460 



Garden and Forest 



[Number 509. 



and even in southern Arkansas, where this tree grows to its 

 greatest perfection, it would be difficult to find many indi- 

 viduals to equal them. The owner of the trees having 

 declared his intention of cutting them down this winter, 

 the attempt will be made to buy the land on which the 

 trees stand or the right for them to grow indefinitely. It 

 would be more than a local and state misfortune if this 

 movement failed of success or if these trees, which are 

 probably several hundred years old and are still in perfect 

 health, should not be allowed to live to show the size and 

 beauty our Sassafras, the only species in all the world, can 

 attain under favorable conditions. 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — VIII. 



IN Pinus the world finds some of its most valuable timber- 

 trees and a few park and garden trees of great beauty 

 and interest. The genus is well distinguished by its clus- 

 tered secondary leaves which are enclosed in the bud by 

 numerous scales which lengthen with the growing leaves 

 and surround their base with a thin, more or less persist- 

 ent, sheath. Pinus is further distinguished by its involu- 

 crate, fascicled, staminate flowers and by its woody cones, 

 which mature at the end of their second, or rarely at the 

 end of their third season. Pinus is widely spread over the 

 northern hemisphere, forming on maritime plains, moun- 

 tain slopes and dry interior plateaus vast continuous forests, 

 or is scattered singly and in groups through deciduous- 

 leaved trees. About seventy species are now recognized 

 by botanists who still have much to learn of the Pine-trees 

 of Mexico, Central America and the interior of China. In 

 the United States thirty-four species, or about half of those 

 now known to science, find their homes ; the genus is 

 largely represented in Mexico, northern India, and in all 

 the region bordering on the Mediterranean, which in num- 

 ber of species is the stronghold of the genus in the Old 

 World. Various methods for grouping the species in sec- 

 tions have been proposed. That based on the number of 

 leaves in each cluster, which, less scientific than the one 

 now generally in use, is perhaps the most satisfactory for 

 cultivators who often have to deal with plants which are 

 not large enough to produce flowers or cones. Adopting 

 this method of arrangement the species of Pinus fall, with 

 some exceptions, into three sections — the first with five 

 leaves in a cluster, the second with three leaves in a clus- 

 ter, and the third with two leaves in a cluster. On the 

 trees of the first section the leaves are usually long, slender 

 and blue-green with deciduous sheaths ; the cone-scales 

 are usually thin and mostly unarmed, and the wood is soft, 

 light-colored and homogeneous ; on those of the other sec- 

 tions the leaves are, as a rule, much stouter and usually 

 dark yellow-green ; their leaf sheaths are mostly persistent 

 during one or many seasons, their cone-scales are thick- 

 ened and generally furnished with spines, hooks or prickles, 

 and their wood is hard, heavy and marked with broad 

 bands of resinous cells. 



For our region the most valuable ornamental trees are 

 found in the first section. These are all inhabitants of 

 northern or of elevated countries and most of them flourish 

 in the north-eastern states. The type of this section, Pinus 

 Strobus, our native White Pine, is the most valuable tree of 

 the whole genus for the parks and gardens of the wide 

 region which it inhabits naturally. Wherever a collection 

 of trees was planted in the north-eastern states more than 

 fifty years ago the White Pine is found to surpass all other 

 conifers, when any others have survived, in height, thick- 

 ness of trunk and health. Impervious to the cold of the 

 Canadian winter and the burning suns and dry winds of 

 the prairies of Kansas, the White Pine flourishes also as no 

 other exotic conifer flourishes in central Europe ; and in the 

 gardens of northern Italy it is as vigorous and beautiful as 

 it is in the forests of Michigan and Minnesota. The brit- 

 tleness of the branches of this tree, which frequently break 

 under a load of snow or frozen sleet, is the one drawback 

 to the White Pine as an ornamental tree, the symmetry of 



isolated specimens being frequently ruined from this cause. 

 The White Pine grows well on dry sandy drift gravels, but 

 only attains its noblest dimensions on well-drained rich 

 soils, when its roots can reach abundant and constant 

 moisture. In cultivation here at the north it will usually 

 outgrow from the start almost every other conifer, but 

 newly planted seedlings do best when they are protected 

 from wind and sun, for the White Pine is a shade-enduring 

 species, and in the forest the seeds germinate most freely 

 and the seedlings grow for many years most vigorously 

 under the shade of other plants. No other tree breaks up 

 so well the flatness of the forest roof, and no other tree that 

 can be used here is so valuable to enliven the monotony of 

 a sky-line with its dark green wide-spreading crowns raised 

 high on stately stems. Only a few abnormal forms of the 

 White Pine are cultivated. Pinus Strobus nivea, which is 

 probably of nursery origin, is distinguished from the ordi- 

 nary form by its rather lighter-colored bark, shorter paler 

 leaves and denser foliage. More distinct than this is Pinus 

 Strobus nana, a low compact, round-topped bush, seldom 

 growing more than five or six feet tall, with abbreviated 

 crowded branches and short leaves ; this is, perhaps, one 

 of the most distinct and beautiful of all the dwarf conifers 

 in cultivation. A dwarf form with pendulous, nearly pros- 

 trate, branches is grown in the Arnold Arboretum, where 

 Mr. Dawson has also propagated plants from a remarkable 

 tree growing in the town of Dracut, Massachusetts, with 

 short, slender, nearly erect branches usually in whorls of 

 three, forming a dense low round-topped head. 



In the section Strobus, to which our White Pine belongs, 

 are two west American Pines, Pinus Lambertiana and Pinus 

 monticola. The former, the Sugar Pine of California, is the 

 largest of all Pine-trees, individuals over 200 feet in height 

 with trunks ten feet in diameter being not uncommon. 

 Although this tree was introduced into English gardens as 

 long ago as 1831 by its discoverer, David Douglas, it has 

 never proved very successful as a cultivated tree. Removed 

 from its native forests, where its growth is rapid and vig- 

 orous, it increases slowly both in Europe and the eastern 

 United States, where it is perfectly hardy as far north, at 

 least, as Massachusetts. Differing from Pinus Strobus 

 while young only in its stouter and darker leaves, it has in 

 our climate no advantage as an ornamental tree over our 

 own White Pine, which grows much more rapidly, and the 

 Sugar Pine will probably never be much cultivated here 

 except as a curiosity. 



The second western American Pine of this section, 

 Pinus monticola, is also a great tree, only surpassed in 

 magnitude by the Sugar Pine. This is a widely-scattered 

 species, being distributed from the western slopes of the 

 northern Rocky Mountains, over a large part of the elevated 

 regions of the west, growing from the level of the sea on 

 the shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to about 10,000 feet 

 on the California Sierras, where trees with enormous stems 

 and short contorted branches withstand for centuries 

 the fiercest mountain gales. Pinus monticola has proved 

 perfectly hardy in the neighborhood of Boston, where it 

 has already produced cones. The cultivated trees can be 

 distinguished from Pinus Strobus by their narrow pyra- 

 midal habit, short remote branches and rather thin foliage, 

 and in beauty do not compare with the native species. 

 Like the Sugar Pine, Pinus monticola will probably never 

 be largely used by eastern planters. 



In Asia the section Strobus has a representative in Pinus 

 Nepalensis (the more usually accepted name of this tree, 

 Pinus excelsa, is unavailable, as it has been used before for 

 another species), an inhabitant of Himalayan forests, where 

 it is scattered from Afghanistan to Bootan between eleva- 

 tions of 5,000 and 12,000 feet above the sea-level. This is 

 a beautiful tree with long, slender, tufted, drooping foliage, 

 attaining sometimes in its native forests a height of 150 

 feet. For many years this Himalayan Pine has been used 

 in temperate Europe and in the eastern United States for 

 the adornment of parks and gardens. Growing while 

 young with great rapidity in cultivation, it often suffers in 



