1674 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART II. 
slender twiggy branches, and leaves nearly lanceolate. There are 
plants in Messrs. Loddiges’s arboretum. : Airs 
+ P. 4. 3 latif lia Hort. has the leaves rather broader than those of the 
species. There isa tree of this kind, in the London Horticultural 
Society’s Garden, 12 ft. high. 
* P. b. 4 intermédia Hort., Pall. Fl. Ross., t.41,.A,is a native of Dahuria, 
with stout, short, thick branches, knotted with wrinkles; and ovate, 
long, and rather narrow leaves; and generally attaining only the 
height of a large shrub. There is a plant, in the London Horticul- 
tural Society’s Garden, 10 ft. high, by which it appears to be quite 
distinct from P. b. viminalis. 
+ P. b. 5 suaveolens; P. suavéolens Fischer, and Lodd. Cat., ed. 1836. The 
new sweet-scented poplar of the nurseries. — The plant in Messrs. 
Loddiges’s collection is not 1 ft. high ; and we have not been able to 
identify it in any other collections ; though it must haye been plen- 
tiful in 1834, since in the wholesale priced Catalogue of the Ken- 
sington Nursery for that year the price of plants is stated to be 
10s. per hundred. 
+ P. 6.6 foliis variegatis Miller has varie- 
gated leaves. There is a tree of this > 
kind in the London Horticultural So- 
ciety’s Garden. 
Description. The balsam poplar, in North 
America, according to Michaux, attains the 
height of 80ft., with a trunk 3 ft. in diameter, 
and roots spreading close under the surface, and 
throwing up numerous suckers. In Siberia, ac- 
cording to Pallas, it is only a middle-sized tree ; 
and in Dahuria and Altai, a low tree, or large 
shrub. According to Franklin, in the northern 
parts of North America, the trunk of the balsam 
poplar attains a greater circumference than that 
of any other tree. The head of the tree, in 
North America, is conical; but in Russia it is 
roundish. The trunk is covered with an ash- 
coloured bark; and the wood, in Siberia, is said ~ 
to be reddish, being closer and a little harder 
than that of other poplars. In the moist plains of Dahuria, the tree is 
shrubby, because, according to Pallas, the grass is annually fired there; and 
the young shoots of all the trees being thus 
injured, they are seldom found rising with a clear 
stem. In the spring, the balsam poplar is known 
from all other species by the fine tender yellow 
of its leaves when they are first developed ; the 
abundance of the yellow glutinous balsam with 
which the buds are covered, the very strong 
odour which this balsam diffuses throughout the 
surrounding atmosphere, and the comparatively 
rigid and fastigiate habit of growth of the tree, 
which approaches, in the latter respect, nearer to 
P. fastigiata than any other species. When 
mature, the leaves become of a deep green colour 
above, and of a rusty silvery white beneath. 
This is one of the hardiest of poplars, though not 
of rapid growth; except the first three or four 
years in the nursery. Bosc observes that bota- 
nists often confound this species with P. can- 
dicans ; but that cultivators never do so, from 
the very different manner of its growth, and from 
