THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
195 
Notes from the Arnold Arboretum 
b^ASTEUN Asiatic Cheiihies. During the last lew 
years tlie Arboretuiii has been engaged in studying the 
(dierry-trees ol‘ eastern Asia, and has assembled a largi; 
eolleetion of these plants, ineluding most of the sjieeies 
and all the forms with double and otherwise abnormal 
llowers whieh are popular garden plants in Japan where 
the llowering of these trees is celebrated by national re¬ 
joicings. All the world has heard of the Japanese 
Cherry-blossoms, and travellers in the East usually so ar¬ 
range their journeys that they can be in Tokyo w hen the 
white flowers of fifty thousand trees of the Yoshino- 
zakura {Primus yedoensis) make a day of thanksgiving, 
and the great trees in the long avenue of Cherry-trees 
[P. serrulata) at Koganei are covered with their rose- 
colored flowers. Well known to travellers, too, are the 
avenues of Cherry-trees at Arashi-yama near Kyoto and 
at Yoshino near Nara. The Cherry-trees wdiich mean so 
much to the Japanese and delight all foreigners w ho visit 
Japan in early spring are perfectly hardy, and easy to 
grow here in New" Englaml; and it is unfortunate that 
there is no hillside in the Arboretum w liicli can be cov¬ 
ered w"ith these trees or no space w"here a long avenue of 
them can be planted, for the flowering of a great number 
of these trees might become as great a joy to the jieople of 
Boston as they are in Japan. Such collections of Cherry- 
trees might w ell form a jiart of the eijuipment for jileasure 
and instruction in all the northern cities of the country, 
but up to this time only Bochester, New York, is arrang¬ 
ing to make a jilantation of these trees to cover many 
acres of rolling hills in its great park on the shores of 
Lake Ontario. In the Arboretum only room for a few- 
isolated individuals has been found, but most of the 
species are now- established here and some of them have 
bloomed for several years. This year the trees promise 
to produce an unusually large crop of flow-ers and a visit 
to them w ill be well repaid. 
Phunus concinna. This little Cherry, which was dis¬ 
covered by Wilson on the mountains of central China at 
altitudes above the sea of from twelve to fifteen hundred 
feet, is the first Cherry to bloom in the Arboretum this 
year. In its native forests it is a shrub five or six feet 
tall, but here it is treelike in habit, although only three or 
four feet high, with a straight stem, and is now- as thickly 
covenal with llowers as it is possible for a plant to be 
covered. The flowers, which appear before the leaves, 
are in few -flow ered clusters and are w hite w ith a wdne- 
colored calyx. The red, lustrous, loose hark of the stem 
of this Cherry is attractive but as a tlow-ering iilant it is 
less valuable than the Japanese Primus suhliirteUn, under 
W'hich name it w as once distributed by a London nursery¬ 
man. Primus concinna can be seen in the collection ol 
Chinese shrubs on the southern slope of Bussey Hill. 
Prunus toatentosa. Until this year the earliest of the 
Cherries to bloom in the Arboretum, Prunus loinentosa is 
a native of China and a shrub only live or six feet high, 
and w hen fully grown in abundant sj)ac(‘ for th(‘ s{)read of 
its hranclu's oftim hi’oadm- than tall. The llowers open 
from ])lnk buds as tlu' leav(‘s begin to unfold, and the 
bright red stalks and calyx make a handsome contrast 
with the white jaials. The small fruit rijiens in June 
and is scarhi, covered w ith short hairs, and is sweet and 
of good flavor. This shrub is very hardy and flourishes 
and produces its fruit in dry cold n'gions like Alberta 
and the Dakotas, and in such regions it is possible it may 
develop into an important fruit-jii'oducing plaid. Prunus 
toinentosa is a native of northern China and was raised 
in the Arboretum twenty-five years ago from seed sent 
here from Peking. A form discovered in western China 
by Wilson (var. endotricha) is also established in the 
Arboretum. This blooms rather later than the northern 
plant and the fruit is destitute or nearly destitute of hairs. 
The wdiite-tlow ered form much cultivated in Tokyo is not 
in the Arboretum collection. 
Prunus subhirtella. This is the Japanese Spring 
Cherry wdiich Mr. Wilson, after a year devoted in Japan 
to the study of Cherry-trees, calls “the most tloriferous 
and perhajis the most delightful of all Japanese Cherries.” 
It is a large, low"-branched shrub rather than a tree and is 
not known as a wdid jilaid. This Cherry is much planted 
in western Japan from Northern Hondo southward, but it 
is not much grown in the eastern jiart of the Empire and 
is rarely found in Tokyo gardens. For this reason and 
as it does not reproduce itself from seed Prunus siddiir- 
tella is still rare in American and European collections. 
There are large plants in the Arboretum collection where 
they have been growing since 189i and where, covered 
with their drooping pink flowers, they aie objects ot 
wonderful beauty. The value of Prunus subhirtella is 
increased by the fact that the llowers ottim remain in 
good condition for ten or twelve days, and longer than 
those of the other single-tlowered Clu'rry-trees. Ibis 
Cherry can he raised from soft wood cuttings and by 
grafting on its own seedlings. ddu'se will grow' into 
tall trees w ith long straight trunks (Prunus subhirtella, 
var. ascendens) and in Japanese temple gardens are 
sometimes fifty feet high with trunks two find in 
diameter. This is a common tree in the forests ot cen¬ 
tral Japan, and grows also in souIIumii Korea and central 
China. Until Wilson’s invc'stigations in Japan in 1914 
this tree seems to have been (udirely unknown in w'estern 
gardens. Baised from the seeds of Prunus siibhirlella, 
which are produced in large (piantities eveiw year, it 
gi’ows h(M‘e rapidly and jiroves to he a handsome lice. 
It has the droopiilg flowers of the well-known Prunus 
pendiila of gaidens which is oidy a siaalling form of P. 
siibhirtellu ascendens and for which the correct name is 
Prunus subhirtella variety pendula. This tree is not 
known to grow wild, but has for centuries decorated 
