Samuel Parsons Jr.

“ One of the salient instances of diversity in hardiness of nearly related plants is the behavior of Japanese persimmons in this country. It was confidently expected that they would prove hardy in America, because native persimmons were hardy, and because the general hardiness of Japanese plants in America had been often demonstrated. ”

“ Latitude, moreover, we find is only one factor, and a very vague one, in the problem of determining the relative hardiness of plants. Climate is the real governing. element—climate, that varies with the special conditions of every valley and hill-top. Yet the knowledge and insight that determine the relative hardiness of plants seem easy of acquisition in the eyes of the inexperienced. ”

“ On the other hand, what can we say to the evergreen Thuiopsis Standishii doing better here than in England, and Thuiopsls dolobrata better in England than in America? Japanese maples, that seem to grow more thriftily and vigorously here than in Japan, give evidence also of being less adapted to England than to the United States. Besides, why is it that evergreens thrive better, and are more hardy, in a cultivated state in Europe, and deciduous trees in this country? ”

“ There are many people who really fancy that tender plants may be rendered hardy by first protecting them carefully and then exposing them more and more by degrees until they are taught to endure a manifestly greater amount of cold than they did at first. ”

“ It is not simply that Rhododendron ponticum and its hybrids are not as hardy as Rhododendron Catawbiense, nor that the more of the Catawbiense strain there is in a Ponticum hybrid, the hardier it is, but it is that sometimes a Ponticum hybrid, usually entirely unreliable, will pass the winter unscathed, when nearly the hardiest pure Catawbiense of the plantation will be killed. ”

“ The proper sources of these reports would be botanic gardens such as those of Washington and Cambridge, and parks such as those of New York and Philadelphia, the superintendents and gardeners of which might be directed to make careful investigations and fill up printed forms month by month on the behavior of plants in different localities. Above all, private individuals—and they need not be trained observers—all over the country should be encouraged to investigate in the same systematic way and report to the central repository. ”

“ We know answers can be given by experienced observers to all these questions, that are more or less comprehensive, but we believe also that, when such answers come to be closely scanned, it will be found that they do not entirely meet the case. ”

“ Natural selection carried on for hundreds and thousands of years may accomplish a change of nature of this sort, but, under ordinary limitations of time, the attempt to acclimatize, in this sense, is practically futile. ”

“ Nor is this the strangest feature to be noticed in the behavior of plants under apparently like influences of soil and climate. Plants a few feet from each other, of the same species, will suffer in very different degrees during many winters. ”

“ Few, comparatively, of the California native deciduous trees are hardy in the East, and even for many Oregon trees of the same class, such as Acer macrophyllum, there is much suffering in store during hard winters on the Atlantic coast. ”