143 
A JAPANESE BANEBERRY 
(Actcea japo?iica). 
This fine kind from Japan is at once the 
finest of the Baneberries and one 
of the stateUest, most graceful 
and showy of hardy, flowering 
plants. Attractive during sum- 
mer in its clean, dark-green. 
Elder-like foliage, it becomes 
strikingly beautiful during its 
flowering season in later Sep- 
tember and throughout Octo- 
ber, until stricken by black 
frosts. Its long erect racemes of 
white flowers go well with the 
tall blue panicles of the Monks- 
hood in the autumn garden, 
when the floral pageant has be- 
gun to wane ; and ranged with 
them in vivid blue and white 
array, one may scarcely miss the 
symphony of the big blue Lark- 
spurs and Madonna Lilies of 
July. The plant, which is well 
illustrated by a portion of one 
growing in the grounds of 
George Ellwanger, is as yet 
little known : the tallest spikes 
in this plant are over 4^, feet high, 
and it is hardy and easily grown. 
The flower-buds remind one of 
a Pyrola or some of the Deutzisa, while 
the expanded blossoms, save for their 
purer white, are not unlike a more taper- 
ing spike of Ciethra alnifolia. There 
are few more gracefully conspicuous 
flowers than this noble Aetata, when, 
succeeding the white and pink Japanese 
Wind-flowers, its slender chastely sil- 
ver spires rise in stately profusion to 
enrich the glories of the garden in the 
fall. 
GEORGE H. ELLWANGER. 
Rochester, New York. 
THFl JaPANKSE ACT.TA [JCllL^ 
Cdfo. 
THE ORIGIN OE THE 
ESPALIER. 
In a recent bulletin of the National Horti- 
cultural Society of France, M. Georges Gibault 
has an interesting article upon the early use 
of the espalier in gardens. He says : — 
The term espalier probably comes from the 
Italian spalliera^ whence the French epaule, or 
" shoulder," used in the sense of a support. 
Some authorities trace it to the old French 
