1 8 1 6 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



and none appears to have arisen in England, except possibly P. Lloydii, one of the 

 parents of which is the English or pubescent form of the black poplar. 



P. serotina was first accurately and completely described by Hartig; and this 

 name is preferable to P. nigra helvetica or P. helvetica. It has always been 

 known in England as the black Italian poplar, and appears to have been im- 

 ported from France, sometime before 1787, when Messrs. Dickson of Hassen- 

 deanburn, Scotland, sold some stock to Pontey. 1 Mr. A. Dickson, much later, in 

 1 81 3, informed Pontey 1 that this poplar was obtained by his firm from a gentleman 

 in Scotland, who received it from his son in America ; but this account is unreliable, 

 as there is no evidence that this poplar originated in America, and it fails to explain 

 the name "black Italian poplar," by which it was always sold. As P. serotina and 

 the Lombardy poplar came into England about the same period, both poplars, 

 arriving from the Continent, were supposed to be from Italy, and hence the name. 



(A. H.) 



POPULUS SEROTINA, Black Italian Poplar 



Populus serotina, Hartig, Naturges. Forst. Culturpfl. Deutschl. 437 (1 851); Schneider, Laubholzkunde, 

 i. 11 (1904); Dode, in Mini Soc. Hist. Nat. Autun, xviii. 44 (1905); Ascherson and 

 Graebner, Syn. Mitteleurop. Fl. iv. 44 (1908). 



Populus helvetica, Poederl, Man. de I 'Arbor, ii. 148 (1792). 



Populus monilifera, Michaux f., Hist. Arb. Amer. Sept. iii. 295, pi. 10, fig. 2 (1813) (not Aiton, 

 Hort. Kew.); Loudon, 2 Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1657 (1838) (excluding the pistillate tree). 



Populus nigra helvetica, Poiret, in Lamarck, Encycl. Mith. v. 234 (1804). 



Populus virginiana, Mirbel, in Nouveau Duhamel, ii. 186 (1804) (not Fougeroux). 



Populus canadensis, Mathieu, Flore Forestiire, 495 (excluding the pistillate tree) (1897) (not Michaux). 



A large tree of hybrid origin (cf. p. 18 14), attaining 130 ft. or more in height 

 and 18 to 20 ft. in girth, with a single undivided straight stem, free from burrs, 

 and slender wide-spreading ascending branches ; bark regularly furrowed. Young 

 branchlets at first green, turning brownish yellow in summer, glabrous, with white 

 lenticels, slightly angled, becoming greyish and terete in the second year. Buds 

 brownish, viscid. Leaves (Plate 409, Fig. 16), opening latest of all the poplars, 

 with a reddish bronze tinge, glabrous, averaging on adult trees 3 in. in breadth and 

 length, ovate-deltoid, with a broad truncate base and a short cuspidate or acuminate 

 apex ; margin crenate-serrate, with the serrations few and wide apart at the base of 

 the blade ; cilia short, at first continuous on the two sides of the blade and sparse 

 on the base, deciduous in summer ; glands near the insertion of the petiole, variable, 

 one, two, or none being present ; petiole reddish. On young plants and vigorous 

 shoots, the branchlets have projecting ribs like those of P. angulata, and the leaves 

 are much larger, up to 5 or 6 in. in length or more. 



Staminate catkins about 3 in. long ; axis glabrous ; flowers on very short 

 glabrous pedicels ; scales early deciduous, obovate, with short irregular lobes 



1 Profitable Planting, 218 (1814). 



8 Loudon, in Gard. Mag. xiii. 536 (1837), says that this "is a very doubtful native of America, and much more likely, 

 in our opinion, to be an improved European tree." 



