April, 19 19 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



115 



Golden Bell (Forsythia) is surely one of the most valuable of all our spring flowering shrubs. Usually it is not given sufficient space 



One of the forms of 

 hybrid Forsythia in- 

 termedia which are 

 better than either 

 parent 



form discovered in 

 western China by 

 Wilson (var. endo- 

 j tricha) is also estab- 

 lished in the Arbo- 

 retum. This blooms 

 rather later than the 

 northern plant and the 

 fruit is destitute or near- 

 ly destitute of hair. 



The white-flowered 

 form much cultivated 

 in Tokio is not in the 

 Arboretum collection. 



'"pHE Japanese 

 ■*• Spring Cherry 

 (Prunus subhirtella) 

 which Mr. E. H. Wilson, 

 after a year devoted in 



Japan to the study of 

 Cherry-trees, calls "the 

 most floriferous and per- 

 haps the most delightful 

 of all Japanese Cherries," 

 is a large, low-branched 

 shrub rather than a tree 

 and is not known as a wild 

 plant. This Cherry is much 

 planted in western Japan 

 from northern Hondo 

 southward, but it is not 

 much grown in the eastern 

 part of the Empire and is rarely found 

 in Tokio gardens. For this reason, 

 and as it does not reproduce itself 

 from seed, Prunus subhirtella is still 

 very rare in American and European 

 collections. There are large plants 

 in the Arboretum collection where 

 they have been growing since 1894 

 and where, covered with their droop- 

 ng pink flowers in May, they are 

 objects of exquisite beauty. 



The value of Prunus subhirtella 

 is increased by the fact that the 

 flowers often remain in good condition 

 for ten or twelve days, and longerthan 

 those of the other single-flowered Cherry-tree. 

 This cherry can be raised from soft wood cuttings 

 and by grafting on its own seedlings. These will 

 grow into tall trees with long straight trunks 

 (Prunus subhirtella ascendens) and in Japanese 

 temple gardens are sometimes fifty feet high 

 with trunks two feet in diameter. This is a com- 

 mon tree in the forests of central Japan, and grows 

 also in southern Korea and central China. Until 

 Wilson's investigations in Japan in 1914 this tree 

 seems to have been entirely unknown in western 

 gardens. Raised from the seed of Prunus sub- 

 hirtella, which was produced in large quantities 

 every year, it grows here rapidly and proves to be 

 a handsome tree. It has the drooping flowers 

 of the well-known Prunus pendula of gardens 

 which is only a seedling form of Prunus subhirtella, 

 the variety pendula. The largest tree seen by Wil- 

 son was sixty-five feet tall with a head as broad as 

 the height of the tree. There is a form of P. sub- 



Prunus tomentosa, one of the earliest flowering Cherries, blooming 

 about the tenth of May 



hirtella (var. autumnalis), with semi-double flow- 

 ers, which blooms in both spring and autumn. 

 This is a shrub cultivated in Tokio gardens, and 

 in the Arboretum first flowered in May, 1915. 



The Cherry which has been most generally 

 planted in Tokio is Prunus yedoensis. It is a 

 small tree with smooth gray bark, wide-spreading 

 branches, and large pale pink or white flowers 

 produced in the greatest profusion, which usually 

 open before the leaves unfold. It has not been 

 found growing wild in Japan, and Wilson after 

 studying it in Tokio was inclined to believe it 

 was a hybrid. But, whatever its origin, it is a 

 hardy, fast-growing tree which produces beauti- 

 ful flowers and should be better known in this 

 country and Europe. 



/"^F ALL single-flowered Cherry-trees the most 

 ^"^ beautiful and most valuable for our gardens 

 is Prunus serrulata sachalinensis. This tree, 

 which was called Prunus Sargentii until it was 

 discovered that it had an older name, is believed 

 to be the handsomest of the large Cherry-trees 

 of eastern Asia. In the forests of northern Japan 

 and Saghalin it is a tree often seventy-five feet 

 high, with a trunk four feet in diameter; it has 

 large pale pink or rose-colored single flowers, 

 large dark green leaves which are deep bronze 

 color as they unfold with the opening flower-buds, 

 and small globose fruits which are bright red at 

 first when fully grown and become black and lus- 

 trouswhen ripe. In western countries this tree was 

 first raised in the Arboretum in 1 890 from seeds sent 

 by Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, of Boston. It has 

 been found that the seedlings of this tree are the 

 best stock on which to graft most of the double- 

 flowered Cherries which are so highly prized by 

 Japanese gardeners and that the reason why these 

 plants have never been successfully grown in the 

 United States or Europe is due to the fact that 

 Japanese gardeners do not use suitable stock for 

 them. Some seventy-five named varieties of 

 these cherries with double or otherwise abnormal 

 flowers, cultivated in Japan, are now in the Ar- 

 boretum where they are being propagated. 

 Among them are fifteen named varieties of the 

 Sargent Cherry, and among these are some of the 

 most beautiful of all flowering trees hardy in this 

 climate and evidently destined, although as yet 

 little known, to become important features in 

 American gardens. Two of the handsomest of 

 these double-flowered varieties of the Sargent 

 Cherry are the forms albo-rosea and Fugenzo; 

 the former has large rose-colored flowers qhanging 

 to white as they open, and the other rose-pink 

 flowers; this is well known in English gardens 

 under the name of James H. Veitch. These two 

 Cherries differ from the other Japanese double- 

 flowered forms in the presence of two leafy carpels 

 in the centre of the flowers. 



