i\ y ^ 



The Best Evergreen Trees f( 



WHY WE WASTE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A YEAR IN PLANTING i 

 WHICH HARDY CONIFERS COME— THE IMPORTANT KINDS FROm' 



THE reason why people throw away 

 thousands of dollars a year in buy- 

 ing evergreens that die or become ragged 

 is largely an historical one. The great bulk 

 of evergreen planting that proves unsatis- 

 factory is composed of six species, English 

 .yew, Irish juniper, Norway spruce, Scotch 

 pine, Austrian pine, and silver .fir. If you 

 had the hardihood to say this to an audience 

 of a thousand horticulturists, your, voice 

 would be drowned in a storm of mingled 

 howls and cheers. Even" intelligent Eu- 

 ropean emigrant to this country knows 

 those trees. They are famous in Old World 

 literature and dear to the hearts of the peo- 

 ple. They are cheap, fast-growing trees, and 

 every nurseryman has them, because the 

 people demand them and they are profitable. 

 Moreover, every one can tell you, off hand, 

 of cases where they have been successful. 

 And yet, sooner or later, they and all other 

 European conifers are bound to be more or 

 less disappointing. If it is simply a question 

 of beauty, there is a chance for debate, be- 

 cause a man usually considers that he gets 

 his money's worth if a tree retains its beauty 

 for twenty or twenty-five years. But if one 

 wants evergreens for permanent comfort 

 and privacy, those mentioned above are too 

 short-lived. The Norway spruce, which is 

 chiefly responsible for the popular notion 

 (wherever it exists) that evergreens are dis- 

 mal and monotonous, is likely to become 

 ragged after twenty years, and therefore 

 less efficient as a wind-break or screen. A 

 more permanent tree of the same dark style 

 of beauty is the oriental spruce. The white 

 pine makes a more lasting wind-break than 

 the Scotch and Austrian pines in most lo- 

 calities, and the white spruce is probably the 

 best of all; while the white fir of the Rockies 

 withstands heat and drought better than the 

 silver fir or indeed any other fir. The Eng- 

 lish yew and Irish junipers are much ten- 

 derer than the other offenders; the Japa- 

 nese yew and American juniper have the 

 same types of beauty and are perfectly hardy. 



A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 



- For every European evergreen that is 

 dear to the American people, another species 

 of the same group can be mentioned that 

 has the same style of beauty and is better 

 adapted to our. climate. In many cases, the 

 two species will be so much alike that the 

 ordinary person can hardly tell them apart. 

 We declared our political independence of 

 England long ago, and it is high time that we. 

 declare our horticultural independence of 

 Europe. Until we recognize that the cli- 

 mates of Western Europe and Eastern 

 North America are fundamentally unlike, 

 we shall never make this country one great 

 garden as England is, and meanwhile we 



have squandered millions of dollars on Eu- 

 ropean evergreens, roses, and other plants 

 that feel orphaned when they get a thousand 

 miles away from the Gulf stream. The 

 trade and social affinities of the northeastern 

 United States are with Europe, but our 

 climatic affinities are with northern Japan, 

 Korea, and China; with the eastern slope 

 of the Rockies; and with Asia Minor. 

 Those are the regions of hardy evergreens. 

 The chief regions of half-hardy evergreens 

 are Europe and California and the southern 

 slope of the Himalayas. 



TWO STRIKING EXAMPLES 



The Douglas spruce is hardy only when 

 raised from seeds gathered in the mountains 

 of Colorado. Many people complain that 

 this tree is tender in the Northeastern United 

 States. This is because the tree was first 

 discovered on the Pacific coast, whence the 

 seeds were, brought to Europe and thus got 

 into the nurseries of the world. The regu- 

 lar course of horticultural trade has been 

 for our nurserymen to get their stock of 

 trees or plants that are native to America, 

 not from the places where they grow wild, 

 but from European nurserymen. It was 

 long supposed that none of the Pacific coast.* 

 trees would ever grow to an)- size in the 

 East, and it was a great day for American 

 horticulture when Parry, the botanical 

 collector, discovered the Douglas spruce 

 growing wild in Colorado. All the hardy 

 specimens of Douglas spruce in cultivation 

 are descendants of Rocky Mountain stock, 

 and it is important to note that the stock 

 must have been gotten from the mountains, 

 not the valleys. This one bit of informa- 

 tion may save a man many dollars and mucfi 

 disappointment.' 



Another instructive example is the case of 

 the juniper. Ordinarily, the same species 

 of evergreen does not grow on both sides of 

 the 'Atlantic, but the common juniper 

 (Juniperus communis) grows nearly every- 

 where in the north temperate and subarctic 

 zones. In every distinct climate, however, 

 it assumes a slightly different form. Some 

 of these forms are the Irish, the Swedish, the 

 alpine or Siberian, the American, the hemi- 

 spherical, the pendulous, and the typical 

 European form, which is more columnar 

 than ours. Ordinarily, the differences be- 

 tween a European conifer" and its American 

 representative are the differences between 

 two species. of the same genus, and it is fair 

 to use this fact as a rough measure of the 

 differences in climate that have produced 

 these results; but in the junipers, the differ- 

 .ence is considered to be only that between 

 varieties of the same species. The prac- 

 tical lesson for us is this: Instead of the 

 Irish juniper {Juniperus communis, var. 



wkwm 



By HEN] 



Hibefnica), plant the American juniper 

 (/. communis, var. Canadensis). 



THE TWENTY-FOUR HARDIEST EVERGREENS 



N orthwestern U. S. 



White pine 



Pitch-pine 



Redor " Norway " pine 



White spruce 



Red spruce 



Hemlock 



American arbor-vitae 



Red cedar 



American jumper (or 

 ground cedar) 

 Rockies 



White fir 



Engelmann's spruce 



Douglas spruce (ten- 

 der from California) 



T be Far East 

 Korean pine 

 Small-flowered pine 

 Japanese umbrella- 

 pine 

 Short-bracted fir 

 Veitch's fir 

 Picea Ajanensis / 

 Lace-bark pine 

 Japanese yew 

 Japanese arbor-vita? 



Asia Minor 

 Ciciltan fir Jfrtd 

 Nordmann's fir 

 Oriental spruce 



Europe 

 English yew 

 Irish juniper 



Africa 

 Mt. Atlas cedar 



SOME . FAMOUS TENDER EVERGREENS 



California 



Redwood 

 Big tree 



Monterey cypress 

 Lawson's cypress 

 Himalayas Douglas spruce (har- 



Deodar dy from Colorado) 



Australia •>, ., 



Norfolk Island pine ■ 

 Araucaria Bidwillii Monkey-puzzle 



THE NINE ABSOLUTELY SURE KINDS. 



Seven years ago, in the last number of 

 Garden and Forest, Professor Sargent fin- 

 ished his memorable series of papers on 

 conifers which has ever since b«en consid- 

 ered a sort of horticultural gospel by students 

 of evergreens. He declared that there were 

 only twelve species of conifers that had 

 shown themselves able to grow to a large 

 size and preserve in cultivation here their 

 mature beauty for a long period. These are 

 the white, red, and pitch-pines, the white 

 and red spruce, the red cedar, the juniper, 

 the American arbor- vita;, the hemlock; and. 

 three deciduous species — the European and 

 American larch, and the ginko. Inasmuch 

 as the last three have no more value for com- 

 fort and privacy than any other deciduous 

 trees, they have been omitted from the list 

 of the twenty-four hardiest evergreens given 

 above. The rest of that list of twenty-four 

 is composed of species which Professor 

 Sargent said had stood the test success- 

 fully for twenty-five or fifty years, which, 

 however, he did not consider a long 

 enough period. The nine sure kinds are 

 all American. 



WHY EVERGREENS DEE 



Thirty below zero is not nearly so deadly 

 to evergreens, or anything else, as alternate 

 freezing and thawing. No man and no 



