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The Laburnum
Cytisus laburnum.
FAMILIARITY does not breed contempt when merit and appreciation accompany it. Who could be so profane as to regard with contempt the laburnum when flowering gaily in the merry month of May--as the Laureate puts it, "dropping wells of fire"? One might think fountains of gold a better figure; but it is too dreadful to propose any improvement in the lines of such a bard, and we already feel as though guilty of a runaway knock.
The common laburnum, like the common thorn, is well able to brave the smoke of a city and subsist on the worn-out, sooty soil of the most dejected London garden. In the squares and open places we see fine trees that flower gloriously; but occasionally we meet with pretty good examples in dirty holes and corners that seem to be utterly unfit for any kind of tree-life. But when we have seen these, and been thankful that such bits of sunshine, as they seem, should drop down into nooks so needing them, and have then gone into the country and seen laburnums again, what a difference! In a really well-furnished country garden the laburnums are equal in splendour to any trees that are grown. Instead of calling them fountains we might call them mountains of gold.
The varieties of laburnum are not many, but they are interesting. The Scotch laburnum is generally regarded as a distinct species, and is named Cytisus Alpinum; but, in our opinion, it is a variety, and we have noticed other varieties that unite it with C. laburnum by a series of gradations. The most distinctive character of the Scotch laburnum is to be found in the seed-pod, which is glabrous, distinctly stalked, and winged along the upper suture. The most remarkable variety is the one named Cytisus Adami, or Laburnum Adami. It is regarded as a hybrid between the yellow and the purple laburnum. If plants be allowed to have any sort of ideas of their own, we should say that Adam's laburnum belongs to the class of people who can never make up their minds what course to take in life, and so you can never calculate what they will do next. True it is that if this variety be grafted on the common laburnum the compound structure becomes the most ridiculous thing under the sun. In one part of the tree we shall see flowers of a good purple, in another part flowers of a dirty purple, and again in another part flowers of a bright yellow, and sometimes the three sorts are all closely associated and make a most absurd mixture. If we mark a branch that bears purple flowers, and watch it the next season, we may chance to find it then producing yellow flowers, and vice versd; and the vagaries of the graft run down into the stock, just as a man's giddy thoughts run to his heels and make him dance. An equally curious but by no means ridiculous variety is the golden-leaved laburnum. This is a splendid tree, with leaves of the brightest orange-yellow colour, and makes a most conspicuous feature in the woodlands all the summer through. This is propagated by grafting it on the common laburnum, and when the graft takes and grows there is a good tree formed, and, however we may admire it, we are not called upon to arouse the organ of wonder. But it is a different case when the graft does not take. You must know that out of a given number of grafts inserted on suitable stocks a certain proportion will perish. It is with grafts as with seeds--they do not all "come up." Now, generally speaking, when a graft fails there is an end of it, and if the stock is left alone it will usually sprout in time and grow in its own way, whatever that way may be. But it is otherwise in this case, for the common green-leaved laburnum stock, from which the graft has been removed by violence or death, will produce golden leaves of its own--a case of genuine inoculation. There is a golden-leaved jasmine that exercises some such influence when grafted on the green-leaved jasmine; but the cases are not quite parallel. There are in cultivation about twenty varieties of laburnum, but none are more beautiful than the common one that may be found in every garden. The pendulous variety (L. pendulum) is one of the most distinct, and the sweet-scented (L. odora) and the white-flowered (L. flore albo) are worth the attention of those who have a taste for interesting trees.
It should never be forgotten that the seeds of the laburnum are poisonous, and occasionally prove deadly to children and cattle; therefore it is not well that a laburnum should overhang a grass field, or have a place in a school-garden or near any playground. Hares and rabbits are so partial to this tree that it may be turned to account for the protection of plantations. A certain proportion of laburnums being sown, the ground-game will eat them down in the course of the winter; but the trees will be renewed from the roots in the spring, and thus, by supplying food at times when the animals are hard-pressed, may tend to the preservation of more valuable timber.