1876.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
263 
tree at the proper season and gather for us some of 
the blossoms, assuring her that blossoms would be 
found, without petals, and consequently making no 
show. The lady has now sent us the blossoms. 
The owner of the tree insisted there were none, but 
to satisfy his enquiring visitor took her to the tree, 
from which she gathered the green blossoms now 
before us. We had known several cases of the sort 
before, in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and the 
blossoms were just such as we expected. They 
have no petals, and so make no show ; they have 
not even a stamen. In place of the petals there 
are sometimes, but not in all the flowers, some 
green scales, like calyx-lobes. So the petals have 
turned to sepals, or else disappeared. In place of 
stamens there are a dozen or two of pistils; so the 
stamens have turned into pistils. In the center 
there are the ordinary five combined pistils, nearly 
in their natural state. As the apples of last year 
ripened some seeds, though not many, these pistils 
must have had pollen brought them from neighbor¬ 
ing trees, either by bees or by the wind. The only 
thing peculiar in the apples was that they had a 
two-story or even three-story core. This is ex¬ 
plained by the flowers, with their supernumerary 
pistils. The proper core at the bottom comes from 
the five regular pistils ; the cores above this come 
from those over them, which should have been 
stamens, but have by some unaccountable freak 
changed their sex. A. G. 
Notes from the Pines. 
--O'- 
We sometimes overshoot the mark. I did in the 
matter of labels, and in my efforts to secure great 
durability, quite defeated the very object for which 
I was working. For several years I had been ac¬ 
cumulating a collection of Sedums and Sempervi- 
vums, procuring them from wherever I could find a 
plant, or a name not already in my collection. 
Finding that common labels were not sufficiently 
durable, I, two summers ago, determined to pro¬ 
vide the plants with 
Permanent Labels. 
After a search, some locust boards were found 
and taken to the mill, where they were sawed into 
stakes of the desired size. These were treated in 
the usual way, by painting with white lead and 
writing on them with a common pencil. It was 
with much satisfaction that I looked upon the job 
when it was done, and thought there would be no 
more trouble from rotten labels. This spring I 
went to take up some plants that I had promised to 
a friend ; the stakes were as *sound as they were 
nearly two years ago, but not a single name could be 
read ! The names resisted the weather for one 
winter, but the rains of a second washed off all the 
paint. The wood being so very hard, the paint did 
not sink into the pores, nor did the pencil impress 
the grain of the wood as it does that of a softer 
.kind, and not a trace was left of the writing. Had 
I thought of anything but the durability of the 
wood itself, this difficulty might have been fore¬ 
seen, but I had long set my heart on locust labels 
—I have them now, and they are as good as new ! 
But my collection is in such confusion that it will 
take much time and labor to get it right again.... 
When “Probabilities” arrives at that point where 
he can predict the weather for a whole winter with 
the accuracy that he now does for a day, he will be 
a great help to horticulturists. There are many 
plants on the border between tender and hardy; 
if not covered in a hard winter they are sure to die, 
and if we prepare them for a severe winter, and it 
happens to be a mild one, they are as sure to be 
Killed by Kindness. 
I know of no way in which we can do like the 
hunter who “aimed to hit it if it was a deer, and 
miss it if it was a calf.” I had a large bed of Tri- 
tomas, having procured all the named kinds I could 
hear of; as they went through the previous cold 
winter safely, they were covered in just the same 
manner for last winter; the result was that this 
spring I found that I had not a “Red-hot Poker” to 
my name—every one dead. I have heard of the loss 
of Pampas-grass and other similarly almost hardy 
things from the same cause—too warm a cover¬ 
ing.... One of the brightest little things we had 
this spring is 
Azalea. amocna, 
one of the Indian Azaleas, which is generally kept 
as a greenhouse plant. Having heard that there 
was a plant in Greenwood Cemetery that had stood 
out for several years, I thought I would try it; the 
experience of last winter would prove nothing, but 
one of my plants was out during the very severe 
season of 1874-75, without any covering, and had 
not a bud injured. This is a capital plant for a 
cemetery, on account of its neat habit and its rose- 
purple flowers, which, though smaller, are much 
richer than those of any of the Belgian Azaleas. No 
doubt some of the other Indian varieties will bo 
found hardy, when one can afford to risk his plants 
in the experiment... .Trees are sometimes injured 
by an over-production of fruit, but I never before 
knew one to exhaust itself by producing an excess 
of that which is neither flower nor fruit. I had a 
large 
§aiolce-Trec —(Rhus Cotinus ,) 
often incorrectly called the Purple Fringe tree, 
which last summer produced such a volume of 
“smoke” as I have never seen equalled. It was 
so completely covered with the cloud that upon all 
but one small branch not a leaf was visible. It was 
explained in the American Agriculturist not very long 
ago, that this mass consists of abortive flower- 
stalks. Occasionally a cluster will produce a very 
few flowers, and the pedicels to these behave very 
much like other flower stalks, while the great mass 
of them are abortive, and having no flower or fruit 
to occupy themselves with, indulge in a sort of 
vegetative dissipation, branching in all directions, 
becoming several times longer than at first, and 
clothing themselves with abundant hairs. I feared 
that after such a demonstration the tree would be 
injured, and this spring nearly the whole top was 
quite dead. I attribute this chiefly to the fact that 
the leaves, being quite hidden, and of course dense¬ 
ly shaded, were so shut out from the air and sun¬ 
light, that they were unable to perform their proper 
functions, and did not prepare any buds for another 
season. The trunk showing some signs of life, I 
cut away all the top, and it is now sprouting from 
the bate pole. 
Cimnging Hie Boating Year. 
Every one who has anything to do with fruit 
trees, knows that a year of abundance is followed 
by a small crop, or none at all. This tendency is 
especially marked in the apple, in which the crop 
is so abundant one year, that the tree requires the 
second year to recuperate, and it does this so 
thoroughly, and makes such abundant preparation 
for the next crop, that there is another year of 
over-bearing, and this alternation goes on. A 
friend writes me that there is such a promise of 
apples in his neighborhood, that he fears that fruit 
will be very low, and that he would like to change 
the bearing year of half of his trees, and asks if by 
sacrificing the present crop by removing the fruit, 
he can not be fairly sure of a crop next year from 
these trees, instead of being, as is likely, almost 
without apples. My fruit trees are not numerous 
enough to he called an orchard, but they make a 
very fair sized fruit garden, and as I have been 
accustomed to thin very freely, I have a fair 
crop each year. I have not had occasion to change 
the bearing year, but had always supposed that this 
was one of those things so frequently done, that 
all who had written about fruit culture would men¬ 
tion it. When a question comes to me that I can¬ 
not answer from my own experience or observation, 
I quote the questioner the best available authority, 
and to do this I turned to one of the best fruit 
hooks at hand, and found it was not even alluded 
to ; the next work gave much space to the subject 
of thinning, but nothing about the effect of remov¬ 
ing all the fruit, and so on through several of the 
most recent works. It was not until I reached 
Downing, which being a large work, was in another 
section of my library, that I found the matter men¬ 
tioned. Downing says : “ The bearing year of an 
apple-tree, or of a whole orchard, may be changed 
by picking oil the fruit when the trees first show 
good crops, allowing it to remain only in the alter¬ 
nate seasons which we wish to make the bearing 
year.” It will be seen that this refers to changing 
the year only when the trees begin to bear. I 
■would like to ask those who have tried it upon old 
trees, how it has succeeded. Of course there is an 
advantage in making the change upon young trees, 
as there is but comparatively little fruit to remove, 
and it can be done much more cheaply than upon 
old trees. This brings up the question, is the ad¬ 
vantage gained by changing the bearing year in old 
trees, sufficient to pay for the cost of doing it ? Of 
course the sooner the fruit is removed after it is 
set, the better it will be for the tree. 
THUS MUJSEIHIOm 
For other Household Items see “ Basket ” pages. 
Home Topics. 
BY FAITH ROCHESTER. 
A Home of Our Own. 
Home is not simply the place where we happen 
to dwell, though we often use the term in this 
sense, but it is the place where we feel at rest from 
outward interference, at our ease with respect to 
the people around us, and where we have a right to 
the things we use. One who has never been de¬ 
prived of such a refuge and resting-place, cannot 
fully realize the meaning of the familiar line of the 
dear old song : “ Be it ever so humble, there’s no 
place like home.” Whether one person alone can 
make and keep a home, with only one chair at the 
fireside, and only one plate laid for dinner, and 
with no companion to bid “ good morning ” and 
“ good night,” whether there can be a full home 
feeling where the house walls and the door yard 
soil are the property of an outsider ; questions like 
these admit of discussion. But home is more and 
more home in proportion as it contains loving and 
beloved friends, old or young, and in proportion 
as we feel secure of undisturbed possession. 
There may be great comfort in a rented house 
and grounds, and sometimes there are good rea¬ 
sons why it is better to accept of these and make 
the best home possible with them, or with even a 
garret in a house full of “other folks,” than to 
buy a bit of land and build a house, or to purchase 
a suitable house already built. A rented home is, 
after all, only a place to stay in for a little while, 
and few have the courage or the generosity to 
make any permanent improvements on a rented 
place. A tenant grumbles over disadvantages 
which he would not mind if he had only himself to 
blame for them. Furniture is broken or marred, 
and books and pictures are defaced by removals. 
“ Three moves are as bad as a fire,” is a common 
saying. It is discouraging to the enterprise of 
housekeeper and household provider to have only 
a sense of stopping for a little while in the place 
they call home. If they owned the place they 
would mend this and improve that. They would 
work for future enjoyment as well as for present 
comfort, and wait for time to show the result of 
their labors. They would plant centennial trees 
and wedding anniversary vines and birth-day roses. 
Tastes differ. Some people can hardly see how 
a man of wealth, who “ of course might do just as 
he liked,” can choose to buy a ready-built house 
and even leave the selection and arrangement of 
the inside furniture to an agent. But the man they 
criticise is perhaps so occupied with other plans 
and employments that it would only bore him to 
have charge of the details of house-building. An¬ 
other person can hardly begin back near enough to 
the beginning of things. He would begin his 
home-making upon the prairie or in the unbroken 
forest, and would gladly plant his own mountains 
and dig his own lakes in such spots as would suit 
his individual taste. There is a great deal of con¬ 
ceit in all this. A person who has a taste for bay- 
windows and balconies will imagine that he knows 
just what kind of a house he wants, though he has 
no ideas of convenience and comfort in the inside 
