June 24, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



289 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — The Bermuda Juniper. (With figures.) 289 



The Lynn Public Forest 290 



Bristol Pond Bog F. H. Horsford. 290 



How We Renewed an Old Place. — X Mrs. J. H. Robbms. 291 



New or Little-known Plants : — New Orchids R. A. Rolfe. 292 



Foreign Correspondence :— Some New Plants in England . .IV. Watson. 293 



Cultural Department: — Stray Notes from the Arnold Arboretum P. C. 296 



Some Early Spirjeas J. G. Jack. 297 



Hardy Flower Garden O. O. 297 



Hardy Plants for Edging a Border J. N. Gerard. 298 



The Vegetable Garden Professor IV. F. Massey. 298 



The American Association of Nurserymen :— Annual Meetingat Minneapolis. — 

 II. The North-west as a Field for Nursery Extension, 



Professor Charles A. Keffer. 298 



Notes on Minnesota Horticulture Samuel B. Green. 299 



Recent Publications 299 



Notes 3°° 



Illustrations : — Old Cedar in Devonshire Churchyard, Bermuda, Fig. 51 294 



Juniperus Bermudiana in the Devonshire Marshes, Bermuda, Fig. 52.... 295 



The Bermuda Juniper. 



THE principal tree of the Bermuda flora is the Juniper, 

 which covers the islands and makes the conspicu- 

 ous feature of their vegetation. A few other trees grow 

 naturally on these islands, and several -others have been 

 carried to them by man and have now become more or 

 less firmly established. No tree but the Juniper, however, 

 makes much show on the islands, which, from a distance,* 

 seem to be completely covered with it. 



This Juniper has been growing on Bermuda for a long 

 time. The wood, in the condition of lignite, was found 

 at the depth of fifty feet below low-water mark during the 

 dredging operations undertaken by the British Govern- 

 ment in connection with the building of the Bermuda dry- 

 dock. Subsidence of land is slow unless it is the result of 

 some violent catastrophe, like an earthquake, and the fact 

 that this Juniper grew on ground which is now far below 

 the surface of the ocean is conclusive evidence that it has 

 occupied these islands for a period so long that the mind 

 of man, accustomed to measure time by years or by cen- 

 turies, cannot form a clear notion of its immensity. 



How did the Juniper first get to Bermuda ? By what 

 process did this tree, which is unlike other trees of its kind, 

 first appear on these minute islands remote from all other 

 land, and raised from the bed of the ocean by the patient 

 toil of insects, long after the neighboring continent had 

 assumed very nearly its present aspect? These are ques- 

 tions which present themselves to the student of nature as 

 he sails into the harbor of Hamilton and sees the low 

 islands about him everywhere clothed with this peculiar 

 tree. It was not a case of separate creation, for the idea 

 of the old philosophers, that plants and animals were 

 created as they now appear in the different parts of the 

 world where they occur, is no longer tenable, Man cer- 

 tainly did not bring the Juniper to Bermuda, for it is not 

 quite four hundred years yet since man first saw these 

 islands ; and it is not improbable that trees are still stand- 



ing which were growing when Juan Bermudez sighted the 

 islands which Oviedo, the first naturalist to write on the 

 New World, and a passenger with Bermudez on his ship 

 "La Garza," described as "the most remote of all the islands 

 yet found in the world." 



Fifty years ago these questions would not have been 

 easy to answer. Now the light which Darwin and Hooker 

 and Wallace and other naturalists, working on the lines 

 laid down by Darwin, have thrown on the origin of insular 

 floras makes it easy to find a simple and, probably, a cor- 

 rect solution of the presence of the Juniper on the Ber- 

 muda Islands. There is a Juniper in North America grow- 

 ing in nearly all parts of the continent, from Canada to 

 Florida, and from Cape Cod to Vancouver's Island ; this is 

 our so-called Red Cedar {Juniperus Virginiana), a tree 

 which, in all important respects, is very similar to the 

 Bermuda tree. It is a well-known fact that several of our 

 birds are very fond of the berries of the Red Cedar and 

 devour them in large quantities. To this is due the fact 

 that this tree is so generally scattered and multiplied 

 through the country, as birds void the hard stone-like 

 seeds without injuring their vitality, and so spread them 

 far and wide. There is evidence enough that our Red 

 Cedar was growing on this continent long before Bermuda 

 rose above the surface of the ocean ; and a bird, with his 

 crop full of Cedar-berries, may have been blown off from 

 the mainland and found a resting-place on the then barren 

 coral rocks, where the seeds he had brought found condi- 

 tions which favored their germination. Our continental 

 birds, in several species, now visit Bermuda every year in 

 considerable numbers, and this habit must have had its 

 origin in accident. The Red Cedar once established in 

 Bermuda, it is easy to imagine that the climate and soil 

 conditions of its new environment would gradually change 

 its appearance, just as all plants are gradually modified by 

 the influences of their surroundings ; and that in time, 

 after the lapse of countless years, that it would take on 

 its present appearance and stand for what naturalists call 

 a species, that is, a modified or differentiated form of some 

 other form or species. And, after all, the differences which 

 distinguish the continental Juniper from its insular de- 

 scendant are not very great. The branches of the island 

 tree have grown stouter and tougher through their long 

 struggles against the ocean gales ; the roots have learned 

 the secret of holding on to bare rocks or of penetrating 

 deep into their interstices. The foliage has lost its dark 

 green tints and is now a pale blue-gray. The leaves are 

 blunter and are furnished on the back with a gland or 

 resin duct. The fruit is somewhat larger, and the heart- 

 wood is not so bright a red and is rather less fragrant than 

 that of the Red Cedar. 



An interesting thing about the Bermuda Cedar is its abil- 

 ity to grow apparently equally well in very different situ- 

 ations. It flourishes on the dry porous limestone-hills and 

 grows as freely on the brackish swamp-lands which occur 

 in some parts of the islands. It is not unusual to find trees 

 of a wide geographical range, and therefore subject to dif- 

 ferent climatic surroundings, which seek to adapt them- 

 selves to them by selecting situations which in one region 

 are at the sea-level and in others are at the top of high 

 mountains. Many conifers which grow at the north at 

 the sea-level are found in the south only at considerable 

 elevations above the ocean ; and the Red Cedar itself, 

 which grows at the north on high dry uplands, inhabits, in 

 Florida, swamps which are inundated during a considerable 

 part of the year, and in the dry climate of the western part 

 of the continent occurs only at high elevations. But the 

 Bermuda Cedar grows as well in one place as it does in 

 another, although climatic conditions do not, of course, 

 differ perceptibly in different parts of this small group of 

 islands. 



Large individuals are no longer common ; the axe of the 

 wood-cutter and the ship-builder long ago swept them 

 away. Here and there a venerable trunk may still be 

 found, but among the large trees still growing on the island 



