148 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 27, 1889. 



Cedars. The following day the Patriarch celebrated high mass 

 upon an altar erected under one of the largest of the trees, 

 which, we are told, were planted by the hand of King Solomon 

 himself, at least this is the story related to the faithful ; and " that 

 the Patriarch otficiated pontiiucally on this solemn occasion ; 

 that his followers were particularly mindful of the Blessed 

 Virgin on this day, because the Scriptures compare her to the 

 Cedars of Lebanon ; and that the same Holy Father threatens 

 with ecclesiastical censure those who presume to hurt or 

 diminish the Cedars now remaining," — an injunction which 

 does not seem to have been very strictly obeyed, for the num- 

 ber of very old trees in this famous grove has been steadily 

 diminishing ever since. Belon found twenty-eight of them 

 standing at the time of his visit. Th^venat a century later 

 found twenty-three. Only sixteen large trees were seen by 

 Maundrell in his journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, made 

 in 1696, although he found many small trees growing near 

 them. The number of the large trees continued to gradually 

 diminish, if the reports of travelers are to be believed, from 

 this time, although the grove being protected more or less 

 successfully from tire and from sheep and goats, the young 

 trees increased. In the middle of the last century there were 

 twelve of the old trees remaining, and between four and five 

 hundred smaller ones of all sizes. Dr. Pariset, who visited 

 Mount Lebanon in 1829, found the grove in substantially the 

 same condition as when Dr. Pococke had seen it eighty 

 years earlier. 



But the most experienced observer wlio has ever seen 

 the Cedars on Mount Lebanon is Sir Joseph Hooker, who 

 visited Syi"ia in the autumn of i860, for the purpose of examin- 

 ing the grove, in regard to which little was known scientifi- 

 cally up to that time. A very interesting account of this visit 

 was published in the Natural History Review in January, 1862, 

 with the author's views upon the specific rank and the origin 

 of the different species or forms of the genus. The elevation 

 of Mount Lebanon was found to be 10,200 feet, and that of the 

 valley, where the trees are growing, 6,200 feet. " The number 

 of trees," to quote from this article, " is about 400, and they 

 are disposed in nine groups, corresponding with as many 

 hummocks of the range of moraines ; they are of various 

 sizes, from about eighteen inches to upwards of forty 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 eighteen inches girth, and 

 that we found no young trees, bushes or even seedlings, of 



a second year's growth The position of the oldest 



trees (of the 400) afforded some interesting data, relative to 

 the ages of the different parts of the grove, and the direction 

 in which it had lately spread. There were only fifteen trees 

 above fifteen feet in girth, and these all occurred in two of the 

 nine clumps, which contained 180 trees. Only ten others ex- 

 ceeded twelve feet in girth, and these were found in immedi- 

 ately adjoining clumps, one on one side and one on the other 

 of the above mentioned. There were ffve clumps containing 

 156 trees, none of which was above twelve feet in girth, and 

 these were all to the westward (or down-valley) side of the 

 others. On this side, therefore, the latest addition to the grove 

 has taken place." 



One of the old Cedars of Mount Lebanon appears upon 

 page 149. The illustration is made from a photograph taken 

 upon the spot and communicated to us by Mr. Francis 

 Skinner, of Boston. It was supposed, until comparatively 

 recent times, that all the Cedars left upon the earth were in this 

 famous grove, but now they are known to occur upon differ- 

 ent chains of the Taurus, where, with Abies Cilicica and Juni- 

 perus fcetidissima, they form extensive forests ; while as late 

 as 1865 Mr. Jesup, an American missionary, discovered five 

 large groves in the Lebanon itself, three east of 'Ain Zahalteh, 

 in the southern Lebanon, one of which was said to contain 

 10,000 trees. Other groves were also discovered at this time, 

 so that upon the Lebanon alone the Cedar is known in ten dis- 

 tinct localities. The same tree, or one hardly to be distin- 

 guished from it by any of the characters which botanists con- 

 sider valuable, Cedrics Atlantica occupies the mountain ranges 

 of Constantine, the western province of Algeria, bordering 

 upon Tunis, and abounds on the eastern Atlas ranges. They 

 characterize the upper mountain zone between 5,200 and 7,200 

 feet, and approach to within twenty miles of the sea. Cedars, 

 too, were found upon the mountains of Cyprus after the recent 

 English occupation of the island, which only dilfer from those 

 of the Lebanon in the shortness of their leaves, and which serve 

 to form an important link between those of Asia Minor and of 

 the Atlas. West of the Lebanon, at a distance of 1,400 miles, 

 or nearly the same distance as that which separates the Atlas 

 from the Lebanon, occur the great Afghanistan forests of 



Cedriis Deodara, which extend eastward along the Himalaya 

 almost continuously to Nepal, occupying various elevations 

 between 4,000 and 12,000 feet, and in Afghanistan outnumber- 

 ing all other Conifers in the number of individuals. The 

 Deodar, or " Tree of God" of the Hindoos, is one of the most 

 valuable timber-trees of the Himalaya. 



Sir Joseph Hooker states in the paper from which we have 

 ali-eady quoted that " the African Cedar differs from that of 

 Lebanon in having a perfectly erect, rigid leader, and straight, 

 stiff ends to the branches, all of which in the Lebanon plant 

 droop more or less. In the African the cone is generally 

 smaller, the leaves shorter and more glaucous, and tlae scales 

 and seeds triangular in form (instead of quadrangular). There 

 are two forms of Cedar in Algeria as in Taurus, and character- 

 ized by the same differences in each country — viz., a greener 

 long-leaved, and a more silvery short-leaved vai'iety. The C. 

 Deodara has a much more pendulous leader and ends to its 

 branches, and longer leaves of a more glaucous hue than C. 

 Libani, though not such silvery leaves as the C. Atlantica. 

 The cones are as large as those of C. Libani, but the scales 

 and seeds are the same form as those of C Atlantica, and 

 hence markedly different from those of C. Libani. ... It 

 should be added that there are no other distinctions whatever 

 between them — of bark, wood, leaves, male-cones, anthers or 

 the structiu'e of them — nor in their mode of germination or 

 duration, the girth they attain, or their hardiness." 



The conclusion reached by Sir Joseph is that the three Ce- 

 dars are well marked forms, generally distinct, but occasion- 

 ally approaching or passing into one another, and all derived 

 from one common parent. 



The Cedars are related botanically to the Larches and to the 

 Firs. Their stiff, awl-shaped leaves are produced like those of 

 the Larch, from very short lateral branches, but unlike those 

 of the Larch, they are persistent. The cones are upright, 

 with deciduous scales like those of the Firs, but they are much 

 larger, and are composed of broad and rounded, closely im- 

 bricated scales, and do not mature until the end of the sec- 

 ond or sometimes the third season. 



The Cedar of Lebanon was planted early in British gardens. 

 The exact date of its introduction seems uncertain, although it 

 is probable that it was about 1680, and that the famous trees of 

 the Chelsea Botanic Garden were really the first. A good 

 deal of conflicting testimony, however, has been produced at 

 different times upon this subject. 



Bernard de Jussieu carried from London in 1734 the first spec- 

 imen planted in France; unless, as has been suggested lately, 

 Belon really brought the Cedar to France from Syria at the 

 time of his visit in the middle of the sixteenth century. 

 Jassieu's tree is growing where he planted it in the Jardin des 

 Plantes, and is still healthy and vigorous. 



No foreign tree perhaps has ever been more generally 

 planted in England during the last two centuries, and thou- 

 sands of noble, wide-branching old specimens, scattered from 

 one end of the kingdom to the other, are among the most 

 impressive objects in many stately parks and pleasure grounds. 



Our illustration upon page 151 will serve to show the Cedar 

 of Lebanon as it appears in England. It is a view of one of 

 the most famous country places, Wilton House, near Salis- 

 bury, long the home of the Pembrokes, where lived the lady 

 whom all the world knows through old Ben Jonson's epitaph 

 as "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother." Here it was that 

 this lady's brother. Sir Philip Sidney, wrote the "Arcadia," and 

 although he died a century before the first Cedar was planted 

 in England, Wilton House in those days must have possessed 

 many of the features which has since made it famous. " The 

 shading woods, . . . the rocks, woods, hills, caves, dells, 

 meads and brooks " which answered the poet's sigh for fu's 

 absent " Stella." 



Here in the United States the Cedar of Lebanon is not often 

 seen. It is not hardy in New England, where, perhaps, more 

 attention has been paid to the cultivation of exotic trees than 

 in other parts of the country ; and although a few good speci- 

 mens may be seen in the neighborhood of this city and of 

 Philadelphia, where the tree seems to be hardy enough when 

 once established, the number is not large, and it does not seem 

 to have been a favorite with planters. It is not known who 

 first planted the Cedar in the United States. Mr. Downing, in 

 his " Landscape Gardening," published in 1849, speaks of a 

 specimen in the groimds of Mr. T. Ash, at Throggs Neck, in 

 Westchester County, in this State, as the finest in the Union, 

 being at that time fifty feet high. It would be interesting to 

 know if this plant still survives. The specimen planted at 

 Woodlawn, near Princeton, New Jersey, by the late Judge 

 Field in 1842, and now the property of Professor Marquand, 

 was thirty-six feet high in 1859, and is now fifty-four feet high, 



