212 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



foliage self-coloured of bright soft gold. I can confidently recommend 

 it as superior to the only two other all-gold coloured oaks with which 

 I am acquainted, viz. Q. pedunculata concordia and Q. pedunculata 

 leucocarpa. I know very well that to some tastes all of what they 

 regard as unnatural colour in foliage is offensive, and appears to 

 indicate disease. To my mind purple browns, whites, and yellows, 

 if judiciously employed and not overdone, add greatly to the cheer- 

 fulness and gaiety of a pleasure-ground. Still, great care must be taken 

 with them, for having none is better than to have too many, or to 

 have them wrongly placed. Although two different living greens 

 always seem to harmonize, yet that is far from being the case with other 

 colours, as will quickly appear if you try planting copper hazel by a 

 purple beech, or Cupressus Lawsoniana aurea alongside a golden elm. 

 Again, too, many a villa garden has been vulgarized and ruined by 

 great splashes of garish golden elder thrust in at random among the 

 shrub borders. 



We have also a variety of Q. rubra called Schrefeldii, which was 

 bought at Muskau in 1902, and which is now between 18 and 19 ft. 

 high. The leaves of this, plant have very sharply pointed and very 

 deep lobes which give it a distinct appearance, fully justifying a 

 varietal name. This last remark also applies to another variety, 

 longifolia, which, as the name implies, has markedly long narrow 

 leaves. I have two plants of this bought at the same time and place 

 as Schrefeldii, but they have not thriven so well, and I cut both of them 

 hard back into the old wood last year with a view, to stimulating their 

 vigour ; it is already apparent that the operation has had the desired 

 effect. Another specimen of Q. rubra Schrefeldii, which I am informed 

 was also obtained from Germany, is to be seen growing at Kew. I 

 should mention here that I have a rubra hybrid 8 ft. high, and grow- 

 ing vigorously, in which case the pollen parent has not been 

 identified, Q. rubra X ? 



Q. X Sargentii. — This is a hybrid, pedunculala x Prinus, 1 ft. 3 in. 

 high, and was doubtless given me about 1913 by my friend the 

 professor, whose name it bears, and it is still too young to enable 

 me to give any satisfactory account of it. 



Q. Schneckii (Britton). — Those who have not been set the task 

 of ordering and maintaining a large botanical collection of trees and 

 shrubs would hardly realize how difficult a matter it is, even though 

 the greatest pains be taken to see that plants gathered from all quarters 

 of the globe are true to the names borne by them, and that such names 

 are all in accord with one system, in my case naturally the one adopted 

 by Kew. " Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of 

 Askelon," but I have in the past, even there in the Mecca of botanists, 

 detected cases of two trees of the same species bearing diverse names, 

 as well as an instance of the converse error. In my own case it was only 

 as late as last year that I had to remove from a specimen of this oak 

 a label which bore the more pleasing, and, since it shows the habitat, 

 the more useful appellation of texana, in favour of the cacophonous 



