The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Shrubs And Trees
The list is restricted to hardy materials, with a few exceptions, indicated in the Descriptive Review.
Floral Effect. This has been discussed sufficiently on p. 13.
Floral Fragrance raises the total allowance for floral valuesto 15 points.
Fragrance 's a matter not easily reduced to score-card terms. It is not one of the most stable qualities, and not all people react to the odors of flowers in a like manner. Certain odors are considered pleasant by some people and unbearable by others. The late E. H. Wilson described many flowers as fragrant from which we would flee, and there is generally much discrepancy among recorded opinions in the matter. We have done the best we could and have even entered debits in the proper column for certain kinds which seem to be objectionable to many people on this score.
Some flowers smell delightfully at close range. Others are hardly pleasant close up, but diffuse a pleasant scent at a distance, as is the case with the European Mountain Ash.
Not all other plant odors have been scored in this column, like the varnish scent of Caryopteris incana, or the disagreeable odor of some of the Viburnums. They have been recorded in the discussions of materials, and some of them in the debit column.
Normal Foliage Value has been scored as distinct from Blending Value and Seasonal Color, and represents the intrinsic characteristic foliage value of the subject. The Aralias, for instance, are scored high for Normal Foliage Value and low for Blending Value.
Seasonal Foliage Color does not cover normal color like that of many of the Japanese Maples, but mostly only autumn color and in some (not many) cases also the distinctive tinting of young foliage, as in Oxydendrum (Sorrel-tree), Cercidiphyllum (Katsura-tree) and in forms of Prunus serrulata (one of the Oriental Cherries).
The occurrence and the brilliancy of autumn color are variable phenomena, influenced by several environmental factors. It is more pronounced in open than in shaded situations and usually more in light than in rich, retentive soils; more marked in dry than in wet autumns. Some shrubs and trees may develop autumn color characteristically in Southern climates, but not in ours, where frost may cut short the process of the maturing of the leaf. The Redbud (Cercis), for instance, may develop a good yellow farther South, but at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., it often drops its leaves in a limp, green condition.
In reading about shrubs and trees, then, one must make allowance for considerable variation in this matter.
Decorative Fruit covers not only the more showy types of fruit like the berries of Dogwoods and the "pomes" of the Flowering Crabs, but also certain more subtly decorative, less showy pods, capsules, etc., like those of Abelia grandiflora, Kolkwitzia (Beauty-bush) and Oxydendrum (Sorrel-tree).
