November 4, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



517 



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, NOVEMBER 4, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles :— The American Buckeyes. (With figure.) 517 



The Delayed Frost 518 



Famous Trees in Pennsylvania 519 



Filices Mexicanse. — III. (With figure.) George E. Davenport. 519 



Holiday Notes from Switzerland. — I George Nicholson. 520 



New or Little-known Plants : — Dendrobium Phalaenopsis W. Watson. 520 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 522 



Cultural Department : — The Present Status of Native Plum Culture, 



Professor E. S. GofiF. 523 



Roses W. H. Taplin. 524 



Pot-plants for Spring Use T. P. Hatfield. 524 



Notes from the Harvard Botanic Garden M. Barker. 525 



The Cranberry Scald Professor Byron D. Halsted. 525 



Correspondence : — In the Shore Towns of Massachusetts. — I... . J. B. Harrison. 526 



Exhibitions : — United States Nurseries, Short Hills, New Jersey G. 527 



Notes 528 



Illustrations : — Nothochlsena rigida, Fig. 80 521 



The California Buckeye [JSsculus Californica), Fig. 81 523 



The American Buckeyes. 



THE North American forests are comparatively rich in 

 Horse-chestnuts, or Buckeyes, as we are still apt to 

 call them in America. The genus ^Esculus, as it is now 

 known, to which these plants belong, only contains thirteen 

 species. Eight of these are American, if we include two 

 little-known shrubs of southern Mexico and of the north- 

 ern countries of South America, and another shrub of Lower 

 California. Outside of America the genus is represented 

 in south-western Europe, in the tropical forests of India, 

 Assam and Burma, in northern and in central China, and 

 in Japan. The different species fall naturally into two dis- 

 tinct sections. In the first the flowers are furnished with 

 five petals, and the walls of the fruit, or pods, are thick and 

 covered on their outer surface with sharp prickles. The 

 common Horse-chestnut, which is a native of the moun- 

 tains of Greece and which is now one of the most familiar 

 of all ornamental trees, and the Indian species belong to 

 this section. In the plants of the other, the flowers have 

 only four petals, and the fruit is smooth with thin walls ; 

 they are American, Chinese and Japanese, and to them the 

 name of Pavia was formerly given. The two sections are 

 united, however, by one of our American trees, the so- 

 called Ohio Buckeye, which has the flowers of the Pavias 

 and rather thin-walled fruit, which, in its early stages 

 at least, is covered with the prickles of the true Horse- 

 chestnuts. And so it has seemed better to consider the 

 Horse-chestnuts and the Buckeyes generically identical. 



Five species grow naturally within the territory of the 

 United States. None of these are so often planted here, 

 however, as the European Horse-chestnut, and none of 

 them, perhaps, are individually as beautiful as that tree, 

 which surpasses all other members of the genus in the 

 massiveness of its port, in the density of its foliage and in 

 the magnificence of its great flower-clusters. But the mas- 

 siveness and the formality of the head of the Horse-chest- 

 nut, while they make it a splendid object in some situations, 



render it a difficult tree to associate properly with other 

 trees ; and it usually looks out of place as an element in a 

 picturesque landscape. Its value, however, for formal 

 plantations, either in city streets or in the avenues of 

 architectural gardens, was recognized in Europe two cen- 

 turies ago, and no other tree has yet been found which 

 surpassed it for such purposes. 



If our American Buckeyes are not equal to their Old 

 World relative in breadth and solidity of head and in floral 

 splendor, they, in their turn, surpass it in grace and in their 

 adaptability to harmonize with the other trees of the for- 

 est ; and for general planting in this country they are, 

 therefore, more valuable, especially the Sweet Buckeye, 

 the fEsculus octandra of botanists, the largest, or, at any 

 rate, the tallest of the American species. It is an inhab- 

 itant of the Alleghany region from western Pennsylvania 

 to Georgia and Alabama, and of the Mississippi Valley. 

 When it grows a't its best, as on some of the slopes of the 

 high mountains of Carolina and Tennessee, it is a noble 

 tree, sending up a straight shaft two or three feet in diam- 

 eter, sometimes free of branches for sixty or seventy feet, 

 and often reaching a total height of ninety feet. The head 

 is rather narrow and formal, and the branches are small 

 and often pendulous. The leaves are of ample size, and 

 are dark yellow-green, and rather paler on the lower than 

 on the upper surface. The flowers are peculiar in the un- 

 equal size of the petals, the limbs of the upper pair being 

 much smaller than the others and borne on slender claws 

 which much exceed the calyx in length. The fruit is pear- 

 shaped, often two inches long, and is beautiful and con- 

 spicuous. There is a variety of this tree found in some 

 parts of the southern Alleghanies and in Texas with red or 

 purple flowers. The yellow and red-flowered varieties 

 are both hardy as far north as New England, and they are 

 both useful ornamental trees, growing rapidly in good soil 

 and harmonizing with the native trees of the north ; and, 

 unlike the Old World Horse-chesnut, they are not seriously 

 injured by fungal diseases. 



The so-called Ohio, or Fetid, Buckeye, fEsculus glabra, is 

 the second of the Horse-chestnuts of eastern America which 

 grows to the size of a tree. It is not as large as the Sweet 

 Buckeye, and it is unusual to find it more than thirty feet 

 in height, although sometimes, under the most favorable 

 conditions, it grows to fully twice that size. The trunk 

 and branches are covered with dark bark which separates 

 readily into thin scales, and these make it easy to recog- 

 nize the tree at a glance, even in winter and while still very 

 young. The foliage is lustrous, dark yellow-green and 

 rather conspicuous from the yellow midribs and veins of 

 the leaflets. The flowers are of a pale yellow-green color, 

 the petals nearly of the same length, although the lateral 

 pair are much broader than the others. The Ohio Buck- 

 eye, which got its name from the fact that it was first 

 known from the banks of the Ohio in Pennsylvania, be- 

 longs to the valley of the Mississippi ; it is nowhere very 

 common, and is even less common now than it was a hun- 

 dred years ago. This is due in part, no doubt, to the fact 

 that this tree always selects rich soil near the banks of 

 streams or on river-bottoms, and has had to make way for 

 the crops of the farmer. It is as hardy at the north as the 

 Sweet Buckeye, but, from an ornamental point of view, is 

 a much less desirable tree and hardly worth planting ex- 

 cept as a curiosity. 



The other Buckeyes of the east are inhabitants of the 

 south, and do not attain to the dignity of trees. The most 

 common of these two plants and the type of the old genus 

 Pavia is the Scarlet Buckeye, or ySscu/us Pavia. This is some- 

 times a low shrub, producing its flowers when only a few 

 inches high, and sometimes reaches the height of a dozen 

 feet or more with many slender straggling stems. It is 

 widely distributed and very common in all the coast-region 

 of the southern states, from Virginia to Texas, and west of the 

 Alleghany Mountains, extending as far north as Kentucky 

 and Missouri. The flowers are two or three inches lon<r 

 and bright red ; they make a great show therefore, although 



