484 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
March 31, 1894, 
THE PROGRESS OF HORTICULTURE 
IN THE UNITED STATES. 
I WILL endeavour to give you a faint 
description of the increase of Horticulture during 
the last eighteen years, for every year durinj; that 
time I have visited the United States of America 
and Canada, therefore I can speak with some 
authority. In 1876 there were not 1,000 nurserymen 
in the whole of the United States; this number has 
increased more than four-fold up to the present 
time, and the trade in America with cut flowers and 
decorative plants is enormous. At the beginning of 
the present year there were 4,659 floricultural estab¬ 
lishments with nearly 40,000,000 square feet of 
glass. The value of these establishments is above 
8,000,000 sterling, while that of plant sales during 
1890 amounted to /a,500,000 sterling, and that of 
cut flowers to nearly ^3,000,000. I may mention 
here that at the World’s Fair at Chicago, Horti¬ 
culture was a most prominent feature. A large build¬ 
ing most suitable for this purpose was erected, its 
dimensions being 1,000 ft. by 287 ft., with a dome 
187 ft. in diameter and 113 ft. high ; there were also 
two courts 270 ft. by 88 ft., which was ample room, 
and made a most imposing and interesting display. 
It may interest you to know that New York leads 
in the number of nurseries, there being over 500, 
besides thousands of florists; then follows Cali¬ 
fornia, Illinois, aad Pennsylvania. Twenty years 
ago a fruit orchard fifty acres in extent was considered 
a wonder; now in nearly every State, Apple and 
Peach orchards of 100, 200, and 300 acres are being 
planted, while in Georgia and California there are 
many Peach orchards of 1,000 or more acres. It 
was stated on November 24th, 1892, that the con¬ 
signments of Apples from America to Liverpool and 
London amounted to no less than 400,000 barrels. 
Californian Fruit. 
Southern California is famous for its Oranges, and it 
is estimated that the crops of last season would pro¬ 
duce 200,000,000 Oranges, or enough to fill 1,850,000 
boxes. The Orange groves of California are all as 
yet young, and thousands of acres are now planted 
with trees that are come into bearing, so in a short 
time this production must be double, and in the 
course of a few years there will be ten times as 
many Oranges as at present. Figs are grown ex¬ 
tensively, one orchard occupying 460 acres, the 
crops from which have been enormous, 2,160 lbs. of 
Figs being obtained from twelve trees in one season. 
Californian Pears now form a great feature in the 
English markets, as of the 240 tons of fruit 
shipped to England from California this season t wo- 
thirds of that large amount were Pears. Lemons 
and Olives are also being planted extensively, and 
like any other legitimate business brings a good 
profit to those who follow it carefully and intelli¬ 
gently ; and some experts think tea might be grown 
advantageously. The high price of labour will be a 
serious drawback, but time will prove this. The growth 
of the Eucalyptus in California is another example of 
how rapidly new industries are developed in the far 
west. The first plantation of any extent was made in 
iS69,when fifty-five acres of hill land at the back of 
the town of Haywards was planted with Eucalyptus 
globulus seedlings to supply the want of timber and 
to improve the climatic conditions of the locality. 
As it proved a satisfactory investment, yielding a 
profit, the example thus set was quickly followed by 
others. One large forest was planted seven miles 
from Los Angeles, and now the Eucalyptus is 
found over a track of 400 miles along the Cali¬ 
fornian coast, cultivated in fields varying up to 100 
acres. They grow very rapidly and form a splendid 
shelter—20,000 lbs. of the oil of. the Eucalyptus 
globulus is now exported yearly from California. It 
is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, as the 
dealers in Eucalyptus oil will tell you, for since the 
influenza epidemic came about, the price of this oil 
(which is strongly advocated as a very fine, although 
not pleasant, preventative) has risen from 2s. 6d. to 
I2S. 6d. per lb. 
Florida Oranges. 
A Florida Orange grower states that a capitalist 
interested in that country has chartered a 
special fruit steamer which sailed direct from 
Fernandino to England on the November 13th, 1892. 
Hitherto the Oranges from Florida have been sent 
to England in an ordinary Atlantic liner, swift, but 
not fitted for carrying quantities of fruit. The new 
service will save the disastrous re-shipment in New 
York, and avoid the high freights and losses from 
rotting in transit. 
Colorado Fruit. 
So recently as 1863, Colorado, then a frontier and 
very sparsely populated region, did not possess a 
single mile of railroad, and in that year William 
Lee, an Englishman from near Croydon, in Surrey, 
carted the first fruit trees (Apples) from Iowa City, 
over 700 miles across the plains, and planted them a 
few miles west of Denver. To-day Colorado has 
5,000 miles of railroad, 30,000 acres planted with 
fruit, and the exhibition recently held in Denver 
could be duplicated in the United States, but 
certainly (according to my experience of many fruit 
exhibits in my native country) not in the United 
Kingdom, for variety, size, colour, and flavour of 
fruits grown in the open air. Last spring 1,600 
acres were planted with fruit trees near the town of 
Grand Junction alone, in not less than 40 acre tracts, 
A New York capitalist planted 8o acres of Pears, 
mostly Bartlett’s, in i8gi, and there are two 80 acre 
Peach orchards. One prominent feature of fruit 
growing in Colorado as against England is that the 
man who plants the orchard owns the land, and is 
not a mere tenant; as a consequence he buys only 
the best varieties of fruit trees, and as he gets his 
land at from /3 to £'^o per acre, according to loca¬ 
tion, every year’s growth of his trees rapidly 
enhances the value of his property, and, having no 
rent to pay, he is soon able to make a very comfort¬ 
able living from his crops. Another thing, too ; fruit 
trees bear earlier and heavier, and command better 
prices than anywhere else. At the Denver Show 
over a dozen counties were represented, but those 
which took the lead were the newer ones of Mesa, 
Delta, and Montrose, on the Western or Pacific 
slope of the Rocky Mountains, where climatic 
conditions are especially favourable to the success¬ 
ful culture of a wide range of fruit trees. In less 
than five years fruit will be shipped from the above- 
named counties by the train load, as it is from 
California. 
Orchid Culture in the United States. 
Orchid culture in the United States dates from a 
very early period, the first we hear of being grown 
in Boston in 1838, when only a few were grown 
in England. The latter were chiefly imported 
by Messrs. Loddiges, in whose " Botanical Cabinet ” 
they were first figured. Mr. James Boott, then 
resident in London, sent his brother, John Wright 
Boott, a collection. This gentleman had a small 
greenhouse in the garden at the rear of his house ; 
he was an enthusiastic lover of flowers, and cared 
for his plants personally as a recreation from 
business. The plants doing well induced him to 
import many Orchids. Cattleyas, Dendrobiums, 
and Epidendrums of the then leading sorts were 
found in his collection, which, however, consisted 
chiefly of Orchids from the Western continent, as 
previous to 1841 a very few East Indian Orchids 
had been introduced to cultivation. Mr. Boott died 
in 1842, bequeathing his collection to Mr. John 
Amory Lowell, who built Orchid houses for their 
accommodation, and increased his collection by im¬ 
porting. Some of the first Orchids exhibited before 
the Massachusetts Horticultural Society were his, 
one being an immense Ptendrobium calceolus, which 
was a grand example of cultivation. In 1833 this 
collection was sold, but some of the plants still exist 
in the various collections in the neighbourhood of 
Boston. Mr. Edward Rand was a great- enthusiast, 
bought many, and added largely by importing from 
Europe. His collection in 1856 was the most im¬ 
portant then in the country. In 1865 Mr. Rand 
presented his collection to the Harvard College, and 
they were moved to the greenhouses at the Cam¬ 
bridge Botanical Gardens, near Boston. 
In the vicinity of New York, Orchids were first 
attempted by Mr. Thos. Hogg, about 1850. or a little 
earlier, although in 1840 the veteran florist, Mr. 
Isaac Buchanan, brought from Europe a Cattleya 
Mossiae. Mr. Thos. Hogg’s collection was disposed 
of fifteen years later. The distribution of this 
collection gave an impetus to Orchid culture. In 
1856 Mr. Buchanan visited Europe, purchasing 
many novelties, determined to make his collection 
complete. In 1857 Mr. Van Voorst formed a grand 
collection, which, in 1870, passed into the hands of 
Mr. Linran, who went to Rio de Janeiro and bought 
of Mr. Perrini, Laelia Perrinii, and sent some to his 
uncle in Germany. The Linran collection was dis¬ 
posed of in 1873, and up to this date was the largest 
sale that ever took place in the United States. 
Philadelphia’s first Orchids of note were Mr. 
Robert Buist’s and Caleb Cope’s. About 1850. at 
South Amboy, a zealous amateur, Mr. George Such, 
formed a magnificent collection of Orchids and new 
and rare plants. They succeeded so well that Mr. 
Such was induced to sell his duplicates, and soon 
found himself doing a thriving trade ; and up to the 
time he disposed of them, a few years ago, he had 
the best collection of plants in the United States. 
At these famous nurseries, for such they were then, 
I found, in 1876, the late Mr. Taplin, formerly of 
Chatsworth Gardens, in charge. His experience of 
plant culture was put to task severely, but he over¬ 
came all the difficulties, and was looked upon as a 
good authority on the cultivation of plants. He 
was a most successful hybridiser, and it was here 
that I purchased for Mr. B. S. Williams the beauti¬ 
ful set of six Nepenthes, Williamsii Outramii, etc. 
Here also was raised the splendid Morganiae. When 
Mr. Such gave up business Mr. Taplin started upon 
his own account, and was doing a fine trade, grow¬ 
ing flowers for market purposes. 
In 1876 I made my maiden trip to the United 
States in conjunction with Mr. Henry Williams. 
We took a large collection of stove and greenhouse 
plants, orchids, etc., for competition at the Phila¬ 
delphia Exhibition, for which we gained the highest 
awards in every class we showed; this was most 
gratifying to us, and was a great inducement for 
lovers of plants to import from Europe. Since then 
many fine collections have been established, the best 
at that time being at Albany. Mr. Erastus Wilson 
Corning at his country place, Ta-was-a-gun-shee, 
had nearly 500 species and varieties; many fine 
specimens I met with which astonished me. This 
collection was in the good hands of Mr. William 
Gray, the head gardener, whose watchful eye and 
intelligence of culture, combined with much scientific 
knowledge, stamped him as the very man to handle 
such a collection, and they are still flourishing under 
his fostering care. 
Another collection in Albany in 1876 was that of 
General Rathbones, who informed me he imported 
his first Orchid, Vanda suavis, in i860. He said, 
" I was so delighted with the flower that I caught 
the Orchid fever, which I am happy to say is now 
prevailing to a considerable extent in this country.” 
He kept importing a few every year, and to give you 
an idea the following plants flowered at that time, 
viz ;—Dendrobium nobile, 476 flowers; Phalae- 
nopsis amabilis, 85 ; P, Schilleriana, 156 ; Odondo- 
glossum grande, 48 ; Angraecum eburneum, 
30; A. sesquipedale, 12; Coelogyne cristata, 216; 
and Cattleya Mossiae, 50. You see from these few 
enumerated that they were no mean specimens, but 
grandly grown and well-flowered plants. It was 
thought at one time that cool Orchids could not be 
grown satisfactorily in the United States owing to 
the heat. Several tried it and failed. I thought 
the matter over, and advised my friends to try a 
north aspect, to excavate the walks out of the soil, 
leaving all the natural soil they could, going down 
about two feet into the ground, and having the 
shading a foot or so from the glass, to use an abun¬ 
dance of water, and with this I am happy to say 
they are succeeding well. Water can be used with 
great freedom during the spring and summer, for the 
atmosphere is entirely different to ours. Some of 
our experts here would stare with astonishment to 
see the way the hose is used by practical men there ; 
they all tell me it takes a long time tff"get used to it. 
{To be continued .) 
ophrys'Yutea. 
Another name sometimes applied to this plant is 
Ophrys vespifera, which means wasp-bearing; so 
that if the latter name had been retained, a suitable 
English name would have been Wasp Orchis. It is 
a dwarf and interesting species from South Europe, 
and if grown n pots in a cold frame, comes 
into bloom earlier, as it is now doing with Mr. T. S. 
Ware, Hale Farm Nurseries, Tottenham. The 
flower scape is only 4 in. to 7 in. high, bearing a 
raceme of flowers of medium size for the genus. 
The sepals are green, but the petals yellow or 
greenish-yellow. The lip on the contrary is the 
most conspicuous organ of the flower, and is of a 
bright golden yellow with a purple, thickened or 
elevated disc. Few of the species present such an 
amount of yellow, for as a rule, brown, green, rose, 
and black colours are more prevalent. 
