15 
Prunus triloba. Among the flowers of early spring few are more 
lovely than those of this small Almond from northern China which, in 
spite of the fact that it has flowered in the Arboretum every spring 
for the last twenty years, is still very little known, although the form 
with double flowers (var. plena) is a common garden plant in this 
country and is often successfully forced under glass for winter bloom. 
The single-flowered plant should be better known. It is a tall shrub 
of rather open irregular habit of growth. The flowers, which are pure 
clear pink in color, are produced every year in profusion, and among 
the shrubs introduced into cultivation by the Arboretum in the last 
thirty years none excel the single-flowered form of P. triloba in the 
beauty of their flowers. This shrub can be seen on the right-hand side 
of Forest Hills Road not far below the entrance. It can also be seen 
with Prunus tomentosa by the path leading from the Meadow Road 
through the woods into the Shrub Collection. 
Early Lilacs. The earliest Lilacs to bloom here, the white-flowered 
Syringa affinis, and its variety with mauve-colored flowers (var. 
Giraldii), and S. Meyeri, are rapidly opening their flower-buds. S. 
ajffinis and its variety are tall shrubs of open habit and, except in their 
flowers, have no decorative value. The individual flowers are small 
but are borne in large loose clusters, and are exceedingly and pleas- 
antly fragrant. S. affinis is not known as a wild plant but is the com- 
mon and perhaps the only Lilac cultivated in Peking, where it has been 
largely used in the Imperial and Mandarin gardens. The variety is a 
wild plant in the region southwest of Peking. S. Meyeri was found 
in a Chinese garden by the traveller whose name it bears, and is not 
known as a wild plant. As it grows in the Arboretum it is a shrub 
beginning to flower when not more than a foot high, and covering itself 
with small compact clusters of small dark purple very fragrant flowers. 
This interesting addition to the genus Syringa will probably never be- 
come a popular garden plant, although it may prove useful to the hy- 
bridizer. 
The Norway Maple. Only a few of the important trees of western 
Europe really succeed in eastern North America, although for more 
than a century they received more attention at the hands of Amer- 
ican planters than our native species. There are, of course, some 
exceptions to this general statement. The forms of the White and of 
the Fragile Willow, some of the Poplars, the Beech, the Lindens, the 
Elms, the Birches and the Norway Maple are as much at home in 
southern New England and the middle states as they are in England, 
and probably grow here more rapidly than they do in their native coun- 
tries where there is smaller although more regularly distributed rain- 
fall and less summer heat. None of the European trees have been 
more generally planted in the eastern states during the last fifty years 
than one of the Maples (Acer platanoides), the so-called Norway Maple, 
although it is not an exclusively Scandinavian tree, but is widely spread 
over the continent and reaches the Caucasus. The Norway Maple has 
