THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE OF AMERICA. 
31 
more must be invented, either by us or by the people who 
live in the mountains, or live in the parks. All that is 
necessary for a good common name is that people feel 
that the name is happy and accept it. A telling name will 
stick, even if it cannot give a satisfying account of its 
origin. 
"Some years since I was coming down out of the 
mountains on a trip. I had been studying what we bo- 
tanists call Calendrinia Caulescens var. Men ziesii, and I 
met some children who had in their hands a bunch of the 
flowers. I stopped and asked them what they called the 
flowers. After some hesitation they said, 'Kisses.' I 
asked them why they called them 'Kisses,' and they either 
would not, or could not tell. But as I went on I heard 
the elder child say : 'That is the botany man, and he is 
always asking why.' But you cannot always tell why. 
Sometimes you just do things. Perhaps no one can tell 
why the name kisses was first applied to the plant. But 
the name caught on, as we say, and people use it. 
"A mountaineer's name, like Mountain Misery, at once 
makes a strong appeal to the people. Common names in- 
dicate the way in which the plants have affected the peo- 
ple who live where the plants live, whether thev are con- 
scious of it or not. 
"Of course, the beauty of our Alpine flowers is a great 
asset irrespective of the names, but the names help. 
Imagine the thoughts of a person traveling in the high 
mountain meadows and seeing for the first time mountain 
grass filled with Shooting Stars. T have seen as mam 1 as 
half a million Shooting Stars in one rather small Sierra 
meadow. Now, when that plant becomes known to our 
people, it will become as famous as the Edelweiss of the 
Swiss Alps." — The Pacific Garden. 
STREET TREES FOR NEW YORK CITY. 
pR< >I-T.SS< )R LAURIE D. COX, landscape engineer of 
the State College of Forestry at Syracuse, is bringing 
to a close an exhaustive study of the trees of New York 
City, and will shortly present a report to Cabot Ward, 
Commissioner of Parks. This report will include the 
first comprehensive census of the trees of Manhattan 
and Richmond and will be the basis for future ac- 
tivities by which Commissioner Ward hopes to in- 
crease greatly the number of trees in the city and 
prevent it from becoming treeless, a condition that 
rapidly approaches unless drastic measures are taken. 
Professor Cox was employed through a fund given 
by John D. Rockefeller. When Mr. Ward became 
commissioner he found the city losing thousands of 
trees each year through lack of system as to plant- 
ing the proper species of trees and their proper care 
after they were planted. He realized that to correct 
these evils would require more money than the Board 
of Estimate would give at once, so he decided to show 
what could be clone with a small outlay and scientific 
and systematic work. There was no money to engage 
a forester, so the commissioner approached Mr. 
Rockefeller. 
Commissioner Ward gave Professor Cox a squad of 
department men and for three months they have been 
accumulating the data on which the forester will base 
his report. The tree census will include the history of 
every tree in Manhattan and Richmond — the date of 
planting, conditions of soil, and environment and the 
life of the tree whose place it took. Professor Cox is 
also gathering data as to the kinds of trees suitable 
for various parts of the city. The depth of soil, the 
street traffic, the congestion and height of buildings, 
proximity of gas mains, pressure of vaults and con- 
duits, and scant tree openings are some of the diffi- 
culties that exist in various zones. 
Another feature of the report will be a map show- 
ing the location of the city's trees. This will be di- 
vided into zones according to conditions. Thus the 
downtown district where underground and traffic con- 
ditions make the growing of trees a practical impos- 
sibility would comprise one zone, while a district a 
little further removed in which the hardiest kind of 
tree might grow would constitute another. 
In an article on the tree situation in New York, pub- 
lished in the current Bulletin of the New York State 
Forestry Association, Commissioner Ward discusses 
the problems that confront his department in stopping 
the denuding of the city of trees. 
"It is my belief that as long as the property owner 
is alone" relied upon to plant city trees," the article 
says, "New York City will never have a sufficient 
number of shade trees. In the whole of New York 
City, and particularly Manhattan, it has been the ex- 
perience of this department that the property owner 
will not plant trees even on his own property when 
such property is leased to tenants. It naturally fol- 
lows that tenants will not often plant trees on prop- 
erty belonging to another person. 
"The landscape architect of the city has estimated 
that under the Manhattan conditions the average 
minimum cost of properly planting a tree in a paved 
sidewalk and providing a suitable cast-iron grating 
and wrought-iron guard would have to be $50, in case 
a general planting effort were made here as in Brook- 
lyn. At the present time very few people are willing 
to pay that amount, and I am hoping that, as the 
result of further studies by the landscape architect 
and other officials of this department whom I have 
directed to look into the matter, this estimate of aver- 
age cost may be substantially reduced." — Exchange. 
MOVING LARGE TREES IN WINTER. 
M 
ANY people are unwilling to wait for trees to grow to 
large size in these days of immediate results, and are 
willing to pay for them ready made, if of good height, 
habit and shape. There is as much diversity in trees 
as there is in white folks. The planter of small trees 
cannot tell how they will develop in later years, and if 
an avenue or parkway is to be planted, and look well 
in the time to come, uniformity is essential. 
E. O. Orpet. in the American Florist, refers to a 
very fine park system in an eastern city, where all the 
elms used are of the English type, and it was always 
thought that trimming or pruning brought the uni- 
formity always seen there. It was a revelation, there- 
fore, some few years ago to find that for manv years 
this city has bought all the trees, grafted annually by 
an English grower from one fine specimen tree. These 
were nursed along for years until needed in the park 
nursery, and then planted along newly created boule- 
vards and streets. This is now being done in Illinois, 
perhaps for the first time, and the prominent planters 
buy the elms as fast as they can be grown. All are 
grafted on seeding elms, below the level of the ground, 
and in two years trees the size of a broom handle can 
be supplied, all warranted to grow alike in time to 
come, and be uniform in habit. It may be said in pass- 
ing that to plant the English or Scotch types of elm 
in the middle west is a mistake ; they grow for a few 
years, and when valuable specimens might be expected, 
decadence begins. There is no elm like the American 
variety, ready to hand, vigorous, hardy and having the 
added advantage of being at home. 
