THE BLACK POPLARS. 1 7 



Bury St Edmunds which was pollinated by adjacent staminate 

 trees, had attained 5 to 7 feet in height in October 191 1. Theie 

 are three English black poplars of great size in Green Park, 

 about 100 yards from Piccadilly, opposite Down Street, London. 

 This tree is eclipsed in rate of growth by the hybrids, and is of 

 little value for commercial planting. 



The Lombardy poplar {Popuh/s nigra var. italica) is a sport, 

 being the fastigiate form of the glabrous European black poplar, 

 from which it differs only in the peculiar habit, all the branches 

 being directed vertically upwards. Much erroneous matter has 

 been written about the origin of this tree, some old writers 

 considering it to be a distinct species, native of Asia Minor or 

 Persia. I have given elsewhere 1 historical evidence proving 

 that it originated, probably as a single tree, between 1700 and 

 1720 in the plains of Lombardy. From here it spread rapidly 

 by cuttings over the whole world, reaching France in 1749, 

 England in 1758, and the United States in 1784, while it was 

 carried to the Levant about 1750 by the Genoese. It is 

 unknown except as a planted tree in Asia Minor, Afghanistan, 

 and India. 



The original Lombardy poplar was a staminate tree, and all 

 trees propagated from this are consequently of the male sex. 

 The rare female Lombardy poplars, which have been reported 

 to occur in Germany from time to time, have not strictly vertical 

 branches, and appear to be seedlings from poplars of the 

 ordinary spreading form, which were pollinated by the pollen 

 of the Lombardy poplar. The only female Lombardy poplar 

 with a truly fastigiate habit which I have seen is a tree (Fig. 2) 

 in Kew Gardens, about 50 feet high, which produced pistillate 

 catkins in 1908, 19 10 and 1914. The origin of this is quite 

 unknown. 



Populus plantierensis' is the fastigiate form of the pubescent 

 (or English) black poplar, and derives its name from the nursery 

 of Simon-Louis at Plantieres, near Metz, where it originated. 

 M. Jouin, the present proprietor of this famous nursery, where 



' Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, vii., 1798 (1913). Seguier, in 

 Plantic Veronenses, ii. , 267, published in 1745, states that the fastigiate and 

 ordinary black poplars differ only in habit, and in the first being a planted, 

 the latter a wild tree. 



- So named by Dode (1905). This name is convenient, but it is more 

 properly called Populus nigra var. plantierensis, Schneider (1906). 



VOL. XXX. PART I. B 



