﻿OCTOBER 1 TO DECEMBER 31, 1917. 9 



this species, although it occurs from Nova Scotia to Texas and was 

 known in the old days as honewort, has never been cultivated or 

 even used as a vegetable by Americans. It is easily grown and 

 deserves to be carefully studied by amateurs. Its food value is 

 probably similar to that of celery. 



The success of the Japanese "flowering cherries makes the introduc- 

 tion of the pink-flowered wild forest cherry {Prunus serrulata var. 

 sachalinensis, No. 45248) of particular interest. The cherry-wood 

 timber from it is said to be excellent, and if some one would plant 

 a hillside with this tree it would not only make a place to which we 

 should all sooner or later want to make a pilgrimage as one does to 

 the Azalea gardens near Charleston, but in the years to come it would 

 furnish for market an excellent quality of cherry wood. 



So remarkable as money producers have been some of the new 

 grasses introduced through the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant 

 Introduction that cultivators are watching with a great deal of 

 interest the behavior of the Napier grass of Rhodesia (Pennisetum 

 purpureum. No. 45572). According to Harrison, the agrostologist of 

 South Africa, it promises there to be one of the most remarkable 

 drought-resistant fodder plants yet introduced into cultivation, mak- 

 ing a yield of 27 tons of green fodder per acre and remaining green 

 even during six or eight months of drought. It must be remembered 

 that the South African dry season comes in the winter, when it is 

 cool. It is very different from the scorching droughts of our own 

 Plains. However, Napier grass is already making its mark in this 

 country. 



It is always with keen satisfaction that one records the arrival of 

 the second generation of an imported plant in the New World. That 

 loveliest of all flowering legumes Camoensia maxima (No. 45608), 

 from the coast of Portuguese West Africa, was introduced in 1901 

 and scattered in vain in Florida. A plant was sent to Dr. E. M. 

 Gray, in charge of the Harvard Experiment Station at Cienfuegos, 

 Cuba. This has grown and flowered and produced fruit, so that 

 this liana, named after the great Portuguese poet, Camoens, is suc- 

 cessfully established in the West Indies. It deserves to be grown 

 wherever it can be in the tropical forests of the New World. 



The species of crab apple which was formerly much cultivated in 

 Japan (Mains pmmifolia rinki, No. 45679) but was driven out by 

 the American varieties, according to Prof. Sargent, of the Arnold 

 Arboretum, may prove as hardy as Pyrns baccata, and he suggests 

 that it be crossed with the Siberian crab-apple varieties and new 

 hardy varieties of apples procured for trial in Canada. 



Dr. Trabut's suggestion that the wild Moroccan pear (Pyrus mamo- 

 rcnsis, No. 45612), which inhabits the dry sandy noncalcareous soils 

 of the Mamora, should be considered as a stock is well worthy of trial. 



