Horticultural Sports 
By Warren H. Manning, Massachusetts 
THE bizarre, garish, unconventional individuals that 
are referred to among humans as "sports," have 
their counterparts in the plant world. One may be 
introduced to you by a friend ; the other by a nursery cat- 
alogue. You will find that some have a thin veneer 
of color or an eccentricity of form or action that may 
be very amusing, but that have no real merit or per- 
manent value ; while on the other hand there are some 
sports that have such substantial and worthy qualities 
that they find a permanent place of honor among your 
friends, or in your gardens and landscapes. 
It is to certain of these plant sports that we shall 
hereafter refer, such as the purple, golden, cut-leaved, 
pyramidal, table-form, table-topped and weeping forms 
that have developed among species of Beech, Birch, 
Maple, Elm, Catalpa, Elder, Hazel, Dogwood, Pine, 
Hemlock, Spruce and other groups. These have be- 
come pretty well established in nurseries, gardens 
and lawns by reason of their vigor, health, distinctive 
foliage or habit of growth. 
They have been mostly used, however, as specimens, 
or to give brilliant spots of summer color in the con- 
ventional patchwork quilt shrub plantations, not as 
elements of broad landscapes. 
Before considering their use in landscapes we should 
recognize that such sports are not always fugitive acci- 
dental freaks that can be reproduced only by grafting 
or by cuttings. It has been found, for example, that 
the seedlings of a conspicuous specimen plant of Wier's 
Cut-Leaf Maple, Purple Beech or Golden Spirea will 
produce so large a percentage of cut-leaved, and purple 
or golden offspring, that the progeny of an old seeding 
plant would be likely to establish in time a wide- 
spreading distinctive group, in which there will be 
much foliage like the parent, and color transitions due 
to variations in seedlings, and these would gradually 
merge the group into the surrounding trees. The 
purple Barberry has already escaped from cultivation, 
and made these distinctive groups in open pastures. 
Much of our broad landscape beauty comes from 
the deep shadows and the high lights of hill and val- 
ley, and of foliage as seen under various atmospheric 
moods. Individual trees count but little in distant 
landscape. It is the mass that counts effectively in 
foliage color and in outline, as shown in the contrasts 
between the spired cone-bearing evergreens and the 
rounded outline of deciduous foliage, or the towering 
Lombardy Poplars ; or again between the dark and 
solid masses of the Burr Oak foliage, the flickering 
and glinting sparkle of the Aspen Poplar or the Silver 
Poplar, or the soft, fleecv, gravish foliage of the 
Willows. 
The really worthy sports of the vegetable world 
may well have a place that has never been given them 
in "broad landscapes that are seen from a distance. 
The deep shadows in the valley, or at the ends of a 
long vista might be given greater emphasis by the 
use of such long-lived vigorous forms as the Purple 
Beech or Purple Maple, that are used in principal 
masses and outline groups with a suitable backing, 
flanking and interlacing of dark green foliage that 
would merge the purple into the surrounding land- 
scape, to give the deeper shadows and not be unpleas- 
antly obtrusive. 
At other points the high lights of the landscape in 
glades through vistas or under arching trees may be 
311 
given greater emphasis and brilliancy by the use of 
such plants as the Golden Elder and Spirea, or the 
Golden Poplar and Hop-tree. 
The cut-leaved form of the Birch, Beech or Maple 
would give a distinct variation in the texture of the 
foliage, as seen from a distance, if a sufficient quan- 
tity were used to count effectively, and they could be 
very properly associated with the type. 
There are man}' places where it would be very desir- 
able to establish a ground cover that will not grow 
high enough to interfere with the view, that will have 
good healthy foliage, and that can be more readily 
kept in restraint than can be most vines. Why should 
we not use the Weeping forms of the Mulberry, Moun- 
tain Ash, Elm, Beech, Dogwood, Pine and Spruce for 
such a purpose ? Some of these forms, such as the 
Weeping Mulberry and Camperdown Elm, are trail- 
ing sports of upright trees, with little tendency to 
form a leader. They are usually grafted on high stems 
to make them suggest the umbrella-like form. 
Other varieties, like the Weeping Beech and the 
Norway Spruce, have a distinct tendency to make a 
leader. Such forms, grown on their own roots, or 
grafted so low that the graft can be buried in the 
ground, to form roots above the union, would have a 
tendency to scramble over the surface. As such plants 
as the Mountain Ash and the Mulberry have fruit that 
the birds like, they would help to form the ideal bird 
cover. One can conceive of an exceedingly interesting 
and attractive phase of landscape so treated, for there 
is enough variation to give high and low foliage 
masses. 
There are other places where the cushion-shaped 
trees, such as the Dwarf Catalpa, the several dense 
forms of the Norway Spruce and American Arbor- 
vitae, could be massed together to form a distinctive 
landscape treatment of this type. 
Is there any more reason why the brilliant crimson 
coloring of the Schwedler's Maple should not be used 
to give color effects in a large way in the spring, as 
we now secure color effects from the Maples, Tupelos, 
Sumacs and Birches in the fall? These are all interest- 
ing propositions for those who have the courage to 
break away from the conventional use of material ; 
but they must recognize the danger of such sugges- 
tions, because it will be very easy to produce a garish 
and disordered effect in landscape, just as is now pro- 
duced in so many gardens and lawns where spots of 
such material are used. 
The type of plant that succeeds best in dry-wall plant- 
ing is worth considering, as so much of this material 
can often be produced at home. After much experience 
in this and allied work, I can affirm that permanent suc- 
cess is much greater from the use of small rooted cut- 
tings and seedlings than from plants that have become 
root-bound in pots. The former are also the most cer- 
tain and easily managed where a dry wall has to be 
planted after building, or for making good any vacancies 
in established walls. 
When very wet or in a pasty condition, the work of 
building should be suspended, as soil put together in this 
condition shrinks considerably when dry. and this opens 
a way for air to penetrate into the wall, to the ruin of 
the plants. 
After planting is completed, little further attention is 
necessary. With dry conditions, it is to the advantage 
