Garden Notes - Gean to Common Holly

Gean
Prunus Avium

The most widely distributed of the three species of native British Cherries. In suitable soil attains a height of 30 or 40 feet. Wood: rich red, sweet scented and of fine grain. Bark: rough, with deeply cut downward fissures, scaling off in patches. Branches: short, stout, ascending, with erect twigs. Leaves: bronze-brown in spring, green in summer, bright red and orange in autumn; often in drooping clusters, when mature 3 in. or 4 in. long. Flow3ers: pearly-white, sometimes tinted with pink, in clusters, on stems about 1 ½ in. long, growing from a common bud. Fruit: heart-shaped, red or red-black, usually bitter.

Guelder Rose
Viburnum Opulus

Frequently found in copses, and beside small streams; sometimes grows to a height of 12 feet; habit of growth rather straggling. Stems and branches brownish, quite smooth, twigs yellowish-brown, polished. Leaves: divided into three or five loves, deeply toothed, base rounded, a pair of slender stipules at base of leaf-stalk. Flowers: white, in flattened circular clusters: outer row of neuter flowers (each about ¾ in. in diameter) designed to attract insects to the smaller fruit-forming flowers within. Fruit: almost round berries, clear translucent red in color.

Hawthorn, or May
Crataegus Oxyacantha

Also known as Whitethorn its grayish-brown bark being lighter in color than that of its near relative the Blackthorn (see No. 10). Usually seen as a dense hedge-thicket (hence its name, a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon Hagthorn, or hedgethorn). In the open the Hawthorn sometimes grows to a height of 40 feet. Branches: crowded, thorny. Leaves: 3-4 lobed, deeply toothed; often eaten by cattle. Flowers: about ¾ in., across, white with pink stamens, arranged in bunches. Fruit: the familiar crimson haws, with whitish mealy flesh and hard seeds; a favorite food with small birds.

Common Hazel
Corylus Avellana

Usually a mere shrub in the hedgerow, or among the undergrowth in copse or wood; sometimes develops into a tree 30 feet high. Bark: on old stems, grayish, and usually covered with lichen. Leaves: roundish, toothed edges, arranged alternately along the straight downy shoots, green in summer, brown and yellow in autumn. Flowers: form in autumn, and ripen the following February, before the leaves appear. Stamen-bearing flowers in hanging catkins ("Lamb's-tails"), 1in. to 2 in. long; Pistil-bearing flowers like swollen green buds, with several thread like stigmas. Fruit: a nut, set in a cup of leathery bracts.

Common Holly
Hex Aquifolium

Grows throughout the British Isles, as a hedge-bush, large shrub, or tree; well grown specimens sometimes reaching a height of 50 feet, with a girth of 10 or 12 feet. Old trunks and branches usually much curved and twisted. Bark: smooth, ash-gray, used in the preparation of birdlime. Leaves: evergreen, much curved and twisted, polished, thick and leathery, with spiny margins; leaves on upper branches sometimes without spines. Flowers: numerous, in white clusters in axils of leaves, each flower about ¼ in. diameter. Fruit: four-seeded berries, green at first, changing to brilliant scarlet.