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At 9000 feet various shrubby rhododendrons prevailed, with mountain-ash, birch, and dwarf-bamboo; also R. Falconeri, which grew from forty to fifty feet high. The snow was deep and troublesome, so we encamped at 9,800 feet, or 800 feet below the top, in a wood of Pyrus, Magnolia, Rhododendron, and bamboo.
Maximilian, however, made his home there with his wife, and they found it so delightful that when at length the castle was ready for occupation, they lingered in the farmhouse, which they loved as their first home. It was a large Swiss châlet, covered with vines and honeysuckle, surrounded by groves of camellias and pyrus japonicas.
In the South are other species. In fact, P. coronaria itself may not be a single species. These wild crabs run into many forms. In the northern Mississippi and prairie country are native apples good enough to be introduced into cultivation under varietal names. These are Pyrus Soulardii, a species bearing the name of J. G. Soulard, Illinois horticulturist.
Even the botanists have given them a great variety of names, as pyrus, mespilus, aronia, crataegus, and amelanchier. No matter which may be the best name, it is enough to know that these little berries are delicious to eat when fresh, and when dried, after the manner of currants, are excellent to mix in puddings, as well as in pemmican.
The wood of the Peartree is in great esteem for picture frames, it receiving a stain better than almost any other timber known. PYRUS Malus. CRAB-TREE. A tree of great account, as being the parent of all our varieties of apples, and is the stock on which the fine varieties are usually grafted.
How well do I remember her parlour half filled with the organ which her husband had built, and scented with a withered apple or two from the pyrus japonica that grew outside the house; the picture of the prize ox over the chimney-piece, which Mr Pontifex himself had painted; the transparency of the man coming to show light to a coach upon a snowy night, also by Mr Pontifex; the little old man and little old woman who told the weather; the china shepherd and shepherdess; the jars of feathery flowering grasses with a peacock's feather or two among them to set them off, and the china bowls full of dead rose leaves dried with bay salt.
As soon as they were gone, she took down her straw hat and passed out, swinging it by the strings. She stopped on the lawn to gather some flame-colored buds from a Pyrus Japonica, and, fastening them in the ribbons as she went, she walked toward her old familiar haunts in the woods.
In general usage, the word "crab" designates an apple that is small, sour and crabbed. Such apples are wildings or seedlings. They are merely depreciated forms of Pyrus Malus, and probably much like the first apples known to man. What are known to horticulturists as crab-apples, however, are other species of Pyrus, of different character and origin. These are the "Siberian crabs."
This is the name given by the great Linnaeus, with whom the modern accurate naming of plants and animals begins. The nomenclature of plants starts with his "Species Plantarum," 1753. Pyrus is the genus or group comprising the pears and apples, and Linnaeus included the quince; Malus is Latin for the apple-tree. Together the names represent genus and species, the malus Pyrus.
I have heard that a cider of peculiar "hardness" and potency, guaranteed to unsettle the firmest head, is made from these acid fruits but I have not found it necessary to extend my tree studies in that direction. The states west of Kansas do not know this lovely wild crab, to which the botanists give a really euphonious designation as Pyrus coronaria.
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