June io, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



275 



which some forty species are now distinguished and which 

 contains some of the most ornamental and valued of garden 

 plants, is barely represented in the North American silva, and 

 of the four or five species which inhabit our territory only one 

 is admitted as a tree. This is the familiar Burning Bush or 

 Wahoo of the eastern states, Evonymus atropurpureus, a small 

 tree often met with in country gardens, although far less 

 attractive as a garden-plant than some of the Old World species. 

 We note, in passing, that the author adopts the early and classi- 

 cal orthography, and writes Evonymus after the manner of all 

 modern continental authors, although Americans and English- 

 men usually still write Euonymus. 



The genera of Rhamnacea, most botanists will agree, are 

 difficult to limit satisfactorily ; and in some' genera like 

 Rhamnus and Ceanothus specific characters are not easy to 

 find. Arborescent representatives of six genera are admitted 

 into The Silva ; of these, three are confined to the south Flori- 

 dan keys, one is Texan. Rhamnus extends across the conti- 

 nent, as does Ceanothus, although it is in California only that 

 species of this last genus attain the dignity of small trees. 

 Some idea of the different views competent botanists may 

 sometimes have in regard to plants in this family can be had 

 from an examination of the synonymy of the plant here called 

 Rhamnidium ferreum, the Black Iron-wood of the Florida 

 keys and of the West Indies — a tree which has been referred 

 to no less than seven different genera, to all of which it bears 

 not a little resemblance. Professor Sargent now enlarges the 

 Brazilian genus Rhamnidium to receive it, although it is a 

 question whether it could not better form the type of a new 

 genus, for where there are such wide differences of opinion 

 about the genus to which a plant belongs, it is pretty safe 

 to say that it does not belong to any recognized genus, and 

 is best considered a new type. 



None of the North American Rhamnacea become trees of 

 large size, and none of them possess any great economic im- 

 portance with the exception of the Pacific coast Frangula 

 (Rhamnus Purshiana), here considered to include the Cali- 

 fornia as well as the more northern tree. This is the largest 

 of the North American species of Rhamnus, becoming some- 

 times a handsome tree forty or fifty feet high in the forests of 

 conifers which surround the shores of Puget Sound. The 

 bark contains to a large degree the cathartic properties pecu- 

 liar to all the Buckthorns, and has become an article of some 

 commercial importance, supplying as it does the basis of the 

 popular remedy Cascarasagrada. Two plates are devoted to 

 this species, the first showing the ordinary California form, 

 with thick, rather narrow, almost persistent leaves ; the other, 

 the form with the large thin leaves developed in the moist 

 mild climate'of the north-west coast, a curious narrow-leaved 

 mountain form found on the California Sierras, which Profes- 

 sor Greene considers a distinct species, and the tomentose 

 variety of southern California and Mexico. 



But that portion of the volume which is devoted to the Sa- 

 pindacea will probably be found the most interesting to the 

 general reader and to all persons who are fond of trees as 

 trees without regard to their botanical characters and relation- 

 ships, for in this family are included the Horse-chestnuts and 

 the Maples, two genera which contain some of the most beau- 

 tiful and highly esteemed of all ornamental trees. North 

 America boasts of a number of Horse-chestnuts, Buckeyes as 

 they are more commonly called in this country, and of these 

 three grow to the size of trees. The genus is not a large one 

 in the number of species, although gardens have long been 

 decorated by a number of hybrid and seminal varieties raised 

 chiefly from the European Horse-chestnut, a tree much more 

 familiar to most persons, except professional botanists, than 

 any of our native species. The true home of this plant re- 

 mained, it appears, a mystery for fully three centuries after its 

 introduction into the gardens of western Europe, and it is only 

 in quite recent years that it has been found growing wild in 

 the mountains of northern Greece. It is interesting to note 

 that it reached western Europe by the way of Constantinople, 

 where it appears to have been commonly cultivated before 

 1557 ; at least, in that year the Flemish traveler, Busbeck, then 

 Ambassador of the Archduke Ferdinand, found it in the capi- 

 tal of Solyman II., and sent it to Mattiolus, in Vienna, from 

 which city it gradually spread through Europe and North 

 America. The fruit first known as Castanets equina was so 

 called because of its reputed efficacy in the treatment of horses 

 for broken wind. None of the American species equal the 

 Grecian tree in size or in the beauty of their flowers, although 

 our Alleghany /Esculus octandra, or Sweet Buckeye, rises to 

 the respectable height of ninety feet, and the flowers of the 

 California representative of the genus are extremely delicate 

 and beautiful. More beautiful than any of our Horse-chestnuts 



is the curious Spanish Buckeye, a small tree of Texas and of 

 the adjacent parts of Mexico, and the only representative of 

 the genus Ungnadia, which, we read, is one of the most at- 

 tractive and ornamental of the small trees of North America, 

 when its branches in early spring, still bare of leaves, are cov- 

 ered with clusters of bright pink flowers, which enliven the 

 sombre glades and mountain-slopes of a region in which trees 

 and shrubs with showy flowers are not very abundant. This 

 plant has been occasionally cultivated in our southern states, 

 and ought to find a place in the gardens of those parts of the 

 world where the climate is not too severe for it. 



North America is not rich in the number of its Maples as 

 compared with eastern Asia, which must be considered the 

 headquarters of the genus, although nine species are found in 

 different parts of the continent and are described in this vol- 

 ume. They are more common in the east than in the west, 

 and, while the number of species is not great, individuals are 

 so multiplied in some parts of the country as to make them 

 important and conspicuous features of our forest-vegetation. 

 This is particularly true of the Scarlet Maple and of the Sugar 

 Maple, which are among the largest, and, economically, the 

 most valuable trees of the genus, especially the latter, which 

 is one of the most important of our timber-trees, besides fur- 

 nishing nine-tenths of all the maple-sugar manufactured in 

 the world. These two trees vary greatly in the size and shape 

 of their leaves, even in a genus remarkable for leaf variation, 

 and we should have been glad to have seen another plate de- 

 voted to the large-leaved form of the Sugar Maple, which is 

 common in Michigan and other western states, and which 

 varies so conspicuously from the typical eastern Sugar Maple 

 that many observers, diifering from the views expressed 

 by Professor Sargent, regard it as a distinct species. Jus- 

 tice, too, can hardly be done to the Red Maple without some 

 pictorial representation of the narrow, nearly entire-leaved 

 form, which is often met with in the swamps of the Atlantic 

 sea-board south of New Jersey, and which, in some parts of 

 the Gulf states, is one of the most common forms assumed by 

 this very polymorphous species. But of course it would be 

 impossible to illustrate all the forms of foliage assumed by many 

 of our trees, especially those which grow over wide areas of di- 

 versified climate. Sixteen plates are devoted to the genus. 

 Certainly nothing can be more successful than Mr. Faxon's 

 rendering of the graceful foliage, flowers and fruit of the Box 

 Elder in one of the best plates of the volume, and equally 

 good are his figures of the less familiar West Indian and Flor- 

 idan Exothea and of the fruit of Sapindus Saponaria, the West 

 Indian Soap-tree, " the tree that furnishes sope berries like a 

 musket bullet that washeth as white sope." These, with an- 

 other species of Sapindus and with Hypelate, complete the 

 list of trees described in the second volume, which in con- 

 scientious research, in the wide range of learning and the 

 sound judgment displayed, is altogether a credit to American 

 scholarship. 



It is dedicated to the memory of George Engelmann, the 

 German physician, who made for himself a home in St. Louis, 

 and, in the hours snatched froni a large and successful prac- 

 tice, found time to become one of the wisest and profoundest 

 of the botanists who have studied the American flora, and the 

 acknowledged authority upon some of the most difficult fami- 

 lies of plants. A worthier name could not be put in the place 

 of honor in a volume of this character, for no man has ever 

 studied our trees more faithfully or gathered together so much 

 information about the Oaks, the Pines, the Junipers and the 

 Firs of the silva of North America. 



Notes. 



A school of biology, in connection with the Sea-side Assem- 

 bly, will be opened on the 7th of Julyat Avon-by-the-Sea, New 

 Jersey. 



The Yellow-wood trees just passing out of bloom in Central 

 Park have been unusually beautiful this year. Some of the 

 specimens are forty feet high and nearly as broad. 



The great Chrysanthemum exhibition which is to be held in 

 this city the first week of November will cover 30,000 square 

 feet of surface. $6,500 have been offered for premiums. 



The twenty-third session of the American Pomological So- 

 ciety will be held at Washington on the 22d, 23d, 24th and 25th 

 of September next. Secretary Brackett promises that the 

 official programme will be issued at an early day. 



At the Geneva (New York) Experiment Station some care- 

 ful tests.'were made last year between imported and American- 

 grown seed of Cabbage and Cauliflower, and the result con- 



