23 
be hardy here. Of the other species, the so-called Mountain Magnolia, 
M. Fraseri , is the first to open its flowers in the Arboretum. It is a 
small tree rarely more than forty feet high, with an open head of 
long branches, leaves often a foot in length and deeply divided at the 
base, and creamy white, sweet-scented flowers eight or ten inches in 
diameter and very conspicuous as they stand well above the crowded 
leaves at the ends of the branches. This Magnolia is a native of the 
southern Appalachian Mountain region and, although it has not been 
found growing north of southeastern Virginia, is perfectly hardy in east¬ 
ern Massachusetts. The next to flower is M. cordata which for several 
days has been covered with its cup-shaped, bright canary yellow flowers 
unlike in color those of any other Magnolia. There is an interesting 
story connected with this tree. It was discovered toward the end of 
the eighteenth century by the French botanist and traveller Michaux 
on one of his journeys from Charleston, South Carolina, up the valley 
of the Savannah River to the high Carolina Mountains. By Michaux 
it was introduced into French gardens where it flourished. For more 
than a century every attempt to rediscover this tree failed, and it is 
only within the last five or six years that it was found by the Berck- 
mans Brothers growing in the woods not many miles distant from 
Augusta, Georgia, where plants only a few feet high flower profusely. 
Grafts from Michaux’s trees, however, preserved this tree in cultiva¬ 
tion, and the plants in the Arboretum were raised from grafts taken 
from old trees in the Harvard Botanic Garden for which they were im¬ 
ported from Europe probably when the Garden was laid out, that is, 
more than a century ago or not long after Michaux had discovered and 
introduced this tree. The flowers of M. cordata will be followed in 
succession by those of M. acuminata, the Cucumber Tree, M. tripe- 
tala, the Umbrella Tree, M. glauca and M. macrophylla. As they 
flower attention will be called to some of these trees in later issues of 
these Bulletins. 
Diervilla florida venusta. Attention has been called before to the 
beauty of this Korean shrub. It is the first of the Diervillas to flower 
and for more than a week it has been covered with its large rose-pink 
flowers which open when the leaves are not more than half grown. 
It is a vigorous, perfectly hardy plant, and none of the hybrid Dier¬ 
villas to which so much attention has been paid by European gardeners 
compare in beauty with this wild plant which is one of the commonest 
shrubs of central and northern Korea. The flora of Korea is not rich 
in trees and shrubs as compared with those of western China and Japan 
and not many endemic Korean plants have been established in western 
gardens. It is interesting, therefore, to find that five of the hardiest 
and most beautiful shrubs introduced in recent years into gardens are 
from Korea. They are Viburnum Carlesii, Diervilla florida venusta, 
Rhododendron Schlippenbachii, R. poukhanense and Rosa Jackii. Korea 
has given us, too, a Fir in Abies holophylla which, although the seeds 
were first planted at the Arboretum in 1904, has grown so rapidly here 
and has proved so hardy that it promises to rival as an ornamental 
tree the Japanese Abies homolepis (brachyphylla). In Korea A. holo¬ 
phylla grows to a height of one hundred feet, and in the northern part 
of the peninsula forms pure forests often of considerable extent. In 
a few years it will be possible to obtain at the Arboretum a better 
idea than we have now of the value of the plants of Korea in this 
