November to, 1S97.] 



Garden and Forest. 



441 



Belon in 1558, in the first book devoted to conifers, pub- 

 lished the earliest description of it. 



Too stiff and formal, perhaps, in outline, when it is 

 planted as an isolated specimen on high ground, where it 

 usually appears out of place and out of harmony with its 

 associates, the Arbor-vita- is admirably suited for massing 

 on the borders of streams and lakes, where it properly be- 

 longs and where it harmonizes with its surroundings. It 

 bears clipping well, and its value as a hedge-plant was 

 shown many years ago by Mr. A. J. Downing, who made 

 it popular in American gardens for this purpose. Few 

 trees show a greater tendency to seminal variation, and 

 many forms have been raised and propagated by nursery- 

 men, no less than forty being described in a recent European 

 work on conifers, while there are several others known 

 only in American gardens. Many of these forms show 

 their distinctive characteristics only while young, and soon 

 grow into the normal form, and in some cases several 

 names have been given to the same plant originating inde- 

 pendently in different nurseries. It would not be profitable 

 to describe even a few of the most distinct of these plants, 

 for any one who will sow a quantity of Arbor-vita? seeds 

 will be sure to find among the seedlings a number of forms 

 as novel and interesting as any now in cultivation. It is, 

 however, worth stating again, perhaps, that a plant com- 

 monly known in this country as the Siberian Arbor-vita? is 

 a form of Thuya occidentalis which originated several years 

 ago in Ware's nursery, in England, and that it is correctly 

 called Thuya occidentalis Wareana. All the abnormal 

 forms of Thuya occidentalis can be propagated by cut- 

 tings, which strike readily, and among them are some 

 exceedingly dwarf compact plants which are sometimes 

 useful in small gardens and on the margins of beds of 

 larger conifers. 



The plants commonly cultivated under the name of 

 Thuya plicata are garden forms of our eastern Arbor-vita?, 

 and must not be confounded with the Thuya plicata of 

 Don, which is more frequently known as Thuya gigantea, 

 although Dr. Masters has recently clearly shown that 

 Thuya plicata is the older name. This is the Arbor-vita? of 

 north-western America, the Red Cedar of Oregon and 

 Washington, the greatest of all the Thuyas, and a veritable 

 giant among conifers. Near the shores of Puget Sound it 

 is a common occurrence to see this tree 200 feet high with 

 a massive trunk gradually tapering from a base fifteen or 

 sixteen feet in diameter. As it grows in its native forests it 

 is one of the most beautiful and graceful of the American 

 conifers, with bright cinnamon-red bark and a narrow spire 

 of branches, which sweep out gracefully from the stem, and 

 are clothed with great Fern-like, pendulous, yellow-green 

 branchlets. Nowhere forming pure forests, the western 

 Arbor-vita? grows singly or in small groves generally on 

 low, moist bottom-lands or near the banks of streams, and 

 less commonly on dry ridges and mountain slopes, which 

 it sometimes ascends in the interior to considerable eleva- 

 tions, although it is only at the sea-level and under the 

 immediate influence of the ocean that it grows to its 

 greatest perfection. Ranging along the coast from southern 

 Alaska to northern California, it penetrates also eastward 

 along the banks of mountain streams through southern 

 British Columbia and Washington to the western slopes of 

 the northern Rocky Mountains, and is abundant on the 

 Bitter Root and Cceur dAlene ranges and in the territory 

 north of Flat Head Lake. Plants obtained several years 

 ago from this interior and comparatively dry region have 

 proved hardy in the Arnold Arboretum, and in Mr. Hunne- 

 well's Pmetum, where they are now growing rapidly, and 

 promise to become large and handsome trees. In western 

 Europe Thuya plicata flourishes, and large specimens are 

 now common in European collections, in which a few 

 seminal varieties with abnormally-colored foliage arc- 

 preserved. 



The Japanese Arbor-vita?, Thuya Standishii, is a rare inhab- 

 itant of the mountain forests of the main island, and occurs 

 only on the borders of streams and lakes usually at elevations 



of 4,000 or 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. It is a small 

 pyramidal tree occasionally thirty feet high, and very like 

 our eastern Arbor-vita? in coloring, but of more open and 

 graceful habit. For thirty years it has been an inhabitant 

 of American and European gardens, where it is much more 

 generally known as Thuyopsis Standishii than by its true 

 name. There is a well-formed and perfectly healthy speci- 

 men of this tree about eighteen feet high in Mr. Hunnewell's 

 Pinetum. 



The Chinese Arbor-vita?, Thuya orientalis, the type and 

 only member of the section Biota, is a small bushy tree 

 with bright green foliage, and an inhabitant of the moun- 

 tain districts of central and northern China. Long sup- 

 posed to be a native of Japan, where for centuries it has 

 been a favorite garden plant and where a number of abnor- 

 mal forms have been perpetuated, it was probably one of 

 the numerous plants carried by Buddhist priests from 

 China to that empire, whence it found its way to Europe a 

 hundred and fifty years ago, and now in all temperate 

 countries it is one of the most commonly cultivated coni- 

 fers. Hardy in sheltered positions as far north at least as 

 eastern Massachusetts, the Chinese Arbor-vita? is more 

 common and far more vigorous and beautiful in southern 

 than in northern gardens. Many varieties of this plant are 

 propagated in European nurseries, but none of them is 

 as hardy here as the typical form. The most remarkable 

 of these varieties, perhaps, is the plant with long slender, 

 flexible pendant branches (var. pendula) found by Thun- 

 berg in Japanese gardens and once believed to be a dis- 

 tinct species. In English and French gardens a dwarf 

 globose and compact form (var. aurea) raised many years 

 ago in the Knapp Hill Nursery, at Woking, is a favorite orna- 

 ment. This plant has not proved hardy at the north, 

 although south of New York it can be successfully culti- 

 vated. On this form the early spring growth is rich golden 

 yellow, changing late in the season to the normal light 

 green of the species. Thuya orientalis, Meldensis, which 

 originated at Meaux, in France, in 1853, and was for- 

 merly considered a hybrid between Thuya orientalis 

 and Juniperus Virginiana, is a juvenile state of the 

 Chinese Arbor-vita?, with acicular spreading leaves. All 

 these plants, like all other Cupressinea?, can be propagated 

 by cuttings which usually root rapidly. 



Thuiopsis chiefly differs from Thuya, to which some 

 authors unite it, while others consider it a Cupressus, in its 

 ligneous cone-scales, much thickened and dilated at the 

 apex, each bearing five seeds. The only species, Thuiop- 

 sis dolabrata, which is one of the most beautiful conifers of 

 Japan, is easily recognized by its broad coriaceous leaves, 

 which are convex and bright green above and concave 

 and silvery white below, and are arranged in four ranks in 

 opposite pairs, those on the upper and under side of the 

 branchlets being closely appressed against the stem, while 

 the lateral leaves are more or less spreading. In cen- 

 tral Hondo this tree is common between five and six 

 thousand feet above the sea-level, growing as an under- 

 shrub in the dense shade of Hemlock forests, and every 

 year buried in snow during four or five months. Sometimes 

 it rises, however, when its crown reaches the light, to the 

 height of forty or fifty feet, with a slender trunk covered 

 with bright red bark, long, graceful drooping branches and 

 a narrow pyramidal top. It is a tree which evidently 

 requires shade and protection, at least while young, and in 

 its native forests even the largest plants are surrounded 

 and overtopped by taller trees. 



In western Europe Thuiopsis dolabrata grows admirably, 

 and there are already handsome, well-formed specimens in 

 many of the gardens of southern England and Ireland and 

 western France, but in this country it suffers from summer 

 drought, and unless it is protected from the winter sun it 

 soon perishes or becomes shabby ami unsightly, although 

 in sheltered positions it is hardy enough in eastern Massa- 

 chusetts, and if winter conditions similar to those it enjoys 

 in Japan and sufficient summer moisture could be given to it 

 here, it might be expected to succeed. A form in which the 



