COLORADO VARIETY OF THE DOUGLAS FIR. 195 



Britain excepting, perhaps, a few of the coldest or most exposed 

 locahties. Its rate of growth, in the earher stages at any rate, far 

 outstrips that of the Colorado variety, and in all probability it 

 produces a better quality of timber than that tree ; and there 

 is also the fact to be taken into account that the growing of the 

 Colorado variety is, as yet, only in the experimental stage in 

 this country, and, as a timber producer, it is therefore an unknown 

 quantity. 



But there seems to be some doubt as to the identity of this 

 Colorado variety of British nurseries. In his Stlva of North 

 America Professor Sargent refers to the failure which attended 

 the first attempts to introduce the Douglas fir into the eastern 

 United States by means of plants raised in England from seeds 

 collected in Oregon, or produced from trees grown in Europe, 

 and to the subsequent success of the project by means of plants 

 raised in the Botanic Garden of Harvard University from seeds 

 collected by Dr C. C. Parry, in 1862, on the outer ranges of the 

 Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Sargent speaks of the plants 

 raised from these Colorado seeds as having grown " rapidly and 

 vigorously " in the neighbourhood of Boston, and of their giving 

 promise of " surpassing all other exotic conifers in permanent 

 beauty and usefulness." There is nothing in Sargent's statement 

 to indicate that the rate of growth of these trees is slow ; in fact, 

 it seems to point in the opposite direction. But the plants grown 

 in British nurseries as the Colorado variety are of extremely 

 slow growth, in some cases so slow as to render it difficult to 

 reconcile their identity with that of the Colorado plants referred 

 to by Sargent as growing at Boston. And this question of identity 

 has become still further complicated by a statement made by Pro- 

 fessor Schwappach in his report on the result of experiments with 

 exotic trees conducted in Prussia, expressing the opinion that the 

 distinctive characters of the plants grown by English nursery- 

 men (who, he says, define Douglas firs as of the green and blue 

 or glaucous varieties) agree with those of the ordinary green type 

 of the Douglas fir and Pseudotsuga macrocarpa respectively. 

 Whether Professor Schwappach is right in his conjecture remains 

 to be seen, but Kent ^ states that it is the variety glauca which 

 " is known in many gardens as the Colorado variety in reference 



^ Veitch's Manual of the Coniferce (new ed.), p. 484. The opinion of Kent 

 that the Colorado plant is the variety glauca is concurred in by Mayr and 

 other authorities. 



