THE ACACIA DEALBATA— HARDY IN FRANCE. 



THE ACACIA DEALBATA— HARDY IN FRANCE. 



BY BAPTISTE DESPORTES, ANGERS, FRANCE. 



French horticulture, always seeking to increase our enjoyments, has accomplished a 

 valuable result for the ornament of our parks and landscape gardens. After several years 

 of experiment, it has succeeded in the open air culture of the Acacia (or Mimosa) dcal- 

 bata. 



This tree, so well known in all green-houses, a native of Van Dieman's Island, was first 

 introduced into England in 1818, and into France in 1824. It has proved since then, every 

 year, the greatest ornament of the green-house and the conservatory, growing so luxuri- 

 antly, that in a few years it reached the roof, whatever may have been its height else- 

 where. 



Few green-houses are high enough to allow it to accomplish the development of which 

 it is susceptible; and such is the vigor of its growth, that very often it forces itself through 

 the roof, struggling to attain that freedom of development that nature has granted it. 

 There is something so wonderfully beautiful in its perfect inflorescence, that few persons 

 familiar with good exotic collections, have not frequently paid a just tribute of admiration 

 to this remarkable tree. What can be more graceful than its smooth branches, of a beau- 

 tiful glaucous green, clad with its delicate persistent foliage of the same color, its myri- 

 ads of gay, golden flowers, lighter than down, and seeking to envelop it with a floating 

 cloud, gilded by the first beams of the morning. No description can do justice to the 

 lightness, the elegance, and the grace of this truly lovely tree. 



Mr. Andre Leroy, whose taste in horticulture is universally known, could not behold 

 this tree, upon which nature seems to delight to lavish her gifts, without regretting that it 

 should not be able to attain all its proportions in his extensive nurseries, so as to embel- 

 lish with its masses of beauty, the numerous parks and plantations which he forms every 

 year. Being desirous to know to what extent it could endure the rigor of the winter, he 

 planted several in the open air, which not only resisted without injur}', the most intense 

 cold known in the south of France, but which soon established a growth such as we were 

 not acquainted with in any other tree. 



Several of these Acacias, planted three years since, merely against a wall, with a north- 

 ern exposure, are now sixteen feet high; their branches nearly six feet long; the flowers 

 which cover them are so abundant, and so finely relieved against the back-ground of glau- 

 cous foliage, that they resemble a large golden sheaf of the most graceful and elegant form. 

 Others, planted at the same time, and entirely in the open air, that is to say, without any 

 protection, are not at all inferior to the first, in luxuriance and vigor of growth. 



The first tree of this kind planted in the open air at Angers, is now eight or nine years 

 old, and more than twenty -six feet high; its branches are nearly eight feet in length, and 

 extend in every direction, bending under the astonishing mass of its flowers. It is not 

 possible to do justice to the beauty and the brilliancy of the bloom of this tree; and who- 

 ever has not seen it in all its splendor, can form but a very imperfect idea of it. 



One remarkable fact about this Acacia is, that it continues to grow all the year round, 

 and even during the winter months, the vegetation scarcely seems to be arrested. The 

 flower-buds begin to appear at the end of summer; they remain in perfect preservation 

 until the first fine days of spring; and towards the end of March, when the gardens bc- 

 throw off" their winter garb, the tree rapidly bursts into its greatest beauty, 

 gers, which seems the chosen country of Flora, and for that reason, doubtless, has 



