1674- 



ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. 



PART III. 



1535 



slender twiggy branches, and leaves nearly lanceolate. There are 

 plants in Messrs. Loddiges's arboretum. 



P. b. 3 latifolia Hort. has the leaves rather broader than those of the 

 species. There is a tree of this kind, in the London Horticultural 

 Society's Garden, 12 ft. high. 



P. b. 4 intermedia Hort., Pall. Fl. Ross., t. 41. A, is a native of Dahuria, 

 with stout, short, thick branches, knotted with wrinkles ; and ovate, 

 long, and rather narrow leaves ; and generally attaining only the 

 height of a large shrub. There is a plant, in the London Horticul- 

 tural Society's Garden, 10 ft. high, by which it appears to be quite 

 distinct from P. b. viminalis. 



P. b. 5 suaveolens i P. suaveolens Fischer, and Lodd. Cat., ed. 1836. The 

 new sweet-scented poplar of the nurseries. The plant in Messrs. 

 Loddiges's collection is not 1 ft. high ; and we have not been able to 

 identify it in any other collections ; though it must have been plen- 

 tiful in 1834, since in the wholesale priced Catalogue of the Ken- 

 sington Nursery for that year the price of plants is stated to be 

 10s. per hundred. 



P. b. 6 foliis variegdtis Miller has varie- 

 gated leaves. There is a tree of this 

 kind in the London Horticultural So- 

 ciety's Garden. 



Description. The balsam poplar, in North 

 America, according to Michaux, attains the 

 height of 80 ft., with a trunk 3 ft. in diameter, 

 and roots spreading close under the surface, and 

 throwing up numerous suckers. In Siberia, ac- 

 cording to Pallas, it is only a middle-sized tree ; 

 and in Dahuria and Altai, a low tree, or large 

 shrub. According to Franklin, in the northern 

 parts of North America, the trunk of the balsam 

 poplar attains a greater circumference than that 

 of any other tree. The head of the tree, in 

 North America, is conical; but in Russia it is 

 roundish. The trunk is covered with an ash- 

 coloured bark ; and the wood, in Siberia, is said 

 to be reddish, being closer and a little harder 

 than that of other poplars. In the moist plains of Dahuria, the tree is 

 shrubby, because, according to Pallas, the grass is annually fired there ; and 

 the young shoots of all the trees being thus 

 injured, they are seldom found rising with a clear 

 stem. In the spring, the balsam poplar is known 

 from all other species by the fine tender yellow 

 of its leaves when they are first developed ; the 

 abundance of the yellow glutinous balsam with 

 which the buds are covered, the very strong 

 odour which this balsam diffuses throughout the 

 surrounding atmosphere, and the comparatively 

 rigid and fastigiate habit of growth of the tree, 

 which approaches, in the latter respect, nearer to 

 P. fastigiata than any other species. When 

 mature, the leaves become of a deep green colour 

 above, and of a rusty silvery white beneath. 

 This is one of the hardiest of poplars, though not 

 of rapid growth ; except the first three or four 

 years in the nursery. Bosc observes that bota- 

 nists often confound this species with P. can- 

 dicans ; but that cultivators never do so, from 

 the very different manner of its growth, and from 



