhere in that archipelago, the species 

 comes out with narrow and perfectly entire foliage. This was 

 at first thought to be specifically distinct from the tree of the 



mainland, and so like the West Indian C. occidentalis that it 

 was so referred. But specimens growing on the grounds of 

 the University, now five years old, from seed of insular trees, 

 up to this time have shown only the notched and Holly-like 

 leaves of the ordinary C. ilicifolia. It should therefore, at 

 most, be made only a variety, integrifolia (Britton), of C. 

 ilicifolia. 

 University of California. Edward L. Greene. 



An Oak Scale. 



"TOURING the meeting of the New Jersey State Horticultural 

 *-^ Society, Mr. E. P. Beebe, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, 

 brought a small branch of Oak, densely covered with round, 

 clear, golden-yellow scales, and stated that the entire tree was 

 as fully infested. The tree is isolated, in a garden plot in the 

 city itself, and is an old Swamp White Oak. The attack was 

 first noticed during the summer of 1890, but it must have ex- 

 isted some time before. Apparently no other trees in the vicinity 

 are so infested. The scales (see Fig. 43) are either round or a 

 little oval, densely clustered, especially on the smaller twigs, 

 but they do not spare even the older wood. They are from -04- 

 •08 of an inch (1-2 mm.) in diameter and slightly convex, hard 

 and brittle. Beneath the scale there is a distinct, cup-like de- 

 pression, extending not only through the bark but indenting 

 the wood itself. I recognized the specimens at once as Astero- 

 diaspis quercicola, Bouchg, a European species, which Mr. L. 

 O. Howard, of the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 had exhibited at the Toronto meeting of the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science, from the European 

 Oaks in the Department grounds. In the report of the De- 

 partment for 1880, Professor Comstock, then United States 

 Entomologist, described the species. According to him, the 

 male scale is oval rather than round, and only about half the 

 size of that of the female. He had not found any male scales, 

 and copied the description from the European authors. In 



Fig- 43- — An Oak Scale. 



none of the specimens seen by me do I identify a male, and 

 the differences are either less than described, or that sex does 

 not occur very abundantly. Professor Comstock states that 

 the scales are " upon the imported Oaks in the Department of 

 Agriculture Grounds at Washington. The species is not a 

 common one in Europe, but is occasionally quite destructive 

 to an individual tree." I have seen no record of the occur- 

 rence of this scale other than at Washington, and its appear- 

 ance at Elizabeth, on a native species of Oak, is decidedly 

 interesting. I recommended a thorough winter spraying with 

 the kerosene emulsion, one to ten, with the view of destroying 

 whatever of life existed in or under the scales, and I would sug- 

 gest that a lookout for this pest be kept on ornamental trees. 

 If it be discovered the treatment should be radical. If not too 

 wide-spread, all infested twigs should be cut and burnt. If that 

 be impracticable the trees should be thoroughly sprayed with the 

 kerosene emulsion when clear of leaves. Trees so badly in- 

 fested as that from which my specimens came will inevitably 

 succumb. The figure gives some idea of the appearance of 

 an infested twig, and most of the specimens showed a greater 

 number of scales than that figured. They are on all sides of 

 the twigs and branches. 



Rutgers College. John B. Smith. 



How We Renewed an Old Place. 



VII.— A NEW PERENNIAL GARDEN. 



A LITERARY man, who paid his only visit to Scotland in 

 ■*"*■ the winter-time, remarked that he realized more fully than 

 ever before how great was the genius of Sir Walter Scott, 

 which had given world-renown for picturesqueness to those 

 low, round, bare, uninteresting hills, the Trossachs. Lacking 

 that genius, I am somewhat dismayed at making my verv 

 unimportant little garden the subject of a paper. Our late', 

 cold springs render it rather a dreary object of contemplation 

 even in the month of May, and with only the power of words 

 to help the reader's enjoyment, I shall have to ask indulgence 

 for the meagre record of its very simple charms. 



Mrs. Carlyle used to tell a story of an Irish prison that was 

 to be built out of the stones of an old one, while the prisoners 

 were to be kept in the old jail until the new one was com- 



