56 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
HORTICULTURAL SPORTS. 
By W ’arren II. Manning, Lands< ape Designer 
T HE bizarre, garish, unconventional individuals that 
are referred to among humans as “sports” have 
their counterparts in the plant world. One may 
be introduced to you by a friend, the other by a nursery 
catalogue. You will find that some have a thin veneer of 
color or an eccentricity of form or action that may be 
very amusing, but that have no real merit or permanent 
value; while on the other hand there are some sports that 
have such substantial and worthy qualities that they find 
a permanent place of honor among your friends, or in 
your gardens and landscapes. 
It is to certain of these plant sports that we shall here¬ 
after refer, such as the purple, golden, cut-leaved, pyra¬ 
midal, table-form, table-topped, and weeping forms that 
have developed among species of Beech, Birch, Maple, 
Elm, Catalpa, Elder, Hazel, Dogwood, Pine, Hemlock, 
Spruce and other groups. These have become pretty well 
established in nurseries, gardens and lawns, by reason of 
their vigor, health, distinctive foliage or habit of growth. 
They have been mostly used, however, as specimens, 
or to give brilliant spots of summer color in the conven¬ 
tional patchwork quilt shrub plantation, not as elements 
of broad landscapes. 
Before considering their use in landscapes we should 
recognize that such sports are not always fugitive acci¬ 
dental freaks that can be reproduced only by grafting or 
by cuttings. It has been found, for example, that the 
seedlings of a conspicuous specimen plant of Wier’s Gut- 
leaf Maple, Purple Beech, or Golden Spirea will produce 
so large a percentage of cut-leaved and purple or golden 
offspring, that the progeny of an old seedling plant would 
be likely to establish in time a wide-spreading distinc¬ 
tive group, in which there will be much foliage like the 
parent, and color transitions due to variations in seed¬ 
lings, and those would gradually merge the group into 
the surrounding trees. The purple Barberry lias already 
escaped from cultivation, and made these distinctive 
groups in open pastures. 
Much of our broad landscape beauty comes from the 
deep shadows and the high lights of hill and valley, and 
of foliage as seen under various atmospheric moods. In¬ 
dividual trees count but little in distant landscapes. It is 
the mass that counts effectively in foliage color and in 
outline, as shown in the contrasts between the spired 
cone-bearing evergreens and the rounded outline of decid¬ 
uous foliage, or the towering Lombardy Poplars; or 
again between the dark and solid masses of the Burr Oak 
foliage, the flickering and glinting sparkle of the Aspen 
Poplar or the Silver Poplar, or the soft fleecy grayish foli¬ 
age of the Willows. 
The really worthy sports of the vegetable world may 
well have a place that has never been given them in broad 
landscapes that are seen from a distance. The deep shad¬ 
ows in the valley, or at the ends of a long vista might be 
given greater emphasis by the use of such long-lived vig¬ 
orous forms as the Purple Beech or Purple Maple, that 
are used in principal masses and outline groups with a 
suitable backing, flanking, and interlacing of dark green 
foliage that would merge the purple into the surrounding 
landscape, to give the deeper shadows and not be un¬ 
pleasantly obtrusive. 
At other points the high lights of the landscape in 
glades through vistas or under arching trees may be 
given greater emphasis and brilliancy by the use of such 
plants as the Golden Elder and Spirea, or the Golden 
Poplar and Hop-tree. 
The cut-leaved form of the Birch, Beech or Maple 
would give a distance variation in the texture of the foli¬ 
age, as seen from a distance, if a sufficient quantity were 
used to count effectively, and they could be very properly 
associated with the type. 
There are many places where it would be very desir¬ 
able to establish a ground cover that will not grow high 
enough to interfere with the view, that will have good, 
healthy foliage, and that can be more readily kept in re¬ 
straint than can be most vines. Wliv should we not use 
the weeping forms of the Mulberry, Mountain Ash, Elm, 
Beech, Dogwood, Pine and Spruce for such a purpose ? 
Some of these forms, such as the Weeping Mulberry and 
Gamperdown Elm, are trailing spoils of upright trees, 
with little tendency to form a leader. They are usually 
grafted on high stems to make them suggest the um¬ 
brella-like form. 
Other varieties, like the Weeping Beech and the Nor¬ 
way Spruce have a distinct tendency to make a leader. 
Such forms, grown on their own roots, or grafted so low 
that the graft can be buried in the ground, to form roots 
above the union, would have a tendency to scramble over 
the surface. As such plants as the Mountain Ash and the 
Mulberry have fruit that the birds like, they would help 
to form the ideal bird cover. One can conceive of an ex¬ 
ceedingly interesting and attractive phase of landscape 
so treated, for there is enough variation to give high and 
low foliage masses. 
There are other places where the cushion-shaped 
trees, such as the Dwarf Gatalpa, the several dense forms 
of the Norway Spruce and American Arbor-vitae, could 
be massed together to form a distinctive landscape treat¬ 
ment of this type. 
Is there any more reason why the brilliant crimson 
coloring of the Schwedler’s Maple should not be used to 
give color effects in a large way in the spring, as we now 
secure color effects from the Maples, Tupelos, Sumacs 
and Birches in the fall ? These are all interesting propo¬ 
sitions for those who have the courage to break away 
from the conventional use of material; but they must 
recognize the danger of such suggestions, because it will 
be very easy to produce a garish and disordered effect in 
landscape, just as is now produced in so many gardens 
and lawns where spots of such material are used. 
Prices on burlap have nearly doubled in the last few 
months which is adding much to the nurseryman's pack¬ 
ing costs. 
The main supply of jute from which burlap is made 
comes from India, and owing to the war there is consid¬ 
erable difficulty in getting cargoes from India. There 
is a ship on the way to the United States at the present 
time with 20,000,000 yards of burlap as part of her cargo 
if she has not been torpedoed. 
Immense quantities of burlap bags are being used by 
the armies in Europe for building fortifications which 
is no doubt responsible for the added cost. 
