Poplars, Aspens, and Cotton-Woods. 



By Dr. JOII^r A. WARDER, North Bend. Ohio, U.S.A. 



I HAVE had the pleasure of seeing the May number of your excel- 

 lent Journal of Forestrt, which but recently came to hand, and 

 with which one cannot fail to be pleased, since the English-speaking 

 people of the United Kingdom, and also those of the United States, 

 who are rapidly becoming interested in forestry, begin to feel the 

 need of such a periodical, and we may soon find it necessary to 

 establish one specially adapted to our needs here in America. 

 Success, say we, to your Journal. 



In your Editorial N"otes, at page 9, is an interesting account of 

 what you are pleased to call the Black Italian Poplar, which you 

 refer to the species Poindus monilifcra. With your popular names 

 we are not expected to be familiar, and as we have the Lombardy 

 poplar from Europe, now accepted as a form of Popidus nigra of that 

 continent, the words Black Italian* would lead us to think of the 

 Lombardy, long believed to be Populiis dilatata of Alton. f Indeed, 

 one of our best informed American dendrologists, Mr. Thomas 

 Meehan, editor of the Gardener's Mo7ithly, seems to have been of this 

 mind, since in the November number of his valuable serial he ven- 

 tures to correct your citation from Loudon, and gives Populus nigra 

 as the proper name for your tree. 



In this I do not concur, for a careful reading of your article gives 

 evidence of a plant very different from the Lombardy, which is 

 essentially a densely clothed pyramidal tree, rarely if ever having a 

 * ' clean bole." 



You may be right in referring your tree to Popidus monilifera, 

 though, unfortunately, this is one of the questionable species, respect- 

 ing which botanists are not fully in accord. At this distance, and 

 with the meagre evidence presented, omitting all botanical characters 

 except the habit and habitat, it may be thought presumptuous for 

 any one to express an opinion, but it is modestly suggested that some 

 other American poplar may have been introduced into Scotland, and 

 that your tree may be Populus angidata of Michaux, or his Popidus 

 monilifera, which last he calls the Virginia or Swiss poplar, and says 

 it is extensively cultivated for timber in Europe, especially in Switzer- 

 land and France. The Carolina poplar, P. angidata- of Michaux, is 



* Nuttall calls this the Italian Poplar, or Lombardy. "Am. Sylva," vol. i., p. oo. 

 + As does Darlington in his "Agricultural Botany," 2nd ed., p. 332. 



