CEDRUS ATLANTICA. 40 



and western forms whilst the Deodar ascends to 12,000 feet on the 



Hindu Koosh. 



The Cedars are of geological antiquity and it is interesting to find that 

 remote ancestors of the present race formerly inhabited Great Britain, 

 fossil evidences of them having been met with in the lower Greensand 

 of Maidstone, Shanklin and Folkestone.* 



Cedrus from ice'fyoj,-, but more often applied by the Greeks to the 

 pungent-leaved species of Juniper common throughout the Mediterranean 

 region, as Juniperus Oxycedrus, than to the noble Syrian tree, just as. 

 Cedar is often applied at the present time to trees included in the 

 CupressinesB, as the Red Cedar, Juniperus mryiniana ; White Cedar, 

 Cupressus fhyoides and Thuia occidentalis ; Canoe Cedar, T. yigantea, 

 and others. 



Cedrus atlantica. 



A stately tree attaining a height of 80 100 feet with a trunk 5 feet 

 in diameter at the base. Trunk tapering, rarely forked or divided as in 

 Cedrus Libani. Branches horizontal and much ramified, scarcely so 

 formally tabuliform as in the Lebanon type. Branchlets distichous, 

 opposite, but oftener alternate and of unequal lengths, the -terminal 

 growths usually rigid and horizontal like the older parts. Buds globose- 

 conic, about 0*25 inch long, with numerous small imbricated perulae. 

 Leaves persistent four five or more years, four-angled, mucronate, about 

 0*5 inch long, dark green and more or less glaucous; distant and 

 scattered on the terminal shoots ; in dense tufts of forty seventy, the 

 number varying with the age of the arrested branchlet or " spurs " on 

 which they are produced. Staminate flowers and cones identical in 

 structure with those of C. Libani, the latter being almost invariably 

 smaller. 



Cedrus atlantica, Manetti, Cat. Hort. Madoet. Suppl. 9 (1844). Carriere, Traite 

 Conif. ed. II. 374. Gordon, Pinet. ed. II. 60. Lawson, Pinet. Brit. III. 217, 

 t. 38, and tigs. Willkomm, Forstl. Fl. ed. II. 160. Beissner, Nadelholzk. 302, 

 with fig. Masters in Gard. Chron. X. -ser. 3 (1891), p. 423, with tig. ; and Journ. 

 R. Hort. Soc. XIV. 200. 



C. Libani var. atlantica, Hooker til in Nat. Hist. Rev. 1862. 



C. africana, Gordon and Hort. 



Pinus atlantica, Endlicher, Synops. Conif. 137. 



P. Cedrus var. atlantica, Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 408. 



vars. argentea and aurea. 



In the first named the foliage is highly glaucescent, sometimes of a 

 silvery whiteness, the glaucescence frequently becoming heightened with 

 the age of the tree. In the last named the young foliage is of rich 

 golden which changes to the normal green of the species in the second year. 



C. atlantica argentea, Hort. C. atlantica aurea, Hort. 



The botanical history of the Mount Atlas Cedar dates from an 

 epoch within the memory of many botanists and horticulturists still 

 living, the first published mention of it being made by the Italian 

 botanist Manetti, in a Catalogue of Plants cultivated in the Imperial 

 Garden at Modicea or Monza, near Milan, and issued in 1844. 



* J. Starkie Gardner, British Eocene Flora, p, 11. 



