15 
more pyramidal than that of other Crabapples and this habit makes 
the plants conspicuous in the collection. The largest plants are cov- 
ered this year with their small, pale pink, delicate flowers which will 
be followed by light yellow fruit, often rose color on one cheek. A 
plant of Mains micromalus first came to the Arboretum from the Paris 
Museum in 1888 and the plants now growing here are descendants of 
that plant. It is still one of the rarest of the Asiatic Crabapples in 
western gardens. 
Malus Halliana var. Parkmanii is the semidouble form of a Crab- 
apple which Wilson found growing wild at high altitudes in western 
China on the Thibetan border. As the double-flowered form had long 
been a favorite in Japanese gardens, where it is frequently cultivated 
under the name of “Kaido, ” this tree before Wilson's time was be- 
lieved to be a native of Japan. The Parkman Crab, as the semidouble- 
flowered form is generally known in this country, was one of the first 
Japanese plants to reach the United States direct from Japan as it 
was sent to Boston in 1862 where it was first planted by Francis Park- 
man, the historian, in his garden on the shores of Jamaica Pond. 
From this tree has been produced most of the plants of this Crabapple 
now growing in America and probably in Europe. The Parkman Crab 
is a small vase-shaped tree with erect and spreading branches and dark 
bark. It flowers profusely every year and the flowers, which droop on 
slender stems, are rose-red and unlike in color the flowers of other 
Crabapples. The fruit, which is borne on long erect stems, is dull in 
color and hardly more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter. The 
Parkman Crab when in flower is one of the handsomest and most dis- 
tinct of Crabapples, and its small size makes it one of the best of them 
all to plant in small gardens. The Chinese single-flowered form, M. 
Halliana, is not in the Arboretum collection. 
Malus theifera is one of Wilson’s early discoveries in central and west- 
ern China, and gives every promise of being a decorative plant in this 
country of the first class. It is a tree with long, upright and irregu- 
larly spreading, zigzag branches thickly studded with short spurs which 
bear numerous clusters of flowers which are rose-red in the bud, but 
become pale or almost white when the petals are fully expanded. In 
central China the peasants collect the leaves' and prepare from them 
their “red tea.” From this fact the specific name of the tree has been 
formed. The largest plant in the Arboretum is now fourteen feet high 
and flowers profusely every year. There is a var. rosea with deeper- 
colored petals which is also in the collection. 
By European botanists the now well known Malus florihunda has 
usually been considered a hybrid of uncertain Chinese origin, and the 
plant cultivated in American and European gardens is certainly the 
parent of several hybrids. The handsomest of these probably is Malus 
arnoldiana which appeared many years ago in this Arboretum among 
seedlings of M. fioribunda. The other parent is probably the hybrid 
M. robusta. It is a low tree with wide-spreading, slightly pendulous 
branches with the abundant flowers of M. fioribunda, but the flowers 
and fruits are nearly twice as large as those of that tree. There is 
