42 



Report on Botany. 



that loves retired places in copses or groves, along the 

 borders of woods or on mountain sides, has been found, 

 under cultivation, to take on a large thrifty form and to 

 produce an abundance of excellent fruit, the berries ripen- 

 ing throughout the season. One of your committee the 

 past summer has seen a fine patch of this strawberry, pro- 

 ducing both red and white berries. Aside from the pecu- 

 liar color of the white-fruited variety, the fact that the 

 berries readily separate from the calyx in picking, it seems 

 to us, should make this variety a very desirable addition 

 to the stock of any horticulturist. It gives us pleasure 

 thus to direct attention to the promising character of a 

 plant long considered to be almost worthless. 



There is a tree now growing in a nursery in the suburbs 

 of this city, probably the only one of the kind in this coun- 

 try. It belongs to the genus Juglans and shows, even to 

 the unpracticed eye, its relationship to our .common butter- 

 nut, Juglans cinerea. The tree was raised from seed pro- 

 cured in Japan by an esteemed member of this Institute, 

 the Hon. R. H. Pruyn, late United States minister to that 

 country. From him we learn that these trees are common 

 there, and that the nuts are eaten and highly relished by 

 the Japanese. The seed from which our Albany tree was 

 produced was planted six years ago, and the past summer, 

 i. e., when six years old, the tree bore fruit for the first 

 time, producing a single large cluster of nuts, twelve in 

 number. The tree has a very thrifty look, and gives evi- 

 dence of being sufficiently hardy for our climate. The 

 trunk is straight, its bark is yet quite smooth, the branches 

 diverge at a wide angle, and the leaves are two feet or more 

 in length with numerous pairs of leaflets. The nuts are 

 nearly or quite equal in diameter to those of our common 

 butternut, but they are shorter and more obtuse at the 

 apex. The wide spreading top, the magnificent foliage 

 and the large clusters of nuts must give to these trees when 



