CONIFERS. 



SILVA OF NORTE AMERICA. 



105 



foot weighing 28.50 pounds. Formerly occasionally manufactured into lumber, it is now only used as 

 fuel. 



Pinus radiata was introduced into English gardens in 1833 by David Douglas, who found it near 

 Monterey. 1 The light green of its dense foliage and its compact bushy habit while young at once 

 attracted the attention of planters; and one of the least beautiful of North American Pines as it 

 grows naturally, it has been extensively used for the decoration of parks in western and southern 

 Europe, where, although rather tender except in favorable positions, it has already attained a great size 

 and produced noble specimens, with wide-spreading lower branches, often resting on the ground, and 

 shorter and erect upper branches forming dense masses of bright green foliage. 2 Easily and cheaply 

 raised from seeds and growing with remarkable rapidity, 3 the Monterey Pine has been more generally 

 planted in the coast region of the Pacific states from Vancouver Island southward than any other 

 conifer with the exception of the Monterey Cypress, and it has been successfully introduced into the 

 southeastern states, Mexico, Australia, 4 New Zealand, and other regions with temperate climates. 



1 Colligon, a gardener who accompanied La Pe"rouse on his ill- 

 fated voyage of discovery, in 1787 sent to the Muse'um d'Histoire 

 Naturelle in Paris a Pine cone believed to have been gathered at 

 Monterey, and said to resemble that of the Maritime Pine of 

 Europe, but with the large seeds of Pinus Cembra. Twelve plants 

 were raised from these seeds, and were described about 1812 by 

 Loiseleur de Longchamps as Pinus Califomianu. Judging by the 

 locality where Colligon is supposed to have obtained his cone, it 

 might well belong to the Monterey Pine ; but the large seeds sug- 

 gest another species, while the description of the plants raised from 

 them might apply as well to several other trees as to this. It is 

 necessary, therefore, to pass over what is perhaps the earliest name 

 of this tree as well as the specific name, adunca, published in 1816, 

 and supposed to refer to the Cultivated plants raised from Colli- 

 gon's seeds. (See Nouveau Duhamel, v. 243. — Lemmon, Erythea, 

 i. 224.) 



Pinus Sinclairii (Hooker & Arnott, Bot. Voy. Beechey, 392, t. 

 93), published in 1840 or 1841, was founded on a cone of Pinus 

 Montezumce from Tepic in Mexico and on foliage of Pinus radiata, 

 while Pinus radiata of these authors is made up from the leaves of 

 the former species and the cone of the latter. (See Engelmann, 

 Brewer §• Watson Bot. Cal. ii. 128.) 



2 Fowler, Gard. Chron. 1872, 1070. — Gard. Chron. n. ser. ix. 

 108, f. 22, 23 ; xviii. 492, ser. 3, ix. 337, f. 77 ; xiv. 725, 757, 808 ; 

 xv. 21. — The Garden, xxxvi. 47, f . — J. G. Jack, Garden and For- 

 est, vi. 14. 



3 Pinus radiata grows with great rapidity even in the most ex- 

 posed positions and on apparently barren soil. The log specimen 

 in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, New York, is seventeen and three 

 quarters inches in diameter inside the bark, and twenty-eight years 

 old ; the sapwood of this specimen is six and one eighth inches 

 thick, with eighteen layers of annual growth. Many of the trees 

 covering that part of Point Pinos called Pacific Grove had trunk 

 diameters of two feet in 1888, when they were only from twenty to 

 thirty years old ; and the largest trees on this point, with trunks 

 from four to six feet in diameter, are not more than one hundred 

 years old, some of their layers of annual growth being an inch in 

 thickness. (See Lemmon, Rep. California State Board of Forestry, 

 ii. 114 [Pines of the Pacific Slope}.') 



4 F. Mueller, Select Plants Readily Eligible for Industrial Culture 

 or Naturalization in Victoria, 175. 



