35 
of the corolla lobes. Syringa Koehneana is as usual flowering very 
sparingly, and it is doubtful if this Korean shrub will have much value 
as a garden plant in this climate. It is a vigorous, irregularly growing 
plant with large leaves and short, broad, compact clusters of rose-col- 
ored flowers white on the inner surface of the corolla lobes. 
Tree Lilacs. The Lilac season closes with the flowering of these 
eastern Asiatic species which are popularly known as “Tree Lilacs.’' 
They all have handsome dark green leaves which fall in the autumn 
without change of color, and large usually unsymmetrical clusters of 
white flowers with the disagreeable odor of the flowers of the Privet. 
They are handsome and hardy plants and when in bloom the most con- 
spicuous of the trees or large arborescent shrubs of their season. This 
year, the three species promise an unusually abundant bloom. The first 
of these plants to flower, Syringa amurensis, is a native of eastern 
Siberia, and a shrub twelve or fifteen feet high, with dark-colored 
bark, leaves pale on the lower surface, and short unsymmetrical flower- 
clusters which usually are produced only on alternate years. Syringa 
pekinensis blooms soon after, S. amurensis. It is a native of northern 
China and a shrub sometimes thirty feet tall and broad, with stout 
spreading stems covered with yellow-brown bark separating into thin 
plate-like scales like that of some Birch-trees, narrow, long-pointed 
leaves, and short, unsymmetrical flower-clusters, usually in pairs. This 
species retains its leaves later in the autumn than the other “Tree 
Lilacs,” and it flowers profusely every year. The last of these plants 
to flower, Syringa japonica, is a native of northern Japan and a tree 
sometimes forty feet high, with a tall straight trunk covered with lus- 
trous brown bark like that of a Cherry-tree, a round-topped head of 
erect branches, broad thick leaves and mostly symmetrical flower-clus- 
ters often eighteen inches in length. This tree rarely flowers except 
in alternate years. 
Berberis V ernae. Gardeners often complain that there are now too 
many Barberries, and it is certainly true that only an expert who has 
devoted years of special study to the genus can readily distinguish all 
the species, varieties and hybrids in the groups of which Berberis vul- 
garis, the common Barberry of western Europe, and now naturalized 
in the northeastern United States, is a typical plant. There are now 
probably at least one hundred different Barberries in the Arboretum 
Collection and the number is likely to increase rather than to decrease, 
for Barberries hybridize easily in collections like the one in the Arbor- 
etum, and it is more than probable that China, the headquarters of the 
genus, may still contain undescribed species. There may be too many 
Barberries but no one who has once seen Berberis Vernae as it is now 
growing in the Arboretum will regret that Wilson, who discovered this 
plant in China, sent seeds to the Arboretum in 1910 from the neigh- 
borhood of Sungtan in the upper Min Valley where he found it at an 
altitude of about nine thousand feet above sea-level, growing with the 
other Chinese Barberries. B. Vernae is here now about six feet tall and 
nearly as much in diameter. The long, slender, bright red branches 
covered with small, nearly entire leaves arch and droop gracefully, and 
from them hang on long stems innumerable slender clusters of small, 
pale yellow, slightly fragrant flowers which in the autumn are followed 
