20 
Berberis Dielsiana, which was raised from seeds collected by Purdom 
in the province of Shensi, in China, is one of the handsomest and most 
vigorous of the Barberries of recent introduction. The largest plant 
in the Arboretum is growing among the new Chinese Barberries on 
Bussey Hill where it is already eight or nine feet tall and broad. It 
is one of the species with flowers in drooping racemes like those of 
the common Barberry. It is not only a vigorous and handsome plant 
but is valuable for its early flowers which have opened in the Arbore- 
tum as early as the middle of April. It first flowered here in 1916 
and is now in bloom. This Barberry deserves the attention of persons 
interested in early flowering shrubs. 
Sorbus auricularis var. bulbiformis. This interesting bi-generic hybrid 
is flowering remarkably well this year on the left hand side and close 
to the Forest Hills Gate. Sorbua auricularis, formerly called in Europe 
the Bollwyller Pear, is a deciduous-leaved tree from twenty to sixty 
feet high, forming a round bushy head, with ovate or oval leaves 
rounded or heart-shaped at base, covered above with loose early decid- 
uous down, and flowers from three-quarters of an inch to an inch in 
diameter. The fruit is pear-shaped, an inch to an inch and a quarter 
long and wide, red, each on a stalk from an inch to an inch and a half 
long, with sweet yellowish flesh. It is said to have originated at Boll- 
wyller in Alsace, and was first mentioned by Bauhin as early as 1619. 
For three hundred years it has been propagated by grafts, for it pro- 
duces few fertile seeds. The variety in the Arboretum, sometimes 
called Pyrus malifolia and Sorbopyrus malifolia, differs chiefly from the 
type in its broadly top-shaped fruit two inches long and wide and deep 
yellow when ripe. Spach named and described this tree as Pyrus mali- 
folia in 1834 and said that the original specimen at that time grew in 
the garden of the King of France in Paris, and was thirty feet or 
more high. This and the Bollwyller Pear are certainly little known in 
this country and deserve a place in all collections of flowering trees. 
