256 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 171. 



thin fleshy external coat, after the manner of the common 

 Almond, and expose a small, nearly smooth pulamen, or nut. 

 I have not heard of any attempts to cultivate this native Al- 

 mond, either in the fertile and fruitful regions of California 

 proper or elsewhere, it is even something of a rarity in the 

 herbariums of the botanists, though this is owing simply to 

 the fact that the desolate and uninviting regions which it in- 

 habits are so seldom visited and so little cultivated by even the 

 most zealous of- botanical collectors. 

 University of California. Edward L. Greene. 



New or Little Known Plants. 

 The Japanese Hamamelis. 



THE Witch Hazel {Hamamelis Virginicd) of eastern 

 America, with its bright yellow flowers which cover 

 the branches late in the autumn as the leaves, which are 

 then orange and scarlet, are falling, is one of the most 

 common and best known of our woodland shrubs or small 

 trees. The genus is confined to eastern America, where a 

 single species occurs, and to eastern Asia, with a Japanese 

 species, and another which has been discovered recently 

 on the mountains of central and western China. The 

 characters which are used to distinguish these plants are 

 not important, and to botanists, who look to species largely, 

 and do not give great weight to geographical distribution 

 as a factor in their establishment, the three Witch Hazels 

 might be considered forms of one species, slightly differ- 

 entiated by local surroundings. 



HamameUs Japonica (Fig. 45), as it appears in the 

 Arnold Arboretum, can only be distinguished from our 

 American plant by its rather smaller and somewhat thicker, 

 more prominently veined leaves of a duller green on the 

 upper surface, and by the fact that the flowers appear in 

 February or in early March instead of in the autumn. The 

 number of the nerves of the leaves by which Siebold & 

 Zuccarini (Site. Akad. Munch., iv. , ii., 193) endeavored to 

 distinguish the Japanese from the American species is 

 variable, as has already been pointed out by Franchet & 

 Savatier ("Enum. PI. Jap.," ii., 368); and in our cultivated 

 Japanese plant the leaves are very constantly five or six- 

 nerved, like those of the American species. The color of 

 the inner surface of the calyx-lobes has also been used to 

 distinguish the Japanese plant. On many of the plants 

 cultivated in Europe, and in the wild specimens gathered in 

 Japan which I have seen, the inner face of the revolute 

 calyx-lobes is dull red. The effect of the contrast between 

 the red color of the calyx and the bright yellow of the 

 petals is striking and handsome, and makes this form the 

 most attractive, probably, of the Witch Hazels at the time 

 of flowering. But this color of the sepals does not seem to 

 be constant. On the plants in the Arboretum, which were 

 originally derived from Segrez, the interior of the calyx is 

 dull yellow-brown, and the flowers can hardly be distin- 

 guished from those of the American plant except in their 

 rather smaller size. Another difference between the Japa- 

 nese plant, as it appears in the Arboretum, and the American 

 species is found in the size of the persistent fruiting calyx, 

 which in the Japanese plant is confined to the base of the 

 fruit, while in the American plant it varies from a third to 

 half the length of the capsule. The relative size of the 

 mature calyx to the fruit appears to vary, however, on dif- 

 ferent individuals, and therefore does not afford a character 

 of much value. Siebold & Zuccarini (/. c. ) found that the 

 calyx was attached to the base of the fruit only ; Sir Joseph 

 Hooker (Bot. Mag., t. 6659) found the same to be true on 

 all the specimens he was able to examine, while Franchet 

 & Savatier (/. c), on the contrary, remarked that "in all the 

 specimens of H. Japonica with ripe fruit that we have before 

 our eyes the degree of adherence of the fruit to the calyx 

 differs from a quarter to nearly a half; not one of them is 

 attached by the base only ; and it is not possible to con- 

 sider this peculiarity as a specific character." Franchet & 

 Savatier speak of the flowers of the Japanese and of the 

 American species as identical, and it is possible, although 

 hardly probable, that the flora of Japan may contain two 



species — one with the red calyx of the plant, which seems 

 to be the only one cultivated in England,* and the other 

 with the yellow flowers of the plant which is figured on 

 page 257. It is interesting in this connection as bearing, 

 perhaps, on the tendency of Hamamelis to vary in the 

 color of its flowers to note that I have recently received 

 flowers of the American Hamamelis with bright red petals 

 found on a wild plant in Maiden, in this state. 



Hamamelis Japonica is described as a small tree in its 

 native country. Here it forms a spreading shrub of strag- 

 gling habit, four or five feet high, with stout ashy-gray 

 branches which are at first pubescent but become glabrous 

 in their second year, and marked, like those of the American 

 species, with small pale lenticels. The leaves are obovate, 

 sinuately crenate and sharply toothed above the middle, 

 five or six-nerved, rounded or acute at the apex, wedge- 

 shaped or contracted into a narrow rounded base, long- 

 petioled, with prominent midribs and nerves grooved on 

 the upper surface. They are dark green and glabrous 

 above, and are coated on the lower surface with pale or 

 rufous persistent pubescence, and are from two to two 

 and a half inches long by an inch or an inch and a half 

 broad. The flowers are produced in subsessile clusters. 

 The calyx is a quarter of an inch across, with lobes which 

 are rounded at the apex, slightly ciliate on the margins, 

 dull orange-yellow, and reflexed at the flowering period. 

 The petals are strap-shaped, three-quarters of an inch long, 

 rounded or truncate at the apex, and bright canary yellow. 

 The filaments, like those of the American plant, are short 

 and stout, the fertile anthers opening from the front. The 

 carpels are silky-pubescent, with filiform styles. The 

 capsule is subglobose, rather less than half an inch long, 

 covered with bright brownish tomentum, and surrounded 

 at the base only with the remnants of the calyx. 



Hamamelis Japonica grows very slowly here, and, from 

 present appearances, will never become a tree. It is very 

 hardy, and the first shrub of the year to flower in the Ar- 

 boretum. The flowers are bright and cheerful, and their 

 earliness gives to this plant considerable value as a garden- 

 plant, apart from the botanical interest which is attached 

 to it. The red-flowered form is not in the Arboretum, but, 

 judging from the figures which have been published of it, 

 it is a more desirable garden-plant than the form which is 

 figured in this issue, and the most showy member of the 

 genus. C. S. S. 



Ravenea Hildebrandtii. 



THIS elegant little Palm was discovered in the Comoro 

 Islands, between Madagascar and Zanzibar, by the 

 German collector after whom it is named, and was intro- 

 duced by means of seeds into the Berlin Botanical Gardens 

 for 1878. Two young plants were obtained from that estab- 

 lishment for Kew in 1879, an ^ ^ ve years afterward one of 

 them, a male, flowered and was figured in the Botanical 

 Alagazine,\. 6776. Shortly after this the second plant flowered 

 and proved to be a female ; the photograph reproduced on 

 page 259 represents the latter in fruit here in February last. 

 This plant is only four feet high, and it has a naked stem 

 a foot long, by one and a half inches in diameter, with an 

 onion-like base. The leaves are a yard long by two feet 

 across ; the pinnae are smooth, pointed, dark green on both 

 sides ; the petiole channeled and covered with gray fur- 

 furaceous scales. The female spadix is slender, four feet 

 long, with an elegant panicle, bearing pea-like fruits of a 

 bright scarlet color. These remain on the plant several 

 months, and as they are ornamental they add considerably 

 to the beauty of the plant. Mr. Wendland, of Hanover, 

 informs me that he has obtained several crops of perfect 

 seeds from his plants by placing the male inflorescence 

 upon the female plant when in flower. This Palm is as 

 elegant as Geonoma gracilis and as sturdy as a Kentia. It 

 deserves to take a prominent place among garden Palms, 



*This is the Hamamelis arbor ea of Masters [Gardeners' Chronicle. iS 

 which is referred by Hooker to H. Japonica. 



Ii, 216, f. 38), 



