THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION. 



123 



Among the more familiar plants one noticed an abundance of 

 Salvia splendenSj Bocconia cordata, single dahlias, cinerarias, 

 petunias, ageratnm, Oenotheras, artemisia and various big sola- 

 nums. The variety of vegetation, the superabundance of odd 

 forms, and the masses of burning color, all enforced the sunny 

 feeling of the place. The pretty court inside the building had 

 a center of phoenixes, with bananas in the corners, and inter- 

 mediate plantings of dark-leaved cannas, cobceas and caladiums, 

 and window pots and boxes of red geraniums, English ivy and 

 lantanas. The Convent itself was prominent from its peculiar 

 architecture and its position upon an eminence jutting into 

 Lake Michigan ; but this glow of ground color sharply enforced 

 its peculiarities. 



Other buildings had conspicuous ornamental features. 

 The great California Building was surrounded by a variety of 

 interesting sub-tropical plants, but they were scattered about 

 the lawn with the evident purpose of snowing them off, rather 

 than to make any garden design to support the building. This 

 nursery included many good specimens of Washingtonia JiUfera, 

 Phoenix Canariensis, Chamcerops excelsa, and C. Nepaulensis and 

 various interesting plants like Bomneya Coulteri, wiegandia, 

 Leucodendron argenteum, loquat, Erythea edulis and tree roses. 

 The great date palm, grown from seed planted about 1770 by 

 Father Junipera Serra, in the Mission Valley of San Diego, 

 stood inside the building, rising to a height of fifty feet, and a 

 specimen with larger trunk and nearly as tall, from Santa Bar- 

 bara, stood on the lawn. 



The Louisiana Building, which represented a plantation 

 house, had various good plants in the yard, but they stood as 

 individual specimens only. Here were roses, Bambusa falcata, 

 caladiums, loquats, palms, camphor tree, Pittosporum Tobira and 

 a bush of Euonymus Japonicus six feet high. The gray moss, 

 or tillandsia, hanging from the catalpa trees in front .of the 

 house, gave a southern feeling to the place. The Missouri 

 Building was conspicuous during the whole summer and fall 

 for its excellent bank of Solarium warsewiczioides which masked 

 the foundations. The French Building, upon the lake front, 

 had some striking effects, especially in gaudy edgings of 

 cineraria, alternanthera and lobelia. Various variegated or 

 otherwise interesting specimen shrubs were conspicuous, par- 

 ticularly ilexes and euonymuses. Rhododendrons and altheas 

 were also used, and there were a lot of good phoenixes from 

 Martichon, of Cannes. But the ornamentation about the 

 French pavilion, as about the California Building, had a much 

 too scattered character to answer any purposes of landscape 

 effect. 



