44 
forming a comparatively narrow or round-topped head. The leaves are 
broad-ovate to nearly triangular, long-pointed, more or less incisely or 
three-lobed, dark green and very lustrous above, and pale below up to 
two inches in length, turning late in the autumn bright scarlet and 
orange. The flowers open here early in June after the leaves are fully 
grown and are about half an inch in diameter, creamy white with rose- 
colored anthers, and are arranged in compact, many-flowered corymbs. 
The fruit is scarlet and lustrous, and ripening late in September or in 
October retains its color and remains on the branches until the spring 
of the following year. The Washington Thorn is the last of the Ameri- 
can species to flower in the Arboretum. The flowers are less beauti- 
ful than those of most Hawthorns, but the plant is valuable for the 
remarkable coloring of the leaves in autumn and for the brilliant and 
persistent fruit. Nowhere very common, this tree grows naturally in 
a few isolated stations from western North Carolina, through Tennessee 
and Kentucky to southern Illinois and southern Missouri, and is now 
often naturalized in the middle and Ohio valley states. 
Late Flowering Magnolias. The_ Sweet Bay, Magnolia virginiana, 
or as it is more often called, M. glauca, opened its fragrant cup-shaped 
flowers ten days ago and will continue to open them until midsummer. 
The leaves, which are dark green above and silvery white below, and 
more beautiful than those of almost any other plant which is hardy in 
this climate, remain on the branches without change of color until the 
beginning of winter; and the perfume of the flowers is more penetrat- 
ing and delightful than that of any of our native trees and shrubs. A 
plant for every garden, great or small, how often is the Sweet Bay 
found in those of modern construction? Magnolia macrophylla flow'ers 
a few days later than M. virginiana, and is the last of the genus to 
open its flowers here. It is a wonderful tree with leaves silvery white 
on the lower surface and often thirty inches long and ten inches wide, 
and flowers a foot in diameter, A southern tree with its northern sta- 
tions in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and in Kentucky, it is 
perfectly hardy in eastern Massachusetts, although here as elsewhere 
the great leaves are often torn by wind unless a sheltered position is 
selected for it. Magnolia macrophylla is a distinct and beautiful tree, 
and is interesting in the fact that its leaves and flowers are larger than 
those of any other which grows in extra tropical regions. 
Eleagnus angustifolius. A tree with silvery white foliage can some- 
times be mixed with advantage with dark- leaved trees to produce con- 
trast in the landscape, and for this purpose no tree which is hardy here 
at the north is so well suited as the Oleaster, as Eleagnus angustifolia 
is sometimes called. A native of southern Europe and western Asia, 
it is a tree sometimes thirty feet high, or a large arborescent shrub, 
with erect and spreading, sometimes spiny branches, and narrow lance- 
olate leaves up to three or four inches in length. The fragrant flow- 
ers are produced in few-flowered clusters in the axils of the young 
shoots and are nearly half an inch in length with a bell-shaped tube 
and four spreading lobes. The fruit is oval, half an inch long, yellow- 
ish and covered with silvery scales; the flesh is sweet and mealy. The 
large plants of the Oleaster on the left hand side of the Bussey Hill 
Road are now covered with flowers. 
