64 
a half in diameter, often free of branches for fifty or sixty feet from 
the ground and covered with bark separating into great platelike scales 
like those of a scaly-barked Hickory or a Swamp Cottonwood. The 
flowers are about one-third larger and the fruit is twice as large as the 
flowers and fruits of the lowland tree. The habit of the plant and the 
large flowers and fruits are reproduced in the seedlings, which when 
the seeds germinate begin to grow as trees with a single stem. The 
seedlings show no variation in habit, and the young trees grow with a 
single straight stem with short branches which form a narrow sym¬ 
metrical, pyramidal head. The trees often begin to flower and to pro¬ 
duce fertile seeds before they are ten feet tall. The mountain Halesia 
has been described as a variety (var. monticola) of H. ccfrolina but 
it will probably be, when better known, considered a species. This 
tree was introduced into cultivation by Mr. Harlan P. Kelsey who for 
many years has maintained in western North Carolina a nursery of 
Appalachian plants. By him it was sent to the Park Department of 
Rochester about twenty-five years ago, and in 1907 it came from 
Rochester to the Arboretum. This mountain tree has proved to be 
perfectly hardy in the Arboretum where it is growing rapidly and where 
it has now flowered and produced fruit since 1913. It is a tree which 
seems destined to play an important part in the decoration of Ameri¬ 
can parks and which may prove useful for street and roadside planting. 
Photima villosa. This small tree or arborescent shrub which has 
been covered with bright red autumn leaves was last week the most 
conspicuous object in the Shrub Collection. It is a native of Japan 
and China, and although it was introduced from Japan, probably in 
1864, by the Parsons Nursery at Flushing, Long Island, it does not 
appear to be well known in this country. Photinia is related to Cra¬ 
taegus; it has small white flowers in clusters, and small, shining, scar¬ 
let fruits which remain on the branches until after the leaves fall. 
Cotixras americaims. The so-called Smoke-tree (Cotinus coggygria) 
of eastern ^Europe is found in many old-fashioned gardens in which it 
is conspicuous in summer by the great clusters of the much-lengthened, 
hairy, colored stems of the small flowers. Much less well known is 
the American species of this genus. The American Smoke-tree grows 
naturally only in the neighborhood of Huntsville in northern Alabama, 
in southern Missouri, and in eastern Oklahoma and Texas. First raised 
in the Arboretum in 1882 from seeds collected on the high limestone 
ridge a few miles south of Huntsville, Alabama, the American Cotinus 
has proved perfectly hardy here. It has grown, however, into a broad 
tall shrub and not as a tree, although on the Huntsville ridge trees 
thirty feet tall were once abundant. The “smoke” of the American 
species as compared with that of the Old World plant is inconspicuous, 
and its value is found in the splendid orange and scarlet coloring of the 
leaves at the end of October when it is one of the conspicuous plants of 
the Arboretum. A large specimen can be seen on the left hand side 
of the Meadow Road next to the Sumachs, and there is another by 
the road near the top of Peter’s Hill. 
