448 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 187. 



sional points at greater elevation. Of humbler plants, Henchera 

 pubcscens and Linn a a borealis are the most conspicuous, the 

 latter, in great profusion and of great vigor, spreading widely 

 under the adjacent Pines and Hemlocks, where it seems per- 

 fectly at home. One can scarcely imagine a more perfect 

 example of a high northern flora localized on a few square 

 rods, because of favorable temperature conditions. 



As if to give emphasis to this little boreal colony among the 

 rocks, there is found, scarce two hundred yards away, a narrow 

 intervale bordering the stream, which here makes another 

 abrupt turn. Upon this alluvial bottom grow a score or more 

 of vigorous Papaws (Aximinia triloba), with trunks six, eight 

 and ten inches in diameter. Their lustrous dark green and 

 pendent leaves mark them at a distance as distinct from any 

 other native tree, and suggest a grove of Horse Chestnuts. 

 They must have been here a long time, for they seem perfectly 

 established, fruit readily, and young trees are not uncommon. 

 One such clump, strangely placed high and dry on the border 

 of the dusty pike two hundred yards away, seems quite suc- 

 cessful in its struggle for existence. Professor Porter long ago 

 told me that the Papaw followed the Juniata, and was found at 

 the mouth of Spruce Creek. He may have referred to these 

 sam e trees. I know of no others to the north, and infer that these 

 mark the furthest pointf or this species in the mountain districts. 



A fine Aristolochia Sipho, clambering over and well-nigh 

 smothering a Red Cedar, seemed to add to the southern char- 

 acter of this Papaw bottom. 



A grove of stately White Pines completes the attractions of 

 this unique spot, which is a favorite picnicking ground for the 

 neighborhood. In the early summer such parties frequently 

 make ice-cream on the spot, using the ice taken out of the 

 holes in the rocks. 



State College, Pa. W. A. BuckllOllt. 



Notes on North American Trees. — XXVIII. 



THE synonymy of the Texas Cercis, or Red Bud, is 

 peculiar. This plant appears to have been first col- 

 lected by Berlandier, in the region of the lower Rio Grande, 

 as long ago as November, 1828, one of his specimens of 

 that date being preserved in the Gray Herbarium. Lind- 

 heimer, many years afterward, found it at New Braunfels 

 and sent it to Engelmann, who called it Cercis reniformis, 

 but did not publish his name, or anything about the plant. 

 Gray, in the second part of the " Planta? Lindheimerianse " 

 (Bos/. Jour. Nat. Hist., 1850, p. 177), was the first author 

 to describe it, making it a variety of C. occidenialis, " var. 

 floribus etiam paulo minoribus , foliis supra nitidioribus," refer- 

 ring to the C. reniformis, Engelmann, but without taking up 

 Engelmann's manuscript name for his variety and without 

 giving it another. Torrey next mentioned it in 1859 in 

 the " Botany of the Mexican Boundary Survey" as C. occi- 

 denialis, confounding it with the California species, and 

 Hemsley, much later, did the same in his " Botany of the 

 Biological Survey of Central America." Watson, in his 

 "Bibliographical Index to North American Botany," next 

 called the Texas Cercis C. occidenialis, var. Texensis, but in 

 the "Botany of California," and later, in a list of plants 

 from south-western Texas and northern Mexico, collected 

 chiefly by Dr. Edward Palmer in 1878-80, and published 

 in vol. xvii. of the Proceedings of the American Academy, 

 called it C. reniformis. This name, as of Engelmann, had, 

 moreover, appeared many years before without descrip- 

 tion in Roemer's work on Texas, in which it was, no 

 doubt, included by Scheele, who supplied the botanical 

 parts on the strength of specimens which Engelmann had 

 probably sent to the Berlin Herbarium, with which he was 

 always in active correspondence. 



From this it appears that the first published specific or 

 varietal name is Watson's C. occideti talis, var. Texensis, and 

 the Texas plant, being considered distinct from the Cali- 

 fornia species, should be called C. Texeiisis. 



Mr. Sereno Watson calls my attention to the fact that 

 the date of the publication of Ventenafs " Description des 

 Plantes Nouvelles et peu Connues Cultivees dans le Jardin 

 de J. M. Cels " is not 1803, as I had supposed, but 1800, 

 which, being the date of the publication of Robinia viscosa, 

 that name must take precedence of Robinia gluiinosa. 



C. S. Sargent. 



Filices Mexicanze. — I. 



WE take pleasure in offering our readers an enumera- 

 tion of the Ferns collected in the states of Nuevo 

 Leon, Jalisco, San Louis Potosi and Machoacan, Mexico, 

 during the seasons of 1888, 1889 and 1890, by C. G. Pringle, 

 of Charlotte, Vermont, with notes and descriptions of new 

 species and varieties by George E. Davenport, of Medford, 

 Massachusetts. 



Mr. Pringle's Fern collections are now so well known that 

 it may be of interest to preface these notes with some extracts 

 from his correspondence, in which he describes the regions 

 where, for the most part, the Ferns herein enumerated grew. 

 Writing from Chihuahua, under date of August 4th, 1888, he 

 thus described Monterey and vicinity, where, during the early 

 part of 1888, his collection was principally made : " Delightful 

 are my memories of Monterey, a quiet pleasant city, with 

 lofty precipitous mountains round about it on three sides, 

 mountains furrowed with canons shady with numerous 

 grand trees, and musical each with its clear, cold brook. 

 It is the paradise of Ferns ! Common as any weed on the 

 foot-hills which overlook the city was Adiantum tricholepis, 

 so rare hereaway. On limestone ledges or bluffs, soft 

 and crumbling, whose bases were laved by water, was 

 Aneimia adiantifolia. A. Mexicana was very abundant on 

 moist shaded banks of the base of the Sierra Madre. Aspi- 

 dium trifoliatwn on limestone ledges dripping with water. 

 On moist shaded banks Cheilanthes meifolia (Palmer's find of 

 1880) was abundant ; with it a Pelloea which I don't know, and 

 an Aspidium strange to me. What I guess to be Llavia 

 cordifolia was common near brooks of the mountains, and 

 rare there a Polypodium which I never saw, and in their dark, 

 cold nooks still another Polypodium, with annual fronds. 

 Here, of course, Aspidium patens was luxuriant, and some- 

 times Pteris Cretica." 



Pellaaflexuosa, Cheilanthes, leucopoda and Cheilanthes aspera 

 are some of the other Ferns mentioned by Mr. Pringle in the 

 letter just quoted. Subsequently, on his return home to 

 Charlotte, he sent to me the following interesting account of 

 " The Haunts of Ferns about Gaudalajara " : 



" Some six miles northward from the city the great St. 

 James River (Rio Grande de Santiago) which carries the over- 

 flow of Lake Chapala down to the Pacific, falling more than 

 5,000 feet in a course of 250 miles, has cut a chasm through 

 the plains which the proud city crowns, and among various 

 chains of low mountains which interrupt those plains and 

 this chasm is the great barranca of Gaudalajara. You stand 

 on the verge of the plain and see the river rushing white 

 1,500 feet below you. Beneath your feet are dizzy cliffs on 

 cliffs, steep grassy slopes and still deeper descents which are 

 a luxuriant growth of tropical shrubs. Here and there, over 

 these steeps, springs start from the rock or rise from the soil, 

 and streams leap down to the river. Against the face of fear- 

 ful precipices they hang as a slender veil of a waterfall, or they 

 saturate the rich soil of the thickets. All the diverse situations 

 on the slopes of the great barranca are the favorite haunts 

 of some Fern or other, whether it be the dry cliffs in sun or 

 shade, the ledges of cliffs sprayed by falling water, the 

 deep shade of thickets clustered by brook-sides, the cool and 

 moist grassy banks, or the mossy banks and ledges in the 

 humid forests near the river. 



" Down to the river from among the hills come lesser canons, 

 each with its noisy brook, which sometimes pours over a 

 precipice in its way, and diffuses over the adjacent walls a per- 

 petual mist or spray. 



" Again, just north of the city walls, a strange thing has hap- 

 pened. The occasional floods from the plains above have cut 

 gullies, sometimes broad, grassy and shaded with trees ; some- 

 times too narrow to admit the passage of your body. The 

 walls of these are twenty to fifty feet high, perpendicular, firm 

 sand or gravel, more or less moist. From the foot of these 

 walls water drips, and close by a a brook flows. 



" Still, again, there are conditions favorable to Ferns supplied 

 by man. It is customary to mark the bounds of highways and 

 fields by trenches five to ten feet deep. Along the edges. of 

 these are planted, or grow spontaneously, Cactuses and shrubs, 

 so that shade is provided. 



" At the end of my stay I crept for a long way through the 

 vegetation filling a trench of this sort which borders the 

 north side of the highway leading westward from the city 

 gate ; and I remember declaring to a friend, as I came out of 

 it, that I had seen on its steep moist banks nearly all the Ferns 

 which I had met with in all the region roundabout. 



