All the Summer Spireas Worth Growing—By W. E. Pendleton, "2" 
EVERYBODY WHO HAS A SHRUBBERY BORDER WILL BE INTERESTED IN THIS GROUP, WHICH BRIDGES 
THE BIG GAP BETWEEN THE SPRING-BLOOMING BUSHES AND THE AUTUMN-FLOWERING HYDRANGEAS 
The eighteenth of those heretical “Little Monographs” which use botany not to make a vain pretense of learning, but simply to find out which are the best kinds in every group, and why 
BELIEVE that the people are inclined 
to put altogether too high a value 
upon the summer blooming spireas, simply 
because they are the cheapest and most 
easily grown shrubs 
that bridge the gap 
between spring and 
fall bloom in the 
shrubbery. They 
are unsightly in 
fruit; not interest- 
ing in winter; their 
autumn foliage is 
not brilliant; they 
are stiffer than Van 
Houtte’s spirea 
(which arches over 
to meet the grass); 
they sometimes 
spread so fast by 
suckers as to choke 
out more refined 
plants, and the ever- 
present magenta, Anthony Waterer, in my 
opinion, is debauching public taste, by 
giving innocent people the idea that the 
proper thing to do is to fill their grounds 
with loud-mouthed disturbers of the peace 
like golden-leaved elder, purple-leaved plum 
(which the nurserymen call Prunus Pissardt), 
and shrubs whose leaves are striped with 
green, yellow, red or white. 
I wish that everyone could afford the 
time and money necessary to grow other 
summer-blooming shrubs that have equal 
or greater refinement, such as the dwarf 
horse chestnut (4sculus parviflora), sweet 
pepper bush (Clethra alnijolia), shining 
sumach (Khus copallina), and the single 
white rose of Sharon (Hibiscus Syriacus), 
or the shrubs whose berries are attractive 
in July and August, especially the honey- 
suckles and the cornel (Cornus Mas). We 
cought not to favor quick, easily grown, 
showy things to the exclusion of quieter 
plants, even if some of them cost more and 
are slower and harder to grow. 
On the other hand, the cheapest and 
most popular plants for any special purpose 
are entitled to a fair and sympathetic treat- 
ment, and there is no denying that the 
summer species will bloom two months 
while the spring kinds may last two weeks. 
We have four types of beauty in the genus 
Spirea, each perfect in its way—the small 
flat cluster, the large flat cluster, the large, 
loose pyramid, and the dense narrow 
cone. All the spring-bloomers have small 
flat clusters (simple umbels), while the 
summer-bloomers have a compound inflor- 
escence. What the spring-bloomers lack 
in size they make up by the graceful manner 
in which their clusters line the stems. thus 
forming showy ‘‘ropes of bloom.” Twenty 
Flat-clustered spirea. 
The favorite tall, pink 
hybrid, S. Margarit 
kinds in this group are in cultivation, but 
the “high C” is sounded by Van Houtte’s 
spirea, the one that everybody knows best. 
The spring-bloomers are all white- 
flowered; the summer-bloomers are usually 
some shade of crimson or pink. The 
spring-bloomers are pruned after flowering, 
the summer-bloomers in early spring, before 
growth starts. The best of the spring- 
bloomers are described and pictured in THE 
GARDEN MacazineE for May, 1906. 
I.—THOSE WITH FLAT CLUSTERS 
These often have clusters three or four 
inches across, thrice or twice the size of the 
spring-bloomers. ‘Though showier, they are 
inclined to be a little stiffer —less graceful. 
SHOWIEST HYBRID — ANTHONY WATERER 
The tyrant of this group is Spirea Bum- 
alda, var. Anthony Waterer, which came with 
a whoop about 1895 and has almost bullied 
the others out of cultivation simply because 
it has the deepest, and therefore the showiest, 
color of them all. The catalogues euphemize 
it, and the “shorter and uglier” phrase 
might be used to characterize some of the 
colored plates. The flowers are crimson- 
purple, fading to a dirty magenta. I like 
crimson-purple-magentas at dusk as well 
as any man, for they are softened in a 
mellow light, but all through the long sunny 
day they are harsh, artificial, gaudy; and 
they are the chief cause of color discords 
in the garden, because you cannot combine 
them with any flower color save white. 
Anything that has a twenty-horse-power 
color and blooms all summer is just the 
thing for small parks in big cities, but why 
spoil our front yards by edging the shrubbery 
with a dozen or two of these poignant 
spireas? And in what formal garden can 
you have a bed of them, without their 
making two or three horrid clashes as you 
view them in relation to other beds? Why 
tolerate all day in the garden as a main 
Wild garden effect of the meadowsweet (S. salici- 
folia), showing how the stiff, conical-clustered spireas 
are mellowed by distance 
284 
feature anything that is beautiful only for 
an hour or two? 
The legitimate way to use the Waterer 
spirea on private grounds is for making 
occasional dots of color 
in the bays of shrub- 
bery—not the promon- 
tories — being care- 
ful to have tall shrubs 
at the back and sides, 
since only luxuriant 
greenery will give the 
shadows and atmos- 
phere necessary to 
soften and purify the 
colors bordering on 
magenta. 
I have seen no evi- 
dence that Waterer’s 
spirea differs from Bum- Pe oe: 
ald’s (S. Bumalda) save <3. Douglasi, ave 
in deeper color. Both Gollsienuimencenene 
are about two feet 
high, have the same season, and the same 
Joseph’s coat effect, the foliage being irregu- 
larly striped with pink, yellowish white and 
green. 
This Bumald’s spirea is supposed to 
be a hybrid between the pink and white 
Japanese spireas ( S. Japonica and albifiora), 
getting its dwarfness and angular branches 
from the latter and its diverging seed-pods 
from the former. 
Ameadowsweet 
FOUNTAIN HEAD OF HYBRIDS—JAPONICA 
In order to comprehend these flat-clustered 
hybrids we must go to the fountain head, 
which is Spirea Japonica. ‘The Japanese 
form, I take it, is not quite so desirable as 
the Chinese, the cluster being less com- 
pound and the leaves smaller. It is a foot 
shorter and the under side of the leaf is 
bluish-green while that of the Chinese is 
bluish white. 
The Chinese form is what everybody 
calls S. Fortunei or callosa, the latter name 
referring to the callous-tipped teeth which 
characterize the variety. Another way of 
telling the Chinese form is that the leaves . 
are wrinkled (rugose) above while the 
Japanese are not. The correct name of 
the Chinese form is S. Japonica, var. Fortunet 
and I presume .(for, of course we have 
mighty little real evidence in such matters) 
that this has been the chief parent of the 
flat-clustered hybrids. I propose to refer to 
both forms as the purple-tipped spirea. This 
pretty purplish red color in the unfolding 
leaves of any spirea of doubtful parentage 
may be taken asa sign of Japonica blood. 
BEST TALL HYBRID — MARGARITAE 
Since the thing most to be desired in this 
genus is a pure pink, it would be natural 
’ 
