454 ^^^ Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Supposed hybrids between the Lebanon and Atlantic cedars have been 

 recorded,' but on insufficient evidence. (A. H.) 



Distribution 



The best account of the Cedar of Lebanon known to me is the classical paper 

 by Sir Joseph Hooker published in the Natural History Review, vol. ii. p. 1 1 

 (1862), and as this gives a careful summary of the facts bearing on the specific 

 identity of the forms of cedar, I summarise it as follows : In the autumn of 

 i860 Sir J. Hooker went to Syria in company with Captain Washington, 

 Hydrographer of the Navy, and Captain Mansell, R.N., and arrived at Beyrout 

 on 25th September. The party proceeded to the Lebanon, where Captain Mansell 

 made a detailed survey of the basin where the cedars grow, at the head of the 

 Kedisha valley, 15 miles from the sea in a straight line. At that time the other 

 groves were apparently unknown, though Professor Ehrenberg informed Sir Joseph 

 Hooker that he found many trees in forests of oak on the road from Bsharri to 

 Bshinnate. The Kedisha valley at 6000 feet elevation terminates in broad, flat, 

 shallow basins, and is two or three miles across and as much long. It is three or four 

 miles south of the summit of Lebanon, which is about 10,200 feet in height, the chapel 

 in the cedar grove being about 6200 feet. The cedars grow on a portion of the 

 moraine which borders a stream, and nowhere else ; they form one grove about 400 

 yards in diameter, and appear as a black speck in the great area of the corrie and its 

 moraines, which contain no other arboreous vegetation, nor any shrubs but a few 

 small barberry and rose bushes. The number of the trees is about 400, and they 

 are disposed in nine groups, corresponding with as many hummocks of the range 

 of moraines; they are of various dimensions, from 18 inches to upwards of 40 feet 

 in girth ; but the most remarkable and significant fact connected with their size, 

 and consequently with the age of the grove, is that there is no tree of less than 

 18 inches girth, and that no young trees, seedlings, nor even bushes of a second 

 year's growth were found. Calculating from the rings in a branch of one of the 

 older trees, now in the Kew Museum, the younger trees would average 100 years 

 old, the oldest 2500, both estimates no doubt being widely far from the mark. Sir 

 Joseph goes on to say, that the word cedar as used in the Bible applies to other 

 trees, and he doubts whether the cedar of Lebanon is the one which supplied the 

 timber used in building Solomon's temple. He thinks that the cypress or the tall 

 fragrant juniper of the Lebanon [Juniperus excelsa) would have been not only 

 much easier to procure, but far more prized on every account.^ Between individuals 

 from the Lebanon and the common Asia Minor form there is said to be no 

 appreciable difference by those who have examined both, but there are two distinct 

 forms or varieties in Asia Minor, one having shorter, stiffer, and more silvery foliage 

 than the other ; this is the silver cedar, C. argentea, of our gardens. Northern 

 Syria and Asia Minor form one botanical province, so that the Lebanon groves, 



' Beissner, Nadelholzkunde, 301, 302 (1 89 1). 



But at a later period Sir J. Hooker changed his opinion on this subject, and believed that the wood used by Solomon 

 and by Nebuchadnezzar in buildings was the Lebanon cedar. 



