Prefatory. 
N PRESENTING for the season of 1891 '92 our Seventh Annual Cata- 
logue of Native Trees, Shrubs and Flowering Plants of the Southern Al- 
leghany mountains, we take great pleasure in being able to offer to our 
patrons a much larger and better selected list than ever before, of these 
beautiful indigenous plants that are now fast becoming so deservedly 
popular. While the whole earth, outside the United States, has been 
searched and explored to obtain the choicest trees and plants to beautify 
our American grounds, yet until very recently the more beautiful 
American plants were overlooked, being rarely seen in cultivation, and as a rule quite un- 
known to Americans. 
It is a notable fact that while our parks, cemeteries, lawns and gardens have been stuffed 
to overflowing with these costly foreign importations, our most beautiful and easily obtained 
native ornamentals have been almost entirely excluded ; and these, too, a class comprising 
an unrivaled wealth of grand and stately trees, magnificent flowering shrubs, and an unpar- 
alleled profusion of fine herbaceous plants and showy climbers; while the beautiful and mani- 
fold forms of terrestrial orchids and great variety of delicate and graceful ferns are beyond 
easy comparison. 
Mr. E. S. Rand has said : " We do not appreciate our American flora, and have shut our 
eyes to the richness that lies all around us. In England a crowning glory of horticultural ex- 
hibitions is the show of ' American plants,' and we in America don't know what they are." 
We further quote from a recent well-written article by the president and founder of the 
"American Wild Flower Club": "In popular imported flowers we have reached the limit. 
Year by year florists find nothing new to offer us. Their ' novelties ' are only variations of the 
old themes. But many of our best wild flowers are distinctly novel ; as unlike anything which 
Europe furnishes as our native red man is unlike the Caucasian. Their domestication would 
marvelously enlarge our garden calendar — at once relieving the time-worn monotony which 
has come to characterize it, and giving us flowers always equaling, and in many instances sur- 
passing in beauty and effectiveness, the finest trans-Atlantic varieties. American wild flowers 
are characterized by singular fineness and delicacy of leaf growth. It would be difficult to 
name a really superior variety, the foliage of which is coarse or rank." 
The well-known botanist and horticulturist, Professor W. A. Stiles, in writing to the A "<■?<' 
York Tribune, says of our greatly favored " Highland " region : " It is a fact that no part of 
the world has furnished the gardens of Europe and America with so many ornamental plants 
of this kind (shrubs and lawn trees) as this same Alleghany region. Along the course of every 
rocky stream are masses of the great Rhododendron and Kaimia, while on the borders are 
smaller broad-leaved under-shrubs of rarest beauty. But, beyond question, the most beautiful 
flowering shrubs are the Azaleas, and four of the five species which belong to the flora of the 
continent are here massed together in the greatest profusion and luxuriance. There are a 
dozen other genera that could be named, each with a special charm of its own. To these add 
the species that are small lawn trees in the north, but attain the stature of timber trees here, 
and we have a group that, for neatness of habit and beauty of foliage, flowers and fruit, and 
brilliance of autumn coloring, has no rival." 
For seven years the Highlands Nursery has been growing, pushing before the public 
M native plants" exclusively, and it is extremely gratifying to note the rapid growth in the 
demand for them, especially the last two seasons. The location of Highlands Nursery, at the 
summit of the Blue Ridge, in northwestern North Carolina, at an altitude of nearly 4.000 feet, 
insures long cool summers and moderate winters, which is very favorable to the growth of 
these beautiful native trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, and produces a hardy stock— an im- 
portant point to be taken into careful consideration by northern planters. While we confine 
ourselves principally to the plants indigenous to the Southern Alleghany region, still we collect 
all over the southern states, and we will be glad to give information as to any plants not found 
in this catalogue. All correspondence will be carefully and promptly answered. 
HARLAN P. KELSEY, Linville, North Carolina. 
