Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club/Volume 6/01

BULLETIN
OF THE
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB.
Vol. VI. ]	New-York, January 1875.	[ No. 1.

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§ 1.   Geographical Distribution of the Ferns of North America, by John H. Redfield, pp. 1-7 (1875)

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§ 2.   Hamilton College. — The Catalogue of Hamilton College for 1874-'5 contains a feature that is rather novel, but certainly very desirable.  In its (regular) mention of “The College Grounds,” after a short statement of the design of the Curators of the College Grounds, with some historical matters — a part of which design is “to obtain specimens of every tree and shrub supposed to be hardy in the climate of Central New York” — a resumé of the experience of the Curators is given in the shape of:

(1) a list of the trees which have thus far proved tender in that climate, comprising nine evergreen trees and four deciduous;

(2) of deciduous trees which have proved hardy and desirable, numbering eighty-seven species;

(3) of evergreens which have been found hardy and worthy of the attention of planters, numbering twenty-eight species;

(4) a list of hardy shrubs, numbering fifty-three species;

(5) of trees and shrubs procured during the past year, and not yet tested, embracing twenty deciduous trees, thirty-seven evergreen trees, and nineteen shrubs.

From my knowledge of the college grounds, I am inclined to think that the list of hardy trees is not quite full.   Most of the deciduous trees, and a large portion of the evergreen trees and of the shrubs, are natives.  Among the trees and shrubs “not yet tested as to their hardiness,” I notice a number of natives, several of them natives of the immediate vicinity of the college, and which are certainly tested as to the climate, whatever may be the effect upon them of cultivation.

The College Campus is situated upon a high hill, at the intersection of the Mohawk and Chenango valleys, overlooking a very large tract of the region whose peculiar botanical richness is shown in Paine's Catalogue; the cities of Utica and Rome lying far within the circle of vision.   The hill is swept over by severe winds, however, and is as hard a place for plants as can well be found in the neighborhood, and plants found hardy there may safely be tried any-where in Central or Western New York.  The Curators have for years not only planted and cared for the shrubs and trees imported and sold by the nurserymen, but made trial of the native shrubs and trees taken from the woods and swamps, and thus have not only succeeded in accumulating a vast deal of experimental knowledge of cultivable natives, but have succeeded in transforming the Campus into a park not surpassed in beauty by any college grounds with which I am acquainted.

Partly as cause and partly as effect of the work of the Curators with the native shrubs and trees, the grounds of several of the professors in the college have been adorned with beautiful and hardy native shrubs and trees, which are also, I am rather sorry to say, somewhat of a novelty, and which sometimes give the professors a reputation for great research in the direction of rare foreign plants.   Some of the professors have also made great acquisitions to their gardens by domesticating native herbaceous plants.  I forbear going into details here, as the gentlemen to whom I refer are far more competent in that respect than I.  The Bulletin would certainly be none the worse if it could obtain from Professors Owen Hoot, or Edward North, or C. H. F. Peters some record of their experimental knowledge of the desirable plants of Ceutral New York.

J. H. H.

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§ 3.   Trichomanes radicans, Swartz. — I found this fern last summer in a dozen localities within twenty miles of Mammoth Cave, in Edmonson County, Kentucky.  I had gathered it the summer previous in the eastern part of the same State.  It grows thriftily and is well fruited.  I also found the Asplenium Bradleyi, Eaton, in one very limited locality in Edmonson county.  I believe no one else has ever reported these ferns north of the State of Tennessee before.

La Fayette, Ind.

John Hussey