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Magnificent Botanical Garden in Bronx Park

All the World Has Contributed to This Wonderful Collection of Plants, Trees and Shrubs
That Has Been Brought Together for the Instruction and Enjoyment of the
Public-Beautiful Walks and Drives Invite Inspection

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GENERAL VIEW OF THE BOTANICAL MUSEUM BUILDING AND ITS APPROACHES FROM THE SOUTH

Although it is possible that even to the public. It was incorporated by some residents of New York may be the Legislature in 1891 for the purpose ignorant of the fact, this City possesses of maintaining a Botanical Garden, a one of the finest Botanical Gardens in Museum and an Arboretum. Under this the world. It covers 400 acres of land legislative authority, the Society has in the northerly part of Bronx Park collected specimens of vegetation from across Pelham Avenue from the Zoo- all over the world as well as fossils of logical Garden,

and it is reached
either by the Har-
lem Division of
the New York
Central, the Third
Avenue "L," the
Subway, or by
trolley. Automo-
bilists find beau-
tiful drives in the
Garden to which
there are plenty
of entrances for
motor cars.

Subsidized by the
City

The New York Botanical Garden, like the American Museum of Natural History and

the Metropolitan

The largest Botanical Museum building in the world is located near the Mosholu Parkway entrance to the grounds. This building, in addition to two museum exhibits on the main floor, includes a large lecture hall, a library, laboratories, and the herbarium. There

VIEW OF THE FRUITCETUM, COVERING SIXTEEN ACRES, WHERE MANY KINDS OF SHRUBS ARE GROWN

are also two glass
house conserva-
tories and the old
Lorillard Man -
sion, built by the
Lorillard family
in 1856, which
contained meeting
rooms and other
offices until its re-
cent injury by fire.

The Garden
Plantations

The plantations on the 400 acres

of ground set aside

by the City for the use of the Garden include:

A pinetum ог collection of cone

bearing trees, mostly evergreens;

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Museum of Art, is a private corporation | vegetable growth, photographs, miscro- a Deciduous Arboretum, or collection which is subsidized by the City on con- scopic exhibits and, in short, everything of trees which shed their leaves in the dition that it keeps its collections open of interest to the botanist. fall;

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A Viticetum, or collection of shrub- far from the Pelham Parkway station by vines;

of the subway. Several hundred variAn Herbaceous Garden, or collection eties of the most beautiful roses bloom of hardy herbaceous plants;

A Morphological Garden, illustrating forms of plants and plant structures;

An Economic Garden, containing hardy plants whose products are directly useful to man.

Flowering Shrubs

here all summer long.

Other Flower Collections

There is the Lilac Garden south of the Rose Plantation and flower gardens containing a great variety of plants which bloom from spring until late autumn are numerous.

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Great care has been taken to maintain, so far as possible, the natural features of the Garden. Forty acres of Canadian hemlock and spruce trees have been left untouched along the gorge of the Bronx River which flows through the Garden past the Lorillard Mansion. The course of this river has been carefully developed and made accessible by a road and walks so that its beautiful vistas may be avail

able.

The northern part of the Garden has been developed into meadows and marshes along the river.

The Great Museum

Decorative wood plants are arranged Collections of cannas, phloxes, gladin groups along the roads and paths ioli, rose mallows and plants having which abound throughout the garden. variegated foliage, a dahlia collection These include rhododendrons, mag-containing several hundred varieties, an The Botanical Museum has a frontnolias and other flowering shrubs. Iris Garden and a Water Garden con- age of 312 feet and a depth of 90 feet. There is a collection of Japanese cherry taining magnificent water lilies and Its style is Italian Renaissance with trees containing over one hundred trees other aquatic plants are found in the walls of light colored brick and terra which flower every spring. cotta trimmings. In front of it stands

Garden.

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BEAUTIFUL TEFFT FOUNTAIN AND PART OF THE MAIN FRONT OF THE BOTANICAL MUSEUM BUILDING

Flavors and Spices

a bronze fountain designed by the paper making are shown in another ex- dye-stuffs, such as logwood, brazil sculptor Carl E. Tefft. hibit. Elsewhere the processes used in wood, madder, alkanet and indigo form The Museum of Economic Botany, the collection of the "rubber milk" an interesting exhibit. with nearly 10,000 specimens, occupies from tropical forests are illustrated and the entire main floor of this building. the production of raw rubber, as well The exhibits in the collection are class- as gutta-percha and allied products is fied as vegetable foods, drugs, fibres, shown. gums, resins, sugars, rubbers, spices and flavoring agents, dye stuffs, tanning materials, oils, cork, starches and other vegetable products of practical use.

The fibre Collection includes cotton plants showing the raw cotton ready for manufacture, and a great variety of other trees and plants from the leaves, stems, bark and roots of which are manufactured such articles as fans, hats, boxes, bags, baskets, mats, ropes, linen and similar manufactures of

fibre.

Paper and Rubber

Where the flavoring substances and spices come from may be learned from a collection which shows the derivation

The woods used in the production of of anise, caraway, cinnamon, pepper,

Wood sections used in the manufac- SHELTER HOUSE IN THE JAPANESE ture of paper and the various stages in

CHERRY GARDEN

capsicum, mustard, horse-radish and similar condiments. In a similar manner the trees which produce waxes, tanning materials, vegetable oils or fats, soaps, perfumery, beverages, starches, sugars, foods and drugs are illustrated.

One of the cases contains samples of poisonous plants in the vicinity of New York. are Among these pokeroot, aconite-root, stramonium leaves, belladonna fruits and so on.

The Museum of Systematic Botany, which occupies the second floor of the

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WHERE TROPIC PLANTS FLOURISH DESPITE WINTER

VIEW OF THE CENTRAL DISPLAY HOUSE OF CONSERVATORY RANGE NO. 2, GIFT OF MESSRS. DANIEL AND MURRAY GUGGENHEIM building, is of more interest to botan- century. The Herbarium now includes ists than to the general public. more than 1,500,000 specimens.

Fossil Botany

The Museum of Fossil Botany in the basement, which contains collections showing the evolution of living flora from the earliest times, can be understood by everybody and it is of intense interest.

This and other collections are used and explained in lectures which are given on Saturday afternoons from spring to autumn in the Lecture Hall which will seat more than seven hundred persons. These are free and they are illustrated by an extensive collection of lantern slides.

The Library contains more than 30,000 volumes. In it also are manuscript letters and portraits of botanists and a complete set of the works of Darwin.

A Wonderful Collection The Herbarium contains prepared specimens of all kinds of plants from all parts of the world. It is the most extensive and complete collection of its kind in America. It includes not only the Garden Herbarium but that of Columbia University as well, the latter having been begun early in the last

It is impossible to describe in detail the various collections that are to be found in the garden. One of the glass conservatories is filled with palms and other tropical plants from all parts of the world. Desert vegetation and aquatic and semi-aquatic plants are also to be found here.

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Huge Water Lilies

One of the most interesting features of the conservatories is the collection of huge and brilliant water lilies from Africa and other parts of the world.

The collection of trees, shrubs and flowers which grow in the open air are both varied and beautiful. They are not only instructive from the botanical point of view but they are arranged with an art which makes every foot of the garden pleasing to the eye. Landscape gardeners have taken advantage of the combination of wooded area and meadows and they have used the Bronx River and its smaller tributary streams not only to make beautiful stretches of water but also small lakes in which grasses, sedges and hundreds of species of trees, shrubs and smaller plants are to be found. The Rose Garden and the Cherry Garden always centers of interest.

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