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propagated and sold by American nurserymen. When in flower it is a 
showy tree but lacks the charm of the normal species. A variety of 
the normal form with pendulous branches is in the Arboretum collection 
but has no particular interest or beauty, and a form with flower-heads 
surrounded by a double row of bracts, which was a good deal adver¬ 
tised a few years ago, has little to recommend it. Beautiful as it is 
the eastern Flowering Dogwood is surpassed by the species of the 
northwest coast region, Cornus Nuttallii, which is a tree sometimes 
seventy or eighty feet high with heads of bracts five or six inches 
across. Cornus Nuttallii grows in damp woods in the shade of large 
coniferous trees, and it is difficult to keep it alive beyond the limits of 
its native forests. It has never succeeded in the Arboretum and has 
flowered in Europe in only a few gardens. The Japanese Flowering 
Dogwood, Cornus kousa, and its Chinese variety are hardy and hand¬ 
some little trees which flower later in the season than our native 
species, with which they do not compare in beauty of flowers, foliage 
or fruit. 
The Sassafras in Autumn. In good years and bad years the Sassafras 
never fails to become a conspicuous object of beauty in October when 
its dark green leaves turn yellow and orange color more or less tinged 
with red. This statement gives little idea of the warmth of color 
which the Sassafras produces when it grows, as it often does, on the 
border of a forest of Oak-trees on which the leaves are still green. 
The Sassafras is a handsome tree at other seasons of the year. In 
winter it is conspicuous by its deeply furrowed dark cinnamon-gray 
bark and bright green branchlets which in early spring are covered 
before the leaves appear with innumerable clusters of small bright 
yellow flowers. The leaves, which are sometimes deeply three-lobed 
and sometimes entire on the same branch, are not attacked by insects. 
The fruit is a bright blue berry surrounded at the base by the much 
enlarged and thickened calyx of the flower raised on a long bright red 
stalk. Among northern trees only Magnolias produce such bright-col¬ 
ored fruits. There is little time, however, to enjoy the fruit of the 
Sassafras for birds eagerly seek it as it ripens. 
Crataegus. A few of the Old World Hawthorns produce fruit as 
large and handsome as any of the American species. The largest and 
handsomest is that of the Manchurian and Chinese Crataegus pinnati- 
fida which is cultivated in orchards by the Chinese for its dark red 
fruits. Very beautiful this year is a variety of the European C. oxy- 
acantha (var. Gireoudii) with thick, slightly lobed, dark green leaves 
and bright red, lustrous, short-oblong fruits half an inch in length. 
The branches of the small tree in the new collection of exotic Thorns 
on Peter's Hill are covered from end to end with fruit clusters which 
make it one of the most brilliant plants in the Arboretum this week. 
Crataegus hiemalis, a European tree of doubtful origin and by some 
authors considered a hybrid, is covered this year with its lustrous, dark 
wine-colored, ellipsoidal fruit half an inch long, drooping on long slender 
stems. More beautiful is a tree growing near C. hiemalis in the old 
Crataegus Collection near the Shrub Collection with small deeply divided 
leaves and depressed-globose, shining, dark red-brown fruit three- 
