August 26, 189 1.] 



Garden and Forest. 



397 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY 1SY 



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, AUGUST 26, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The Northern Pitch Pine. (With figure.) 397 



Monuments in Public Places. — 1 397 



Blacu Tea and Green 39 s 



How We Renewed an Old Place.— XVII Mrs. J. H. Robbins. 399 



Dijon. — II Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 400 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 401 



Cultural Department : — Some Hybrid Gladioli W. E. Endicoti. 403 



Spring-flowering Bulbs J. N. Gerard. 403 



Cycads IV. N. Taplin. 404 



The Blackberry Crop E. P. Powell. 404 



Correspondence : — " A Massachusetts Forest." .... Charles Eliot. 405 



The Florists' Convention : — I. The President's Address M. H. Norton. 405 



Review of New Plants : New French Roses Ernest Asmtis. 405 



Bedding Roses Dingee & Conard Company, Wm. Falconer. 406 



New Roses J. C. Vaughan. 406 



Rose Novelties : Hybrid Perpetuals E. G. Hill. 406 



New Hardy Roses IV. H. Spoouer. 407 



Azaleas for Forcing James Dean. 407 



New Pansies Denys Zirngiebel. 407 



The Construction and Heating of Greenhouses F. R. Pearson. 407 



Notes 4° 8 



Illustration : — Northern Pitch Pine (Pinus rigida), Fig. 65 402 



The Northern Pitch Pine. 



INQUIRIES about this tree often reach us from Europe, 

 especially from France and. Germany, where the im- 

 pression prevails that it is the species which produces the 

 pitch pine of commerce, generally known in this country as 

 southern pine or Georgia pine, and now exported from the 

 maritime region of the southern Atlantic and Gulf-states to 

 Europe and South America in large quantities. The ver- 

 nacular name is, in part at least, responsible for this con- 

 fusion. It should be remembered that all our Pines on 

 which the leaves appear in twos or in threes in the same 

 cluster, and which produce coarse resinous wood distinctly 

 marked by broad bands of dark-colored cells, are called 

 Pitch Pines, and that the Pitch Pine in New England and 

 in New Jersey is an entirely different tree from the Pitch 

 Pine in Georgia, or from the Pitch Pine in California ; and 

 that there are more than a dozen different trees in the 

 United States to which this name is applied by the people 

 living in the regions which these trees inhabit. 



The northern Pitch Pine is the Pinus rigida of botanists. 

 The wood of this tree was formerly used in building in 

 those parts of the country where it was found before cheap 

 transportation brought the more valuable material of the 

 southern Pine-forests to northern markets. Now it is 

 rarely manufactured into lumber, and during the last 

 twenty years it is not probable that a single foot of it has 

 been exported from the United States. The two Pitch 

 Pines of North America, which now possess commercial 

 importance, are the Pine of the south, Pinus paluslris, and 

 the western or Oregon Pine, Pinus ponderosa ; and it is 

 from the forests of the former that the pitch pine so largely 

 used in the north is derived, and that furnish all the 

 American hard pine sold in Europe. 



The northern Pitch Pine is a valuable and interesting tree 

 in spite of the fact that the lumber it yields is not of the 

 best quality. It grows naturally on poor and sterile land, 



usually on sandy barrens, and less frequently in sour 

 swampy soil. Its presence is a good indication that the 

 soil which bears it is too poor to supply other trees with 

 sufficient plant-food to compete successfully with this tree. 

 Once in possession of a sandy plain on our northern sea- 

 board no other tree can wrest this advantage from the 

 Pitch Pine, and its hold upon existence is strengthened by 

 the peculiar power it possesses of reproducing itself from 

 seed. Seedlings spring up in great quantities in the neigh- 

 borhood of seed-bearing trees, and grow rapidly in what 

 would appear to be most unfavorable situations ; and it 

 can be raised from seed sown in the open ground more 

 easily and with greater certainty than any other tree which 

 is hardy in the northern states. In this capacity of the seed 

 to germinate readily will be found the greatest value of this 

 tree, which seems destined sooner or later to be used in 

 covering the great tracts of unproductive land which occur 

 in the neighborhood of our northern seaboard. Its value 

 and adaptability for this purpose has already been proved. 

 Thousands of acres of the New England coast have been 

 covered with forests of this tree, raised from seed at a mere 

 nominal cost, and nothing but the dread of fire prevents the 

 extension of these forests over still larger areas. What 

 appears to be barren soil, such as occurs on some parts of 

 Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and in southern New Jersey, 

 will in forty or fifty years produce a forest of Pitch Pine of 

 considerable money value for the fuel which it contains. 

 No other method has yet been found by which such waste 

 lands can be made to yield any return whatever, and any 

 comprehensive system of agriculture must look to covering 

 sooner or later these lands with trees. The Pitch Pine 

 planted on barren soil will not grow to a large size or pro- 

 duce anything more valuable than fire-wood. It will, how- 

 ever, in a comparatively short time yield on the poorest 

 land several cords of fuel to the acre ; and the fuel value of 

 this wood is unsurpassed by that of any other inhabitant of 

 our northern forests, and for many purposes, such as brick- 

 making and for charcoal, it is extremely valuable. When 

 individual specimens have happened to grow in good soil 

 they have sent up tall stout stems two or three feet in 

 diameter. These trunks were eagerly sought for in the 

 early settlement of the country, and were manufactured 

 into timber and flooring of excellent quality and remarka- 

 ble durability. In some parts of New Jersey houses tim- 

 bered and floored with this wood a hundred years ago are 

 still standing, and are in a perfect state of preservation. 

 Such trees have now almost entirely disappeared, however, 

 and there will probably never be a question of planting the 

 Pitch Pine for timber, for where the soil is good enough 

 to produce large individuals with straight clean trunks 

 it will support a forest of more valuable species. 



As an ornamental tree Pinus rigida, although it is not 

 suited to decorate a trim lawn, can be used sometimes to 

 advantage when it is desired to produce bold, picturesque 

 effects or to clothe a barren knoll with verdure. It grows 

 rapidly ; the trunk, covered with dark, deeply furrowed 

 bark, broken into large, square plates, is always a hand- 

 some object, and the color of the coarse, pale-green foliage 

 makes a good contrast with the other trees of our woods 

 and plantations. 



The form this tree assumes, when it stands by itself and 

 has the opportunity to develop the stout branches which 

 are characteristic of single individuals, is well shown in 

 the picture on page 402, made from a photograph of a 

 peculiarly picturesque Massachusetts tree, for which we 

 are indebted to Dr. W. H. Rollins, of Boston. 



Monuments in Public Places. — I. 



ORE and more, as the years go by, the questions in- 

 volved in the placing of statues and other monu- 

 ments in our parks, streets and city squares must attract 

 serious attention from all who have the artistic interests of 

 the community at heart. These questions are three in 

 number : Is the person or event to be commemorated 



