3 
petals of little beauty, and it is only as a curiosity that it is worth a 
place in the garden. 
The middle of April the season appeared to be ten or twelve days 
earlier than last year but on April 20th and 21st the temperature 
in the neighborhood of Boston rose in the afternoon to 87° and the 
buds of many plants began to open, and now a week later there is not 
more than a week’s difference in the opening of flowers between this 
year and last. The Soft Maple (Acer saccarinum) which has been 
known to flower here in February was in full bloom this year on March 
24th, nine days later than last year; and a tree of the Red Maple 
(Acer ruhrum) was in flower this year on April 20th or ten days later 
than last year. In spite of the lateness of the season there are inter¬ 
esting flowers to be seen in the Arboretum, although it is still not too 
late for a destructive frost like that of April 21, 1922, which did so 
much damage to flowers here. 
Early Magnolias. Three Japanese species are conspicuous in early 
spring; all of them, however, bloom at least ten days too early for 
their delicate white petals rarely escape injury by cold nights. The 
handsomest and the best known of these plants, Magnolia stellata, is 
a large round-topped shrub with star-like flowers which appear before 
the dark green leaves. Although a native of southern Japan, this Mag¬ 
nolia is entirely hardy in Massachusetts, and if it flowered later would 
be one of the most desirable plants which could be grown in northern 
gardens. The other early-flowering Japanese species are Magnolia 
salicifolia and M. kobus var. borealis. The former is a small slender 
tree with narrow pointed leaves and smaller flowers than those of 
M. stellata. It is a native of the mountain slopes of northern Hondo. 
It is hardy but has never grown as well in the Arboretum as it has in 
Highland Park, Rochester, New York. The third of these plants, the 
northern large-flowered form of M. kobus (var. borealis) is the most 
northern in its range of the Magnolias which flower before the leaves 
appear, and grows naturally only in Asia. This northern tree was in¬ 
troduced into gardens by the Arboretum as long ago as 1878, but in 
cultivation has never been a particularly successful plant. The small 
white flowers are pendent and are not often produced freely until the 
tree is thirty or forty years old. Growing in the open the trees are 
apt to produce heavy lower branches which interfere with the growth 
of the stem which is stunted and often killed by them. This Magnolia 
grows naturally in dense forests in which it becomes a tall tree with a 
long straight trunk, and it is probable that it will do better than it has 
in the Arboretum if it could be planted with other trees in woods. The 
old trees have all disappeared from the Arboretum, but one of the 
original seedlings growing in a garden in Brookline, is now more cov¬ 
ered with flowers than it has ever been before. 
Forsythias are now covered with nearly fully expanded flowers and 
are the most conspicuous plants in the Arboretum. When planted in 
low ground they have lost some of their flower-buds from cold, espe¬ 
cially those at the end of the branches, but even in low situations they 
are fuller of flowers than usual. A species which is flowering this 
spring for the first time in the United States is 
