moving and healed itself. This of course is true of all the 
Magnolias including their first cousin, the Tulip Tree. 
If the Shadbush were expensive and difficult to grow and 
came to us from the other side of the world, we should be 
quarreling with each other as to who should have the best plants 
of it, but as it grows freely in all our rocky woods and close to 
our bogs, its tasselled blossoms hanging on the slender twigs 
with an incredible lightness and grace, we do not bring it in 
from the woods to help us in our spring gardens as we really 
ought. The close gray bark, the silvery whiteness of its misty 
blossom, the tiny red fruits which the birds eat greedily before 
they ripen, and in the autumn the coloring of the leaves, often 
on certain individual trees as bright as the Maple, make the 
Amelanchier, whether tree or shrub, one of the most welcome 
inhabitants of the spring garden. With the Shadbush and the 
Magnolia comes the delicious little Spicebush, Benzoin, which the 
country children all know by taste as well as by sight as they 
Shrubs break off and chew its twigs on their way to and from school. 
They may not feel that throb of excitement which Ave grown-ups 
. all have when we see the woods misty with its yellow, fuzzy 
blossoms, but at any rate, they know as well as we do that we 
shall not have to look far to find the first Skunk Cabbage and 
perhaps a plant of Hepatica. 
Early One of the Chinese plants which has taken most kindly to 
Flowering us and we to it, is the Chinese Weeping Cherry, which alas ! 
Trees most of us know only in the terrible form in which it is usually 
sold by nurserymen. These men are not patient enough to 
raise the trees from seed and, therefore, to save time in 
propagating, they graft it on standards of the ordinary Cherry 
5 or 6 feet high. On top of this rigid pole the flowering Cherry 
then starts to weep and the tree lover is tempted to do likewise, 
as the best she can hope for is that it will grow into an irregular 
mop. The real growth of the tree, for tree it is and not a 
shrub, is an erect habit with the ends of the twigs hanging in 
graceful curves and when in bloom it is literally a geyser of 
pink flowers of exquisite color. The most beautiful plant of 
this that I know grows near Professor Charles Sargent's house 
in Brookline ; it is thirty feet high and seldom fails to be covered 
with a mass of flowers. This is one of the 'Cherry Blossoms 
which makes the Japanese festival. If we have space in our 
spring garden we should certainly plant a few trees of the 
double flowering Cherry, Prunus avium, fl. pi. Primus liortensis 
is the real Japanese flowering Cherry of the national festival 
and it is quite hardy here and flowers as well as it does in its 
own home. Then we have our own wild black Cherry, Prunus 
serotina, which to me is one of the most charming trees in every 
way that we have ; it is lovely in flower, makes a beautiful dark 
green round-headed tree during the summer and for many 
8 
