3i8 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 176. 



short one indeed, all the horticultural efforts of such establish- 

 ments being devoted to securing during a couple of months 

 in summer a glaring display of tender bedding plants. Now 

 many of these gardens contain large collections of shrubs 

 often tastefully grouped and arranged, while the use of hardy 

 perennials has also increased. It is interesting to trace the 

 influence of the Arboretum in this increase in the popular 

 knowledge of hardy plants and to find that some of the most 

 popular shrubs in the gardens of the northern states were first 

 raised and cultivated in this country by Mr. Dawson a very 

 few years ago. 



surface ; they are yellow-green above and pale on the lower 

 surface. The flowers make their appearance late in May of 

 in the early days of June, and are produced in rather small, 

 flat and few-flowered clusters. The fruit, which grows rapidly, 

 ripens in July, and is white or lead color, but not very showy 

 or handsome, as the color is dull, and only a few fruits ripen 

 in the clusters. The color of the branches in winter is the 

 most ornamental thing about this shrub. They are bright red 

 purple, especially the portion produced during the previous 

 summer, and make this plant a conspicuous and interesting 

 object. At the season of the year it is stripped of its foliage, and 



54. — Arbutus Arizonica. — See page 317. 



But the remembrance that the Cornels, like so many other 

 native shrubs, were first cultivated in the Arboretum on a 

 large scale has carried us too far away from the consideration 

 of the individual value of the species. Another of the early- 

 flowering Cornels is the so-called Red Osier Dogwood, Cortins 

 stolonifera, so named on account of its habit of spreading and 

 multiplying freely by prostrate or subterraneous shoots. By 

 these, if the plant happens to find itself in the deep, rich, wet 

 soil it delights in, it soon forms great broad clusters of grace- 

 ful branches, six or eight feet tall. The leaves are lanceolate 

 or ovate, and vary considerably in size and shape on different 

 plants, and in the amount of pubescence which clothes their 



interest and variety in the composition of gardens and 

 shrubberies is often lacking, a plant of this Cornel lights 

 up a whole shrubbery, and makes, when seen against 

 a background of snow, a bright spot upon which the 

 eye delights to rest. No other plant is so well suited to 

 produce this sort of effect, with the exception of an Old World 

 Cornel, closely related to C. stolonifera, which shall be men- 

 tioned a little later, when we come to speak of the foreign 

 species. C. stolonifera is a northern plant, and loves a cold 

 climate and moist soil. It grows in the east, from New Bruns- 

 wick as far south as the Potomac, and extends along the 

 shores of the Great Lakes far into British America and 



