JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ARNOLD ARBORETUM 



Volume IV APRIL, 1923 Number 2 



NORTHERN TREES IN SOUTHERN LANDS 



Ernest H. Wilson 



INTRODUCTION 



Since the settling of the white man in the southern hemisphere many 

 northern trees have been introduced there, some for their economic 

 value andothers for aesthetic purposes. Now that the world- wide shortage 

 and consequent high price of timber has called forestry and especially 

 afforestation into active being the value of exotic trees for practical 

 forestry purposes is being universally appraised. Each country is re- 

 questing quick growing trees yielding useful timber. Haste is the order 

 of the day and it is remarkable that so few southern countries where 

 forestry has been inaugurated seem to find indigenous trees of sufficiently 

 rapid growth. And so the exotic is in request. During my recent tour 

 through Australasia and South Africa I found much to interest me in the 

 behavior of our northern trees in these southern lands and it has been 

 thought that these observations may be worth recording. 



That varieties of such northern fruit trees as the Apple, Pear, Peach, 

 Nectarine, Japanese Plum, Orange and Lemon thrive in parts of Australasia 

 and South Africa is common knowledge. Less is known about the behavior 

 of the ordinary northern trees planted either for ornamental or forestry 

 purposes in the southern lands and yet several species of these trees 

 flourish amazingly there and are already proving an immense boon to 



the people. 



In popular language trees are commonly divided into the two classes 

 of Hardwood and Softwood. All dicotyledonous trees are classed as Hard- 

 wood and all the gymnospermous trees as Softwood. That the terms are 

 misleading is obvious l for the wood of many Dicotyledons is so soft as to 

 be utterly useless as timber. However, in general the wood of the Gymno- 

 sperms is straighter of grain and more easily worked than that of Dicoty- 

 ledons. In the northern hemisphere the Conifers yield nearly all the 

 softwoods but in the southern hemisphere there is a great scarcity of 

 this kind of timber and such as there is is yielded chiefly by the Taxads. 

 No species of northern Conifers or Taxads is indigenous in the southern 

 hemisphere and of these families five genera only have representatives 



