Turkey Oak, hold their leaves late and show no bright autumn colors. 
These three trees grow very rapidly here while they are young but are 
short-lived as the stems are usually cracked by the cold and, like the 
European Ash ( Fraxinus excelsior) and the Sycamore Maple ( Acer Pseu- 
doplatanus), they are unsatisfactory to plant in New England. One 
of the Oaks of western Europe, Quercus conferta, or, as it is often 
called, Q. pannonica, promises to be a much more valuable tree here. 
This is a large and common forest tree in some parts of Hungary and 
is easily distinguished by the leaves which are deeply divided into num- 
erous narrow lobes and which turn bright yellow at this season. It is 
a perfectly hardy, shapely, fast-growing tree which promises to suc- 
ceed in this region as it has in western Europe, and it is surprising 
that it is still so little known and so seldom planted in the United 
States. The largest plant in this country which has been reported to 
the Arboretum is growing on what was formerly the estate of George 
W. Carpenter in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and is now about forty 
feet high. Mr. Carpenter, who was a lover of trees and had a large 
collection of them, was a friend of Thomas Nuttall, the distinguished 
botanist, who paid him frequent visits about 1850 and probably pro- 
cured this then little known tree for him. There is a fine specimen, 
too, on the estate of Mr. John T. Morris at Chestnut Hill, Philadel- 
phia, which produces acorns freely, but outside the Arboretum it does 
not appear to be growing in Massachusetts. The Hungarian Oak may 
be seen near Oak Path among the other exotic Oaks. 
Five eastern Asiatic Oaks are well established in the Arboretum and 
nearly all of them produce fruit here; they are Quercus crispula, 
Q. grosseserrata, and Q. glandulifera from Japan, and Q. dentata and 
Q. variabilis from China and Japan. They are all interesting and 
attractive trees, and Q. grosseserrata will probably grow here, as it 
does in Japan, to a large size and become a valuable timber tree. 
The leaves of these Asiatic Oaks turn yellow or yellow and red in the 
autumn; they can be seen on Azalea and Oak Paths and on the left-hand 
side at the foot of Azalea Path where there is a large plantation of 
Asiatic Oaks. In this collection are the Oaks discovered by Wilson in 
western China; these are growing well and appear to be perfectly hardy, 
but it is too soon to speak of their value in this country. 
The leaves of nearly all the Sumachs turn scarlet or red in the 
autumn. The last of them to lose its leaves is the native Rhus copal- 
lina. This plant at the north is a low shrub which spreads into thick- 
ets, but at the south, especially in southern Arkansas and in Texas, it 
sometimes becomes a slender tree thirty or forty feet high. The leaves 
are rather more lustrous than those of the other Sumachs, and this spe- 
cies can also be distinguished by the wings on the stalks between the 
leaflets. Few plants present a more brilliant appearance in the autumn 
when the leaves turn bright scarlet. In the Sumach group, which is on 
the east side of the Meadow Road, there is a plant which is of excep- 
tional beauty in the autumn; this is the American Smoke-tree ( Cotinus 
americanus). It is a rare tree found only in the south in a few isolated 
stations from northern Alabama to southwestern Missouri, eastern 
Oklahoma, and western Texas. In the Arboretum, where it grows 
