September. 23, iSgi.] 



Garden and Forest 



445 



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 TOST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles : — The Possibilities of Economic Horticulture 

 Monuments ill Public Plnces. — IV 



r AG f . 



445 



■ -14" 



Northern Plants in Pennsylvania Professor IV. A. Buckhout. 447 



Notes on North American Trees. — XXVIII Professor C. S. Sargent. 448 



Filices Mexicaiue. — I. (With figure.) George E. Davenport. 448 



Foreign Corresrondence : — London Letter W. Colt/ring. 450 



The Bermuda Onion. (With figure.) Russell /fastings. 451 



Cultural Department: — Insecticides for Greenhouse Plants... . }V. H. Taplin. 452 



Border Flowers in Autumn E. O . Prpet. 452 



The Water Garden J.N. Gerard. 455 



In the Vegetable Garden S. 453 



Pelargonium Blight, Nematodes in Zinnias.. .. Professor Byron D. //aisled. 453 



Cestrum elegans, Peristrophe speciosa '/'. D. Hatfield. 453 



Correspondence: — The Boston Public Garden Sidney Hyde. 454 



Plants Tor Shady Places J. J. D. 454 



Periodical Literature 454 



Exhibitions : — The Elizabeth Horticultural Society 455 



Notes 456 



Illustrations :— Asplenium Pringlei, Fig. 71 449 



Harvesting Onions in Bermuda, Fig. 72 . 451 



The Possibilities of Economic Horticulture. 



" POME of the Possibilities of Economical Botany" was 

 ^3 the subject selected by Professor Goodale for his 

 valedictory address as President of the Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, and it is one of exceptional in- 

 terest. An attractive field of speculation opens before us 

 at once as we begin to inquire what plants the coming 

 man will use for food and forage, for timber and tanning, 

 for fibre and cordage, for perfumes and flavors and medi- 

 cines. This is especially true when we are reminded that 

 of the more than one hundred and ten thousand species of 

 flowering plants known to exist on the globe, scarcely one 

 percent, are utilized to any considerable extent by man. If 

 we include the Ferns, Mosses and Liverworts, the Algae, 

 Fungi and Lichens, the percentage of utilized plants will 

 be much smaller still. The questions discussed by Pro- 

 fessor Goodale were : How can this, short list of useful 

 plants be increased to advantage ? What likelihood is 

 there that our future food-supply will include other vege- 

 tables, fruits and cereals than those we now use? Will 

 new fibres replace those we now spin and weave? Will 

 new remedial agents be discovered among plants now un- 

 known or neglected ? 



Omitting a consideration of the cereals we find that the 

 plants which would be more strictly classed as horticul- 

 tural. have undergone remarkable transformations under 

 cultivation. Wild Cabbage, a tall perennial weed of open 

 growth, shows to the unscientific observer scarcely any 

 likeness to the garden forms with which he is familiar. 

 The largely developed leaves of some of these forms are 

 imbricated and overlapped into a compact spherical, con- 

 ical or flattened head ; others, like Borecole and Kale, 

 have branching leaves ; in some, like Broccoli and 

 Cauliflower, the flower-stems have been transformed into 

 fleshy edible masses ; in others, as in the Kohl-Rabi and 



Turnip-rooted Cabbage, the stem or root has been devel- 

 oped into a large ball, and there are others still with modi- 

 fications in the ribs of the leaves or in the axils of the 

 shoots, or in several organs together, to produce such va- 

 rieties as Brussels Sprouts, the Marrow Kales and many 

 more. The Cabbages have been cultivated since the ear- 

 liest historic time, and no one knows how many years of 

 selection have been needed to produce these striking 

 morphological changes. But the Tomato is younger as a 

 garden-plant. It is a native of America, but, although cul- 

 tivated more than three centuries ago in Europe, it has 

 come into general use only within the memory of men 

 still living. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to suppose 

 that there are many garden-plants now used only to a lim- 

 ited extent which merit a wider employment, and which 

 we may hope can be developed into much wider use. 

 Professor Goodale names some of these, and he also sug- 

 gests that we may expect to obtain from Japan, for exam- 

 ple, whose flora is closely related to our own, many other 

 vegetables which are already used there. Dr. Curtis, of 

 North Carolina, has suggested that we have in the unutil- 

 ized Mushrooms an immense amount of available food of 

 delicious quality, and we may add that researches now in 

 progress at the Experiment Station of Indiana prove that 

 many other Fungi furnish nutriment of the best quality, and 

 that they can be largely improved by careful selection. 



The improvement which has been made in oranges, 

 pears, apples and other fruits, within historic time, suggests 

 that there is an opportunity for much further develop- 

 ment, and Professor Goodale adds that there is no reason 

 whywe should not have strawberries without seeds, black- 

 berries and raspberries with only delicious pulp, and large 

 grapes as free from seeds as the small ones which we call 

 currants, but which are really grapes from Corinth. Core- 

 less apples and pears, stoneless cherries and plums, must 

 be propagated by bud division, it is true, but bananas and 

 pine-apples have been propagated in this way for centuries. 

 Then, many of our wild fruits are promising subjects for 

 selection and cultivation. The common Blueberry and its 

 allies are, no doubt, worth trying to improve, and so is the 

 Juneberry and others. The eastern coast of Asia will, beyond 

 question, add largely to our future fruits, and it cannot be 

 long before the list is considerably increased. Professor 

 Goodale went further, and discussed the probability of 

 new timbers and cabinet woods, new vegetable fibres and 

 tanning materials, new resins and new plants for fragrance 

 and flowers, and spoke of the need of systematically in- 

 vestigating plants of promise under the most exhaustive 

 conditions. When our botanical gardens, museums and 

 laboratories of economic botany, as well as our experi- 

 ment stations, work together, with the co-operation of all 

 persons interested in scientific matters in the domain 

 of commercial and industrial botany, we may reason- 

 ably hope for discoveries of immediate and growing im- 

 portance. 



But there are possibilities of horticulture in other direc- 

 tions which are well worth considering. As increasing 

 population presses upon the world's food-supply it is a 

 matter of interest to know to what extent the productive 

 powers of the earth can be increased. As new fruits and 

 vegetables are brought into use we ought to be learning 

 how to obtain the greatest quantity from a given area 

 within a given time, and with a given outlay of labor and 

 expense. Even now the difference between the amount of 

 wild fruit which an acre will naturally yield and the 

 amount of the same fruit which an equal area, carefully 

 prepared, will yield under cultivation is enormous. An 

 acre of wild Cranberry-vines, fighting for life with the 

 other vegetation in a swamp, would give but a few bushels 

 at most, and these could only be gathered at considerable 

 trouble ; but on the leveled and sanded bogs of Cape Cod 

 the uniformly loaded vines on a single acre have yielded 

 a hundred and fifty barrels, and even more, of choice fruit, 

 or a barrel of berries to every square rod. This is accom- 

 plished by thorough preparation, sleepless care, clean cul- 



