162 THE COTTAGE GARDENER. [December 12. 
THE ELOWER-GARDE1S!. 
Trees and Shrubs. —After the Thorns come a host of 
nice low trees and large shrubs—such as Cotoneasters, 
Pavias, Amclanchiers, Ceanothuses, Primus, Pyrus, Ne¬ 
ff undo, and such like—one or two of ■which are well 
suited to represent tho best of the older flower-garden 
and lawn trees. 
Perhaps the very best out of the lot is the Scarlet 
Horse-cliestnut, or Scarlet Pavia, as it is now called. 
The Pavias are quite low things when compared with 
the nobility of our fine Horse-chestnuts. If one had no 
more room than would take three ornamental trees, the 
Scarlet Horse-chestnut should be one of them. There 
arc two or three kinds of it varying in the shade of the 
flowers; one of which is a deep scarlet, one a pinkish 
sort, and one a yellowish pink—the first is the best. 
I believe it is now settled in the minds of the learned 
that either plants, or animals, belonging to two different 
families, or genera, cannot be crossed with one another, 
or, if they do cross, that they are of one genus nothwith- 
standing dissimilarity of aspect. The name Pavia to 
the dwarf Chestnuts, therefore, has been a great mistake, 
for they will cross and recross, like calceolarias, among 
each other, and with the Horse-chestnut—so that very 
often one does not know which is which, except by 
guessing from the appearance of the leaves. At any 
rate, for the purposes of The Cottage Gardener, dwarf 
Chestnuts is a much better name and easier to mind 
than Pavia. The Scarlet Horse-chestnut will not come 
true from seeds, but I would have plenty of them sown 
whenever they are found; and, after three years, destroy 
all the strongest ones, keeping only those seedlings that 
appeared to be of a weak constitution—-just the sort of 
plants that many would not think worth their while to 
keep at all. But, as the dwarf Chestnuts do not all seed, 
and do not come true in most instances from seeds when 
they have them, they are grafted on the common Horse- 
chestnut in the nurseries, to increase the stock of them 
and to keep them all true to the sorts, as apples and 
pears are managed. Now, for small gardens, and, indeed, 
for any gardens, weak seedlings from the Scarlet Horse- 
chestnut are far preferable to graft the different sorts 
on than the Horse-chestnut; because the Horse-chestnut 
grows too fast for the Pavias, or dwarf Chestnuts, and, 
in time, either gets weakly itself or half strangles the 
weaker sorts; so that, except in nurseries and some 
good gardens where trees are very well managed, one 
seldom meets with dwarf Chestnuts, except, perhaps, 
here and there a scarlet one. One of the Scarlet Chestnuts 
here (Slirubland Park) had the roots cut all round at four 
feet from the stem the spring before last. It was becoming 
so large that it threatened to damage a fine Ilex, or ever¬ 
green oak; and as that land of oak is ticklish about 
being removed, we prepared for transplanting the Chest¬ 
nut away from it instead; and last May, what with the 
check from cutting the roots and from the good light 
compost put in the trench for the young roots to work 
in, it certainly was the finest tree I ever saw in bloom. 
Every single shoot, or side spray, all over a large round 
head produced a long spike of splendid coloured flowers; 
and some knowing ones who saw it then thought it was 
an improved sort from the old one ; and if I had not 
been acquainted with the tree for years, I would side 
with them. But afterwards I found the reason to be 
that the flower-spikes being so munerous, the one re¬ 
flected its colour on the next to it, and so on all over 
them; and when a flower-spike was cut off and shown 
at a distance from the rest, the colour was not so rich. 
Now this is just the way the best of us are often deceived 
about plants and fruits—something or another causes 
a temporary departure from the usual state of the 
flowers or fruit, and some great man says at once they 
are different from any of that kind he had ever seen or 
tasted before. The thing takes, and we all of us know 
the rest; and we seldom pass two years in succession 
without being actually gulled by our own best friends in 
this way, and no design either of deceiving any one. 
The mischief is, that we allow ourselves to fall into con¬ 
clusions without troubling ourselves to think or find out 
causes; and if I were to say that all Europe wovdd thus 
be visited before The Cottage Gardener is many years 
older, from irons already in the fire, everybody woidd 
call me a croaker. 
The next dwarf Chestnut, or Pavia, that I would grow 
is oue that is very little known among country people, 
indeed, little known out of the nursery and botanic col¬ 
lection. It is a native of South Carolina, where the 
fruit ripens so well that it is accounted really a fruit-tree, 
as nuts, filberts, or almonds, are with us; but having an 
easy, slovenly way of increasing itself from ground- 
suckers, people are content with that, instead of breaking 
off the bad habit of suckering. Let our friend, Mr. 
Errington, take it in hand, however, and make a 
“dwarf” of it, but not on the “ dwarfing principle,” but 
just on a contrary plan, and then send it over to Mr. 
Barnes, in Devonshire, and let it be planted in deep, 
rich, moist ground—as almost all plants from the low 
grounds in both the Carolinas and in Georgia prefer a 
moist subsoil,—and if it does not produce a late dish of 
excellent nuts for the desert, it will do what will be ten 
times more acceptable, flower in abundance, and in a 
very singular manner, for two or three months when no 
other hardy tree in England is in bloom; and if that is 
not a recommendation to it, what more can I say—only 
that nobody in the country knows it; because it is not a 
verbena to bloom on the ground in July, August, and 
beginning of September, instead of blooming a little 
above the eye at the same time. Now, I have said 
almost all that can be said about this kind of dwarf 
Chestnut, without absolutely giving the name of it; and 
yet I am free to set my “ head on the block,” if there is 
one gardener cut of ten between here and Inverness— 
my Highland home—who could, on the spur of the 
moment, tell what species I meant; because the plant, 
as far as I know, has never yet been done justice to in 
private gardens, either as to name or culture. As to the 
name, like most trees and shrubs, it has been variously 
called, but the true one means large, or long spiked, 
Macrostacliya, and refers to the long spikes of white 
flowers with which every shoot ends. It is not the 
length of the spike, or the colour of the flowers, however, 
which give its peculiar charm, but the fringe-like dispo¬ 
sition of the stamens which advance much beyond the 
opening of the flowers, each flower having seven sta¬ 
mens; and when we know that these flowers are set 
closely on a spike of from ten to fifteen inches long, and 
each of them having so many stamens which spread out 
after getting free of the flower, we can easily conceive 
what a pyramid of fringes each spike will produce; and 
when a little standard tree, not much bigger than a 
standard rose, and from a score to a hundred of these ! 
fringed pyramids all glistening with the morning's dew, j 
1 know not a prettier plant for a quiet corner of the 
lawn, unless it be the Venetian Sumach, Rhus cotinus, \ 
under similar circumstances. But we shall never see it j 
under such favourable circumstances by the way we 
generally manage the plant, and rear it from suckers and : 
layers, because it shows a strong natural disposition to 
that way of increasing. The true way to manage it is 
to graft it on weak seedlings from the above Scarlet | 
Horse-chestnut, on which it woidd grow soon to the 
nicest form possible for a small garden, and on which it 
would thrive for many years on good rich laud with a 
moist bottom; because the stock and itself would go on 
all the while at about the same ratio of growth. Thus a 
Horse-chestnut in miniature, with an improved style of 
flowering, might be had for little or no trouble. 
