1895 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
427 
Four or five years ago, we gathered a 
lot of magnolia seed from underneath 
the Magnolia Lenn6i. The flowers of 
this are imperfect, and we think they 
are dependent upon foreign pollen for 
pollination. Within 15 feet of the Lenn6 
are an Umbrella magnolia, Magnolia 
cordata, M. maeropliylla and M. liypo- 
leuca. The seeds were planted in drills 
during the fall, and perhaps as many 
as half of them germinated the next 
spring. The one-year-old seedlings— 
about 20 in number—were transplanted 
the next spring, and they are now from 
three to eight feet high. Three of them 
bloomed about May 25. These seemed 
in all ways, leaves, habit and flowers, re¬ 
productions of the Umbrella magnolia. 
All the others—they have not bloomed— 
resemble the mother plant, Lenn6, in 
foliage and habit. Possibly the three 
which bloomed came from Umbrella 
seed. This supposition seems more ten¬ 
able than that seedlings resembling the 
Umbrella in all ways should come from 
seeds of Lenn6 crossed with Umbrella. 
Be this as it may, we would say to our 
friends that if they knew how easy it is 
to raise these spleudid magnolias from 
seed, there would be fewer purchased 
of the nurseries that charge from $1 to 
$2 each for them, and they do not trans¬ 
plant safely either, unless grown in pots, 
or removed from one place and at once 
set in another. The roots will not bear 
the least exposure. 
Ouk respected friend, Nicholas Hal- 
lock, of Queens, Long Island, N. Y., has 
a good word for the Japanese Wineberry, 
introduced by J. Lewis Childs, and con¬ 
demned by The R. N.-Y. as essentially a 
worthless fruit. In our esteemed con¬ 
temporary, Gardening, he says that it is 
“ perfectly hardy, and a good bearer of 
good berries which, when quite ripe, 
have a pleasant but not high flavor ; 
they are also of a beautiful color and 
very juicy ; have small seeds, and keep 
well.” “ The sale of the fruit ” through 
Mr. Hallock's section “as it became 
known, increased very much.” “ The 
field,” he says, “ when in full bearing, 
was the most beautiful sight in the way 
of a crop of berries 1 ever saw. And I 
am going to increase my plantation.” 
We advise Mr. Ilallock not to do so But 
he is as experienced as is Ruralisms, and 
we are wondering which one of us will 
ultimately be obliged to yield to the 
other. 
Mb. F. W. Stukhmeb, of Hammonton, 
N. J., kindly replies to our inquiry regard¬ 
ing the so-called winter oats : “ With 
me, they could not stand 10 degrees be¬ 
low zero.” We did not suppose that 
they would stand even zero. But there 
are “ winter ” oats and “winter” oats, 
and we wish to find out whether the 
“ winter ” part of it is fact or assump¬ 
tion. 
Remarkable to say, Crimson clover 
“ came through all right at Hammonton, 
15 degrees below zero, and is now (May 
28) in full bloom and 14 inches high.”... 
Saghalin, it has been said, will give 
more green leaves and stems to the given 
area, than any other plant that farm 
animals relish. We doubt it, and in 
support of our doubts, would be willing 
to contribute our share of the cost of 
trying it for three years on a half or 
quarter-acre plot with Prickly coml'rey 
to compete. It is true that, at first, farm 
animals would prefer Saghalin to com- 
frey. But we have found during up¬ 
wards of 20 years’ trial of comfrey, that 
animals very soon learn to like it. and 
they are then likely to like it immensely. 
Comfrey has this advantage over Sagha¬ 
lin : the stems do not grow so woody. 
When cut during the early bloom, they 
are not at all woody, but filled with a 
mucilaginous sap that seems to take the 
place of woody fiber. Saghalin stems, 
while yet the comfrey stems are full of 
this mucilaginous sap, become as hard 
as corn stalks when the kernels are form¬ 
ing. Whatever may be said of either 
plant as food for animals, as a mulch 
we would prefer the comfrey. The 
stalks would sooner ferment and decay ; 
there is, perhaps four to one, a greater 
leaf growth as compared to the stalk 
growth, and, finally, the nutrient matter 
of comfrey is second to that of few other 
hardy herbaceous plants—we do not re¬ 
member to have seen any analysis of 
Saghalin. 
A week ago, during the excessively hot 
weather between May 28 and June 4, we 
tried to cure comfrey. The leaves turned 
black, crumbly and papery, much like 
charred paper. Still the stems were 
mucilaginous and so elastic that, like a 
rubber rope, they would not break. In 
this condition, a horse that was always 
fond of the fresh, green leaves, was found 
to be ravenously fond of the dried com¬ 
frey. Now, we would ask, how can 
such plants, the stems of which after a 
week's exposure to about 120 degrees of 
sun heat, remain as full of slimy, ropy 
sap as fresh slippery elm, be cured so 
that they could be safely stored in a 
mass ? We would much like to have 
comfrey thoroughly tried in the silo. 
We would much like to have it tried as 
a mulch plant, cutting it twice during 
the season, to enrich orchards and other 
fields. 
Mb. Falconer, the editor of Garden¬ 
ing, mentions that the much discussed 
Saghalin (Sacaline) was grown in the 
collection of the Botanic Garden of Har¬ 
vard University in 1879. He says that 
while, as an ornamental plant, it is much 
larger than Cuspidatum, it is not so 
handsome. On the other hand, it isn’t 
anything like such a pestiferous runner. 
He finds that at Dosoris (an island in 
Long Island Sound) they thrive by the 
seaside, where the salt water occasion¬ 
ally laves their roots, about as well as 
asparagus does. And this is an impor¬ 
tant discovery. But driving windstorms 
lashing them with salt spray, will de¬ 
foliate them and ruin their appearance 
above ground; their roots, however, 
don’t seem to mind it. 
In Gardening, Mr. E. G. Fowler re¬ 
peats precisely our own experience as to 
the pretty Variegated Japan hop. Its 
seeds are abundant, and they have a 
way of getting all over one's place. 
Last season he had these vines growing 
around a veranda. This spring, the 
whole premises were full of seedlings. 
Not only around the veranda, but be¬ 
hind the house, on both sides and on his 
neighbor’s premises. So he proposes 
planting no more of the Humulus Japon- 
icus. He will have to do considerable 
work as it is in eradicating the crop now 
swarming about him. 
From a square foot of soil which we 
spaded up a couple of weeks ago, we 
would guess there were 300 seedlings of 
the Japan hop. But it is a pretty vine, 
and might repay the trouble of cutting 
off the inconspicuous blossoms. 
A few days of intense heat and dry¬ 
ness, such as have prevailed for about a 
week prior to this date (June 4), gives 
small fiuits a set-back from which they 
do not recover. June 1 , according to the 
New York City thermometers, was the 
hottest day of which there is any record 
for the corresponding date. The earliest 
strawberries ripening now are not, we 
would guess, more than half size. Among 
these we would mention Elinor, Meek's 
Early, Mele, Marston, Staple’s No. 1, 
Nan. The berry season may be said to 
have opened at the Rural Grounds June 
2 , and the first berries were picked from 
Nan and Meek’s Early on May 30. 
The roses began to bloom this year 
June 2. Clothilde Soupert, the queen, 
we would say, of the “Fairie” class, was 
the first to bloom, closely followed by 
Georges Bruant and the Rugosas and 
Rugcsa hybrids. The flowers are pinched 
from drought and heat, and the semi¬ 
doubles are nearly single, as, for ex¬ 
ample, the Carman and Bruant. Already 
the lawns begin to look gray and weedy. 
They will not fully recover, no matter 
what the weather may be henceforth, 
and the summer is shorn of a goodly 
slice of its charms. 
Our highly-prized contemporary. The 
Garden (London) speaks in a late issue 
of two kinds of Argenteuil asparagus, 
the variety preferred for the Paris mar¬ 
ket, Late and Early. The difference 
between them is, it appears, not so much 
with respect to the time at which the 
shoots become fit for cutting, as that the 
late variety continues to produce very 
tine shoots for a much longer period 
than the early kind, which, in the be¬ 
ginning of the season, yields very fine 
shoots, but these soon decrease very 
much in size, although abundantly pro¬ 
duced. It is then that the late kind 
comes in, with its good-sized shoots, 
which are all the more valuable from 
their comparative rareness at that sea¬ 
son. The Argenteuil asparagus as grown 
(from seed) at the Rural Grounds, is 
lighter in color—nearly as light as the 
New Columbian, but we have never 
known that there was any difference in 
the season of sending up the shoots. 
Of Interest to Nurserymen. —The 
32,000 prize and gold medal offered by 
the Horticultural Congress, of Paris, in 
1893, was awarded to Mr. Charles Baltet, 
of Troyes, France, for his book called 
“ The World’s Gardening.” It will, per¬ 
haps, be remembered that Mr. Baltet 
was the first to call the attention of 
horticulturists to the great value of 
Saghalin as a forage plant. 
$UjeicfUatt*ou0 gUievtisinfl, 
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