Sir.—In Garden and Forest of August 1st, page 266, the law seems to me to have been laid down that the introduction of foreign plants in our scenery is destructive of landscape repose and harmony. No exception was suggested, and the word harmony was used, if I am not mistaken, as it commonly is in criticism of landscape painting, not of matters of scientific interest; not as if the question were one of what, in matters of literary criticism, is called “the unities.”

That a fashion of planting far-fetched trees with little discrimination has led to deplorable results, no good observer can doubt. That these results are of such a character that we should, from horror of them, be led, as a rule, in our landscape planting, to taboo all trees coming from over sea, many of your readers will not, I am sure, be ready to admit, and if no one else has yet offered to say why, I will ask you to let me assume that duty.

Suppose anywhere in our Northern Atlantic States an abandoned clearing, such as in Virginia is called an “old-field;”—suppose it to be bordered by the aboriginal forest, with such brushwood as is natural to its glades and skirts straggling out upon the open;—suppose that mixing with this there is a more recent, yet well advanced, growth of trees and bushes sprung from seed, of which a part has drifted from the forest, a part from a neighboring abandoned homestead, while a part has been brought by birds from distant gardens, so that along with the natives, there is a remarkable variety of trees and bushes of foreign ancestry;—suppose a road through more open parts of the old-field, and that on this road a man is passing who, having lately come from New Zealand (or the moon), knows nothing of the vegetation of Europe, Asia or North America, yet has a good eye and susceptibility to the influences of scenery.

Now suppose, lastly, that this man is asked to point out, one after another, so that a list can be made, trees and bushes in an order that will represent the degree in which they appear to him to have an aspect of distinctiveness; No. 1 being that which stands out from among the others as the most of all incongruous, unblending, unassimilating, inharmonious and apparently exotic; No. 2 the next so, and so on.

The question, as we understand it, is essentially this: Would all of the trees and bushes that had come of a foreign ancestry be noted before any of the old native stock?

Some of them surely would stand high on the list, and some of much popularity, such as Horse Chestnut and Ginkgo and numerous sorts of trees in themselves, at least, less objectionable on this score, as, for example, [553]Weeping Beech and most of the more pronounced weepers; most of the Japanese Maples, also, and the dwarf, motley-hued and monstrous sorts of Conifers.

But, all? or, as a rule, with unimportant exceptions? So far from it, to our eyes, that we doubt whether, even of different species of the same genus, the visitor would not point out some of the native before some of the foreign—some of the American Magnolias, for example, before any of the Asiatic. We doubt if the European Red Bud, the Oriental Plane or the Chinese Wistaria (out of bloom) would be selected before their American cousins. It appears to us that Rubus odoratus would be noticed before Rubus fruticosus. Passing from the nearer relatives, it seems to us likely, also, that many of the European and Asiatic Maples, Elms, Ashes, Limes and Beeches would be named after such common American forest trees as the Catalpas, Sassafras, Liquidambar, Tulip, Tupelo and Honey Locust; that the American Chionanthus, Angelica, Cercis, Ptelea, Sumachs, Flowering Dogwood, Pipevine and Rhododendrons would be placed before some of the foreign Barberries, Privets, Spireas, Loniceras, Forsythias, Diervillas or even Lilacs. We doubt if the stranger, seeing some of these latter bushes forming groups spontaneously with the natives, would suspect them to be of foreign origin, or that they would appear to him any more strange and discordant notes in the landscape than such common and generally distributed natives as have been named. We doubt if Barberry, Privet, Sweetbriar and Cherokee Rose, which, in parts of our country, are among the commonest wild shrubs, or the Fall Dandelion, Buttercups, Mints, Hemp Nettle and a dozen others, which, in parts, are among the commonest wild herbaceous plants, though it is believed all of foreign descent, would ever be thought, by such an observer, out of place in our scenery because of their disreposeful and inharmonious influence. Two hundred years hence are not Japanese Honeysuckle, “Japanese Ivy” and “Japanese Box” (Euonymus radicans) likely to be equally bone of our bone in scenery?

The forest scenery of northern Europe is distinguished from most of ours by greater landscape sedateness. It is to be doubted if many of the trees that come thence to us, judiciously introduced among our own, provided they are suited with our climate, will not often have more of a quieting than of a disturbing influence on our scenery.

We have much ground which it is difficult and costly, with any plants natural to it, to redeem from a dull, dreary, forlorn and tamely rude condition. There are parts of the world where, in ground otherwise of similar aspect, plants spread naturally, of such a character and in such a manner, that the scenery is made by them interesting, pleasing and stimulating to the imagination—picturesque, in short. Heather, Broom and Furze are such plants in the British Islands. It happens that neither of these has yet flourished long with us, though it is said that Broom appears to have got a foothold in some of our exhausted tobacco lands. But if we cannot have these, it does not follow that nowhere in the world are there plants that would serve the same purpose [554]with us. If any such offer, should not every American give them welcome? The Woad-waxen is a plant inferior to those above named as an element of landscape, but superior in cosmopolitan toughness. As a matter simply of scenery is such heroic settlement as it has effected (it is often winter-killed to the ground, but not to the root), upon the bleak, barren fells back of Salem, as lately described in Garden and Forest, a misfortune? We believe that to most persons it adds (and otherwise than through its floral beauty) much to the landscape charm of these hills, while detracting nothing from their wildly natural character.

Again, may we not (as artists) think that there are places with us in which a landscape composition might be given a touch of grace, delicacy and fineness by the blending into a body of low, native tree foliage that of the Tamarisk or the Oleaster, that would not be supplied in a given situation by any of our native trees?

Is there a plant that more provokes poetic sentiment than the Ivy? Is there any country in which Ivy grows with happier effect or more thriftily than it does in company with the native Madrona, Yew and Douglas Spruce on our north-west coast? Yet it must have been introduced there not long since from the opposite side of the world. Would not the man be a public benefactor who would bring us from anywhere an evergreen vine of at all corresponding influence in landscape that would equally adapt itself to the climatic conditions of our north-eastern coast?

Imagining possibilities in this direction, let us suppose that, from remote wilds of Central Asia or Africa, we should be offered an herb, or a close-growing, dwarf, woody plant like the Leiophyllum, as it occurs in the Carolina Mountains, that would form a sod with a leafage never rising more than three inches from the roots and never failing in greenness or elasticity during our August droughts. Would not the matting of many a large, quiet, open space among our trees, with such a plant, favor harmony of scenery much more than it is ever favored by the result of the best gardening skill, aided by special fertilizers, lawn mowers, rollers and automatic sprinklers, in dealing with any of our native grasses? Such an acquisition we may think too improbable to be considered. But is it really much more improbable than, 200 years ago, would have been a prediction of the present distribution in some parts of our country of Timothy Grass, Red Clover and Canada Thistle, or in other parts of Bermuda Grass, Alfalfa and Japan Clover?

Before agreeing that no addition can be made to our native forest, except to its injury, we should consider that trees for landscape improvement are not solely those that please simply from their fitness to merely fall quietly into harmony with such as are already established. Trees would be of no less value to us that, being adapted to our climate, would supply elements of vivacity, emphasis, accent, to points of our scenery, such as we see happily produced by the Upright Cypress and the horizontally branching Stone Pine when growing out of Ilex groves on the Mediterranean. And this is a reminder that some [555]scholar has said that we can form little idea of what the scenery of Italy was in the time of Virgil from what we see there now. This because so many trees and plants, which were then common, have since become rare, and because so many, then unknown, have since become common. Is there reason for believing that the primitive scenery of Italy was, on this account, more pleasing than the present?

The large majority of foreign trees that have been introduced with us during the last fifty years, and which have promised well for a time, have been found unable to permanently endure the alternate extremes of our climate, but that there are many perfectly suited with it we have abundant evidence. Does the White Willow flourish better or grow older or larger in any of the meadows of its native land than in ours? Was it not under this tree that the most American of our poets sung of the family of trees, “Surely there are times when they consent to own me of their kin, and condescend to me and call me cousin,” forgetting that, if so, it was the case of “a certain condescension of foreigners”? How is it with the English Elm, the Norway Maple, the Horse Chestnut? The Ailanthus, the Paulownia, the Pride of China, all introduced from Asia within the memory of living men, are spreading as wild trees and elbowing places for themselves in the midst of our native forests. The Eucalypti, from Australia, have come, in thirty years, to be a marked (not generally an agreeable) feature in the scenery of California, and while the climate of our Atlantic coast does not quite agree with the Hawthorns, in Oregon, notwithstanding its greatly drier summer, they seem to be as much at home as in Kent or Surrey.

But on this point of the adaptability of many foreign trees to flourish in American climates, only think of Peaches, Pears and Apples.