SEPTEMBER, 1908 
outdoors and about Easter indoors); both 
have twice or thrice pinnate foliage and 
minute seeds borne in the peculiar kind of 
fruit called a follicle. There are only two 
ways in which you can surely tell them apart. 
Astilbe has only eight or ten stamens while 
Aruncus has many; Aruncus usually has 
three pistils; Astilbe only one, but this is 
three-lobed and it ripens into more or less 
separate follicles. 
PLUMY OR PYRAMIDAL CLUSTERS 
. I would give a good deal for a glimpse of 
the new race of “pink spireas” originated by 
the genius of Lemoine, of Nancy, France, 
for I have the greatest curiosity to know 
where he got this pink color. Seven of these 
varieties he groups under the name of 
Astilbe Lemoineiz. Nine others he calls, 
“hybrids of Lemoinei and Chinensis.” 
Now Chinensis might be the origin of this 
pinkness for it has rosy lilac petals, but it 
also has blue stamens — a unique character, 
and, moreover, Lemoine specifically declares 
that the parents of Astilbe Lemoinei are 
Astilbe Thunbergii and Aruncus astilboides 
var. floribunda, neither of which normally 
have pink petals. ; 
The only hint I have for explaining the 
pinkness in Astilbe Lemoinei is Nicholson’s 
statement that the “flower stalks” of Thun- 
bergii are reddish. But flower stalks is an 
Mass effect of the 
(Ulmaria pentapetala), so called from the shape of the 
side leaflets 
““elm-leaved’’ meadowsweet 
ambiguous expression and whether the pink 
color of Thunbergii resides in the pedicels 
T cannot say. 
Again, Lemoinei has been specifically 
described as having pink stamens, but if 
this is so the mystery only deepens, 
for whence came they? And why does 
Lemoine give the impression (without say- 
ing so outright) that it is the petals that are 
pinkish. 
I am well aware that in publishing rank 
speculation like this I violate every tradition 
of botany from Dioscorides and Linneus to 
Gray and Britton, but I suspect that 
American flower-lovers will forgive me 
for telling the latest horticultural news, 
and I hope that some _ public-spirited 
American will import the complete col- 
lection of Astilbe so that we can see how 
beautiful these “pink spireas” are and 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 
One of the Ulmarias (probably U. pentapetala), 
showing the characteristic flattishness of cluster 
and their palmately lobed terminal leaflet 
make our rude guess as to how Lemoine 
“oot there.” 
THE THREE TALL KINDS 
So far we have been dealing with plants 
that grow only one and a half to two and 
a half feet high. Now we turn to three six- 
footers, for though they may be only three 
feet high in the wild, they will attain four to 
seven feet in a good hardy border. 
The sensational member of this trio is 
the rosy Chinese astilbe (A. Davidit), a 
new species which the catalogues have been 
booming as the “most beautiful spirea,” 
simply because of its novel color. It has 
“rosy” petals and “mauve” stamens and 
blooms in August. The boomers claim that 
the flowering sprays are two or three feet 
long and say that the young leaves are very 
handsome in their bronzy state. I must 
confess that I have not seen it yet and my 
experience has taught me to be wary of 
investing in anything that the catalogues 
call “mauve.” 
The other two tall plumy species are 
the white-flowered American goatsbeard 
(Aruncus sylvester) and its mimic Astilbe 
decandra, which I shall venture to call the 
“false goatsbeard.” Both bloom about 
June or July in the North and both are 
native to the United States. The former 
has an interesting variety Kveijfi, said to 
have the foliage divided so finely as to give 
a fern-like effect. 
THOSE WITH FLATTISH CLUSTERS 
The ulmarias are more refined than 
the true spireas that have flat clusters 
because their clusters are airier and freer, 
looser — not painfully precise. You cannot 
even say they are flat—only flattish. 
Everybody instinctively speaks of their 
flowers as “feathery” and their foliage 
as ‘‘fern-like.” They are at the other ex- 
69 
treme from the hard-featured, purple-faced 
Anthony Waterer and other flat-clustered 
shrubby spireas that make so many lawns 
look hot, and apoplectic in July and August. 
They are full of billowy grace, and if you 
plant the white ones in sufficient quantity, 
your guests will be reminded of white caps 
and sea foam. 
THE FERN-LEAVED MEADOWSWEET 
The climax of beauty in this group is 
touched by the dropwort (U. Filipendula) 
one of the “forty-eleven natives of Europe” 
which people call ‘‘meadowsweet.” It 
makes a perfect flat rosette of finely cut 
leaves from which arise half a dozen or more 
slender stalks. These, at the height of a 
foot or so, break out into an inflorescence of 
marvelous grace, which is intensified by 
the tender pink color of the buds. When 
quite open the flowers are white. I shall 
call this the “fern-leaved meadowsweet.” 
There is a double-flowered form of it that 
is not objectionable because the individual 
flower has no distinctive form to be ruined 
by doubling and, of course, double flowers 
last longer. 
It is no wonder that many people want to 
put the fern-leaved meadowsweet in a 
genus by itself, for it has tuberous roots, 
while the other ulmarias are fibrous-rooted; 
and its foliage is pinnately cut, while theirs 
is palmate (the former like a feather, the 
latter like the fingers of the hand); to 
say nothing of its being dwarfer and earlier 
than most of the others. It blooms in June, 
or about a month before the rest 
While these other ulmarias have com- 
pound foliage, the side leaflets are few and 
The American and false goatsbeard mimic each 
other so closely that no one can tell from a picture 
which is which 
