DECIDUOUS SHRUBS. 
481 
and August. Its fruit-pods are like little bladders, and explode 
with pressure. A good shrub for the interior of masses of shrubbery. 
Height twelve to fourteen feet. C. cruenta is a smaller variety, 
with reddish flowers. C. media is near the size of the first, with 
orange flowers. They require cutting back, to prevent the bottom 
parts from becoming bare of leaves, unless placed behind masses 
of lower shrubs. The C. arborescens can, with care, be made into 
a pretty tree. 
THE FLOWERING CURRANT. Ribes. 
The several varieties of flowering cur- Fig - l6 3 - 
rants are graceful shrubs of slender growth 
and small leaves ; with less weight of foliage 
than characterize the lilacs, syringas, and 
bush-honeysuckles, but so early in leaf and 
flower, and pleasing in form, that they are 
apt to grow in favor where well known. 
There is a grace in the drooping—almost trailing—habit of the 
lower growth of old bushes when allowed free expansion on all 
sides, that adapts them for the borders of groups. Height and 
breadth five to eight feet. 
The Missouri Currant. Ribes aureum. —This blooms in 
April, as the leaves are beginning to expand. The blossoms are 
yellow, small, in racemes from one to two inches long, and fragrant. 
Covering the slender branches, bending to the lawn, these early 
flowers mingled with opening leaves have a pretty effect, and the 
shrubs cover pleasingly with delicate yellowish-green glossy foliage 
after the flowers are gone. 
The Red-flowering Currant, R. sanguineum , is much more 
showy in bloom. Its flowers are a deep rose-color, small like the 
preceding, but the racemes a little longer, and it blooms even 
earlier. There are many varieties, hybrids between this and the 
R. aureum. The following is generally considered the finest: 
Gordon’s Flowering Currant, R. Gordoni, has both crimson 
and yellow flowers ; it blooms profusely, and somewhat later than 
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