IRISH GARDENING 



VOLUME XVI 



No. 1 86 



Editor-J- W. Besant. 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE 



ADVANCEMENT OF HORTICULTURE AND 



ARBORICULTURE IN IRELAND 



AUGUST 

 1921 



i,mwA*r 



Trees in Le Jardin des Plantes. 



QAkUbN 



By John Paterson. 



LEFT Glasgow on the 10th of May, 

 1921, to pay a few visits to the 

 Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and, after 

 a day spent at Kew, on the way, I 

 reached the famous gardens on the 

 loth. Mv first impression was dis- 

 appointing. Owing to fences and walls 

 not having liad a pot of paint ex- 

 pended on them for a very long period, 

 there was a general appearance of 

 neglect about the place which was de- 

 pressing. This condition of affairs is 

 set down to the war, but there is more 

 to it than that. A sentence from 

 Robinson's " The Parks, Promenades, 

 and Gardens of Paris " (1869), throws 

 some light on the appearance of the 

 celebrated gardens to-day. He writes : 

 " One ball at the Hotel de Ville dur- 

 ing the festivities of 1867 cost con- 

 siderably over £30,000, while the poor 

 Jardin des Plantes gets from the State not more 

 than one-third of that sum to- exist upon for a 

 whole year." 



I possess a big, lavishly-illustrated French work 

 on the Garden, published in Paris in 1842, and 

 the numerous woodcuts and other evidences 

 therein show the Gardens to have been, at that 

 period, a fashionable resort. It seems to have 

 fallen entirely out of fashionable favour now, but 

 remains a highly popular peoples' park. It re- 

 tains, happily, great attractions for a student, 

 though the conservatories were closed to the 

 public during the war, and are not yet open. 

 The systematic beds, though extensive and well- 

 arranged, and the plants adequately named, were 

 in a backward state, and I found it more profit- 

 al)le, at the time of my visit, to concentrate on 

 the arboreal vegetation in which I was, besides, 

 much interested. An autobus has as its destina- 

 tion the Jardin des Plantes, and lands one at the 

 memorial fountain to C:uvier, opposite one of the 

 ontrances. The first tree to attract me here, and 

 near the statue to Chevreul, the chemist, was 

 ]'ninus reni.sifera (Ehrlidii) var. I'lssardi, and the 

 til St example introduced from Persia by Pissard. 

 It is a fine tree in splendid condition. Ptero- 

 carya stenocurpu, near by, is a beautiful foliage 



tree. „ r, i- 



When T first saw. a little way off, flowers of 

 PauloiDiid imperialis among the green grass I 

 thouc'ht of L(ithr:t(i rhindestina, but was quickly 

 undeceived. The Paulownia is a great tree in 

 Paris, and I was lucky to see one about forty 



feet high, at the main entrance to Longchamps 

 Race-course, in full flower, on the 19th of May. 

 By that time I had seen hundreds of trees of this 

 series, bvit all nearly past flowering. The puce- 

 coloured caducous flowers, two inches long, with 

 curious short, hairy, brown calyces, are most 

 eagerly sought for by children in public places, 

 and were, 1 was told, strung into chains as our 

 children do with daisies. With great pyramidal 

 puce spikes at the ends of the branches, before 

 the leaves are out, Paulownia is, indeed, an im- 

 perial tree. If we Scottish people have an Order 

 of the Tliistle, it is not surprising that the Japs 

 have an Order of Paulownia. In Paris it is a 

 street tree (north side of Boulevard Bonne Nou- 

 velle), and is used as a shelter tree in squares 

 where markets of garden produce are held. 



Le Jardin des Plantes possesses the oldest 

 rauIoa-7ua in Europe, put in the open from seed 

 iH-ought to the Museum in 1834 by the Victe. 

 Fritz de Ussy. It has attained a circumference 

 of trunk of about nine feet, but has had to be 

 severely cut down, only two remaining branches 

 carrying on now. Something similar must be 

 said of the Eohinia, now twelve feet in circum- 

 ference of trunk, planted at the time of the foun- 

 dation of the Garden in 1635 by Vespasien 

 Robin. " From him," as the story goes, '' came 

 the seeds which have served to naturalise in 

 France one of the most elegant and useful trees 

 of our country"; to wit, Bohinia Pseudacucia. 

 Fifty feet high, with pale rose flowers, I thought 

 P. Pseudacucia, var. decaisneana, a fine thing. 



The summer sun that glows over Paris, and 

 makes it to many people a nightmare at that 

 season, enables many plants to present them- 

 selves in aspects quite unattainable here. But 

 Paris lacks our moisture, and the mildness of 

 western winters by the sea, and the attempts to 

 grow conifers, for instance, are pitiable; but 

 there is a fine stick of Pinus Lnricio Poir., 

 planted by Laurent de Jussieu in 1773, about nine 

 feet in circumference. It is a well-grown tree, 

 with wide spreading branches, and though now 

 manifestly decaying is still striking in appear- 

 ance. It recalled the fine example of P. Laricio, 

 var. PaUosiunu, at Glasnevin, but their respec- 

 tive situations differ much. 



On one side of the big mound, in the labyrinth, 

 where several ])aths diverge, still exists the Cedar 

 of liebanon, which Bernard de Jussieu brought 

 with him from England in 1734, in his hat, if 

 tradition is to be lielieved. It has been a noble 

 tree, has a clean trunk thirteen feet or so in 



