752 



BUDS, BLOSSOMS, FRUITS. 



full of white grubs, which take three years to come to full 

 development. For the same reason avoid freshly -plowed 

 meadows for strawberries. — Geo. J. Kellogg, Wis. 



An Old City Garden. — (Page 577.) The trees and vines 

 in this garden are even larger than represented. I 

 brought the apple tree from Chautauqua in 1864. It is 

 of the Westbrook or Blodget variety, and is 35 feet high, 

 33 feet in diameter of top, and the trunk is 20 inches in 

 diameter. I intend to have an engraving made that will 

 show its full magnitude. I have never seen a larger ap- 

 ple tree, though I have seen those the Indians planted 

 near Geneva, N. Y., which are supposed to be 100 years 

 old. My father was the first orchardist to cultivate im- 

 proved varieties of apples. That was in Ontario county, 

 New York, 1800 to 1813, and in Chautauqua, 1814 

 to 1836. At Chautauqua I took up the work where he 

 left it. From Washington, in 1864, I brought to the 

 "old city garden" many grape-vines. Rogers No. g 

 grew quite rapidly, and its trunk is now five inches in 

 diameter. The branches extend 70 feet eastward, and 

 rise to a height of 35 feet on the back of the house. They 

 cover all that portion of the house, 30 or 40 feet by 25 

 feet, and their whole length east and west is 130 feet. 

 This is the largest grape-vine I ever saw. In i8go it 

 bore 450 pounds of grapes. It has twice been figured in 

 Meehan's Gardener' s Mo7ithly, and I intend to have 

 more complete illustrations of it made. On this place, 

 in 1865, I planted pits for several groups of peach trees, 

 and in three years from time of planting the seeds the 

 young trees began to bear. I had 30 trees that bore 

 fruit for nearly 15 years, and harvested from 50 to 70 

 bushels of peaches yearly, but in 1884 the trees failed, 

 and not a peach have they yielded for eight or ten years. 



The locust tree at the lower gate is fairly represented 

 in the picture ; it is 18 inches in diameter, 30 feet high 

 and perfect in shape and symmetry. — Lorin Blodget, 

 Washington, D. C. 



Why Our Wild Flowers Disappear. — Flower-collec- 

 tors and dealers are among those most frequently blamed 

 for the disappearance of our native wild-flowers and 

 plants. I have spent my life in the fields and forests as 

 an earnest student of botany, and have collected and 

 dealt in wild-flowers since 1883 . I am familiar with their 

 native haunts in a large portion of five counties in Mich- 

 igan, and I know that they disappear just as fast where 

 no plant-collector ever comes as in localities frequented 

 by him. I have also found that such reproductive 

 powers are given to plants that even the various species 

 of cypripediums can be profitably collected from the 

 same ground every three years, and most plants every 

 one or two years, provided the real destructive agencies 

 are not set to work. Now, the only ways to destroy by 

 human agency wild-flowers in a given locality are to re- 

 move every particle of root and every seed from the 

 soil, or by some process to change the condition of the 

 soil so that a particular species can not live there, or to 

 denude it of foliage during its entire growing season. I 

 have found that such is the abundance of seed produced, 

 that even if the collector could remove every root in the 



soil he could not exterminate any species of plant I am 

 familiar with, for the land is sure to be well seeded. 



Who, then, is really responsibly for the disappearance 

 of rare native plants ? I have known wild-flowers to dis- 

 appear wholly from a piece of land in a single season. I 

 have had good reason to note this, for the failure of the 

 supply of some choice flowers has often caused me much 

 embarrasment. Some flowers need partial shade for 

 their growth, hence cutting down trees or shrubs destroys 

 them. Others require a certain amount of moistures, so 

 that if you drain or flood the land they will die. Few 

 plants can stand burying, so that to plow them under 

 is to destroy them ; and no plant can live if constantly 

 deprived of foliage during its growing season. So turn 

 the land into a sheep-pasture for a season, and you ef- 

 fectually destroy foliage and roots, and prevent further 

 seeding. The real forces at work in exterminating our 

 native flora are the woodman's axe, the drainer's spade, 

 the farmer's plow, and the herder's sheep. Of all these 

 agents the sheep are most destructive. They even ef- 

 fectually prevent young trees from growing up to replace 

 the old ones that die. Now, I suggest these remedies : 

 (i) Encourage the study of botany in every school, and 

 thus create an interest in native plants. (2) Show the 

 farmer the great injury he does his forests by pasturing 

 sheep in them. (3) Encourage the preservation of for- 

 ests upon every piece of land not readily adapted for cul- 

 tivation, urging that its flora be not destroyed by the 

 causes I have previously mentioned. It is better by far 

 to preserve our wild plants than to give the land over to 

 foreign weeds. (4) Urge the necessity of parks in the 

 vicinity of every city and village, and fill these parks 

 with our wild plants. {5) Cultivate wild-flowers in 

 your own flower-gardens. Get any plant you fear will 

 become extinct, and plant it where it will be protected. All 

 the choice plants of our gardens are but the wild-flowers 

 of other lands. All over the world men are collecting 

 flowers to adorn our gardens and greenhouses. — Wil- 

 fred A. Brotherton, Mic/i. 



The Virginia Creeper. — (Page 655.) The festoons 

 illustrated in this article are far less graceful and luxur- 

 iant than .some we find in woodlands where this ampel- 

 opsis grows wild. Its leaves turn scarlet about the same 

 time that the light blue and purple wild asters bloom, 

 and anything prettier than the light, airy tendrils of this 

 scarlet ribbon runner, trailing over banks of feathery, 

 cool blue asters, can hardly be imagined. Some of the 

 prettiest and most graceful vases of flowers that I ever 

 saw were made up of these two wildings. 



After the leaves turn crimson, often one can collect 

 sprays cf Virginia creeper a yard long with perfect foli- 

 age, and perhaps several clusters of the dark blue berries 

 at the base of the spray where the leaves are larger. 

 These sprays, if pressed and lightly glazed with wax or 

 coated with shellac, form the brightest, most graceful 

 winter ornaments, for using in a multitude of ways, you 

 can imagine. The Virginia creeper to me seems quite as 

 beautiful for all purposes as the Boston ivy, and is much 

 more hardy. — L. Greenlee, Xortli Carolina. 



