36 
looks more like a Spiraea than a Cotoneaster. The flowers are white, 
in small clusters which stand up well above the leaves. The fruit is 
bright red and lustrous, but it has not yet been produced here very 
profusely and as it is a good deal hidden by the leaves this species is 
not as showy in the autumn as several of the others, C. nitens and 
C. divaricata are covered with their small bright red flowers which 
make them attractive at this season of the year. They are large and 
vigorous shrubs with arching stems and dark green and very lustrous 
leaves; the former has reddish black fruit and C. divaricata, which is 
the larger plant of the two has bright red fruit. All the plants in this 
group are good garden plants in this climate, and among them are some 
of the most valuable additions which have been made in recent years 
to the New England garden flora. The largest specimens of the Chin- 
ese Cotoneasters are among the other Chinese shrubs on the southern 
slope of Bussey Hill; many of them are also in the general Shrub Col- 
lection and on Hickory Path near Centre Street. 
Xanthoceras sorbifolia. This handsome Chinese shrub or small tree 
has flowered unusually well in the Shrub Collection this year. It has 
dark green leaves and erect and spreading racemes of white flowers 
marked with red at the base of the petals, and fruit like that of a 
Buckeye. This interesting plant is related to the so-called Texas Buck- 
eye, Ungnadia, and to Koelruteria, the yellow-flowered Chinese tree 
which blooms here at midsummer. Xanthoceras, of which there is but 
a single species, is not new in gardens. It is very hardy but has a way 
of dying without any apparent cause, and for this reason it is not as 
often cultivated as it might be for when it flowers as it has here this 
year few shrubs are more beautiful. 
Symplocos paiiiculata, or as it is often called, S', cratacgoides, is a 
native of Japan, China and the Himalayas. The form which is culti- 
vated here is Japanese, and is a tall, broad ahrub, with large, obovate, 
dark green deciduous leaves, small white flowers in abundant, compact 
panicles which open after the leaves are nearly full grown and are fol- 
lowed in the autumn by bright blue fruits about one-third of an inch 
in diameter. Although the plants are attractive when in bloom, the 
fruit of a color unusual among that of hardy shrubs is the most inter- 
esting thing about it. There are large plants now in flower in the 
general Shrub Collection and on the side of the Bussey Hill Road just 
above the Lilacs. Apparently this shrub does not flourish in soil im- 
pregnated with lime, at least it has been found impossible to make it 
live in Rochester, New York. 
The cold and rainy season has so delayed the blooming of early flow- 
ering plants like Lilacs, which were three weeks later than usual, that 
trees and shrubs whose flowering periods are normally several weeks 
apart are now in bloom together, and probably there has never been a 
time when so many different flowers could be seen here at once as are 
open this week. Azaleas, Rhododendrons, Wisterias, Viburnums, Cor- 
nels, Laburnums, American Crabapples, Hawthorns, Roses, Diervillas, 
Dipeltas, Syringas, Horsechestnuts, Buckeyes, Maples, Barberries, 
Siberian Pea-trees, Aronias, Robinias, Mountain Ashes, and Cotoneas- 
ters are a few of the genera represented by many species which are 
now covered with flowers in the Arboretum. 
