26 EUCALYPTUS. 



ornamental. E. cordata is a dwarf Tasmanian species, 

 that maintains through life this opposite, oval and sessile 

 foliage. When a blue gum is pollarded, or cut back, the 

 new sprouts always have at first the seedling or yearling 

 foliage in a dense mass of oval leaves, blue as a gendarme 

 blue can be. 



In very dry places, or after continued cool weather, the 

 young blue gum foliage may be seen to vary in an extra- 

 ordinary way. At times the whole tree will have a pink 

 sheen in its blue foliage, again the under veining of the 

 leaves will be bright crimson, and sometimes the square 

 stems will change from their peculiarly assertive blue to 

 the crimson of the leaf veins. A few leaves, too, will turn 

 red, as red as any eastern Autumn leaf. Yet the general 

 blue aspect will not be lost. In the older trees the young 

 stems of the ultimate sickle-shaped leaves are usually a 

 lemon yellow, but sometimes are a dull red. The branch- 

 lets are more often red, in fact, generally these are red and 

 only the youngest shoots are yellow. 



I have spoken of Eucalyptus globulus seedling foli- 

 age as gendarme blue. This, however, is not exact. The 

 color is a sort of silvery grey done in blue. It is bluer 

 than the leaf of a century plant, but of that type of color. 

 The foliage of the old trees, it must be remembered, is of 

 an entirely different color. While the blue gum is not 

 a desert plant, it has been most planted in countries that 

 have a natural tendency in that direction, and is well fitted 

 at least for the outskirts of the arid districts. Its first 

 color suggests the frequency of blue shades, in the foliage 

 of plants subjected to such conditions. In the dry portions 

 of California we have many blue foliaged plants, cactus, 

 yucca, many of the artemesia, manzanita, and in trees, 



