GRAY herbarium 
HARVARD UNIVERSinfl 
2 ; ' 
exception of a few precocious flowers on a branch of one of the plants 
of H. vernalis which opened late in December, none of these plants 
were in flower this year until the middle of March. In the size of 
the flowers and in the length and brilliancy of the bright yellow petals 
Hamamelis mollis, a native of western China, is the handsomest of 
all the Witch Hazels. The pale green foliage of this shapely shrub is 
also attractive. It is very hardy and grows rapidly, and might well 
find a place in any garden or city plot in public view during the win- 
ter months. This Witch Hazel is one of the most valuable and inter- 
esting shrubs brought in recent years to the United States. 
Prunus Davidiana. This is the earliest of the Plum, Cherry, Peach 
and Apricot groups to flower this year. It is one of the wild Peaches 
of northern China, and is a small tree with lustrous red-brown bark, 
slender erect branches which form a narrow head, small flowers, nar- 
row pointed leaves and small fruit of no edible value. The flowers are 
usually of the color of those of the common Peach-tree, and there is a 
form with 'pure white flowers. The two forms have been covered with 
flowers during the past week in the Peach and Apricot Group on the 
right-hand side of the Meadow Road before its junction with the For- 
est Hills and Bussey Hill Roads. As a flowering tree in this climate 
this Peach has little to recommend it for the flower-buds or the flowers 
are killed almost every year by late frosts, but just now pomologists 
in this country are interested in it as a possible stock on which to 
work the common Peach-tree, as it is hardy north of the region where 
the Peach thrives. 
Early Rhododendrons. Several plants of the Siberian and north 
China Rhododendron dahuricum have been in bloom on the upper side 
of Azalea Path during the past week. This shrub has been in Euro- 
pean gardens for more than a century but is still little known in the, 
United States. It has small dark green leaves which in this climate 
remain on the branches until late in the winter, and small bright rose- 
colored flowers. These are often destroyed by spring frosts, and this 
plant has never been so beautiful before in the Arboretum as it is 
this spring. There is a variety sempervirens with more persistent 
leaves and darker-colored flowers. This variety is not blooming this 
year. Usually Rhododendron mucronulatum is the earliest of the Rho- 
dodendrons to bloom in the Arboretum but this year it is a week later 
than R. dahuricum, and is only now opening its paler rose-colored 
flowers. This is a tall, perfectly hardy, deciduous-leaved shrub which 
• has flowered freely every spring in the Arboretum for the last twenty 
years and is chiefly valuable for the earliness of the flowers which appear 
on the leafless branches and are rarely injured by spring frosts. In 
the Arboretum the leaves turn bright yellow before falling late in the 
autumn. There is a large group of these plants on the lower side 
of Azalea Path. 
Early Magnolias. The flower-buds of the Japanese Magnolia stellata 
have been nearly all killed in the Arboretum. This should not, how- 
