December 29, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



5il 



stems. This peculiarity is seen even in the young plants 

 in our gardens, on which the short lower branches are 

 usually soon shaded by those above them. The pale bark, 

 long crowded leaves, dark green on one surface and silvery 

 white on the other, and the large purple cones make this a 

 beautitul tree. It grows here very rapidly and is perfectly 

 hardy, but probably will be early disfigured by the loss of 

 the branches near the base of the trunk. Abies Veitchii 

 forms forests of considerable extent on the high slopes 

 of Fugi-san and is another handsome tree with lus- 

 trous dark green leaves, silvery white below. From Abies 

 homolepis, to which it bears considerable resemblance, it 

 maybe distinguished by its shorter and more crowded leaves, 

 by its more slender branches coated with fine pubescence, 

 and smaller cones. This tree was sent to the Parsons 

 Nursery in Flushing nearly forty years ago by Mr. Thomas 

 Hogg, and was cultivated in the United States under the 

 unpublished name of Abies Japonica for many years before 

 it was introduced into Europe. It is very hardy in eastern 

 Massachusetts, where it has produced cones, and in its 

 young state, at least, is an exceedingly beautiful tree of 

 slender pyramidal habit and dense lustrous foliage. 



Abies Mariesii, which appears to grow only on a few of 

 the high mountains of northern Hondo and atone point on 

 the southern coast of Yezo, is a compact, shapely pyramidal 

 tree forty to fifty feet in height, with crowded branches cov- 

 ered with short, dark foliage, pale below and abundant 

 large dark purple cones. In this country and Europe, 

 although it appears to be hardy enough, Abies Mariesii is a 

 feeble grower and gives little promise of success. 



The Silver Fir of Yezo (Abies Sachalinensis) is a tall pyra- 

 midal tree with pale bark, long slender dark green leaves 

 and conspicuous white buds which make it easy to distin- 

 guish this species at any time. It is not rare on the hills 

 of central Yezo, and in the northern part of that island and 

 in Saghalin it is said to form great forests. In the neigh- 

 borhood of Boston, where it is very hardy, Abies Sachali- 

 nensis grows more rapidly than any of the other Abies. 

 The largest plants are, however, only five or six feet high 

 and too young, of course, to give any idea of the perma- 

 nent value here of this tree. 



In China Abies is less common than it is in Japan, al- 

 though a still little-known species has been found by Dr. 

 Augustine Henry on the mountains of Hupeh, in the central 

 part of the empire. Further north the Silver Fir of Siberia 

 (Abies Sibirica) ranges eastward to the valley of the Amoor 

 River and to Kamtschatka. This is a very hardy tree in 

 New England, of slender pyramidal habit and narrow dark 

 green lustrous leaves, in form and color not unlike Abies 

 Sachalinensis. I do not know that it has produced cones 

 here yet, although the largest trees are from twenty-five to 

 thirty feet in height and have already passed the period of 

 their greatest beauty. This is one of the earliest of the 

 Silver Firs to begin its growth in the spring, and in western 

 Europe it is often injured every year by spring frosts. The 

 Himalayan Fir (Abies Webbiana), which sometimes grows 

 to the height of 1 50 feet, with a trunk ten feet in diameter, 

 and is distributed from Bootan to Afghanistan at elevations 

 between seven and thirteen thousand feet above the sea, 

 is one of the handsomest of the whole genus, with leaves 

 which are dark green and lustrous on one side and silvery 

 white on the other, and large bright purple cones. This 

 tree grows only moderately well even in sheltered posi- 

 tions in western Europe, where it frequently suffers from late 

 spring frosts, but in some of the gardens of southern France 

 and northern Italy it appears to be perfectly at home. I 

 have never seen a specimen in this country, and the Hima- 

 layan Fir would certainly not be hardy in the north-Atlantic 

 states. In south-western Asia and south-eastern Europe 

 there is an interesting group of Abies. The most widely 

 distributed and best known of these trees is the common 

 Silver Fir of Europe (Abies pectinata), which is distributed 

 from central France to middle Russia, and grows also on 

 the mountains of Macedonia and Greece and on some of 

 those of the eastern provinces of Asia Minor. This is the 



Silver Fir of the silviculturists of central Europe, who con- 

 sider it a valuable timber-tree, although the wood which it 

 produces is inferior to that of the Spruce. Long a popular 

 ornamental tree in England, Abies pectinata was probably 

 first brought to this country nearly a century ago. It has 

 never proved very successful here, although occasionally a 

 healthy specimen fifty feet high or more can be found in 

 some old garden of the middle states. In New England, 

 except in very sheltered positions, it suffers from the cold 

 and usually disappears at the end of a few years. Among 

 several abnormal forms of this species the most distinct is 

 the variety pendula, a handsome tree with distinctly pendu- 

 lous branches ; variety nana, a handsome bush, which in 

 time often loses its dwarf habit and grows into the normal 

 form, and the variety columnaris with erect branches 

 pressed closely against the stem and short crowded leaves. 



Another of this group, Abies Cephalonica, is a distinct- 

 looking tree with branches long in proportion to the height 

 of the stem and crowded rigid sharp-pointed leaves. It is 

 a native of Mount Enos, on the island of Cephalonia, and has 

 been an inhabitant of English gardens since 1824. The 

 Cephalonian Fir is quite hardy in eastern Massachusetts, 

 and there are specimens in Mr. Hunnewell's pinetum which 

 are from thirty to forty feet in height and have produced 

 cones for several years. Large plants in this country, 

 however, are not handsome, and the Cephalonian Fir is 

 probably one of the least desirable of the genus as an orna- 

 ment of our gardens. Abies Apollinis and Abies Reginas- 

 Amaliae, natives of the mountains of Greece, are usually 

 considered merely geographical forms of Abies Cepha- 

 lonica ; they are both hardy here in a young state and the 

 largest plants which I have seen in this country, still only 

 a few feet high, are handsome. Abies Nordmanniana, 

 another of the Silver Firs of south-western Asia, has been 

 the most generally planted of all the Old World Abies in 

 the northern states, where it has proved very hardy and one 

 of the most beautiful and satisfactory of the exotic conifers 

 which have been tried here. The largest plants in the 

 eastern states are now from fifty to sixty feet in height and 

 are still well furnished with branches clothed with beauti- 

 ful crowded leaves dark green and lustrous above and sil- 

 very white below. The Nordmann Fir is a native of the 

 mountain forests east and south-east of the Black Sea, 

 including the western spurs of the Caucasus, and in its 

 native country it is said to grow to the height of 150 feet, with 

 a trunk five or six feet in diameter, in forests of Oaks, Horn- 

 beams and other deciduous-leaved trees. A number of 

 seminal varieties which I have not seen are cultivated and 

 described by European nurserymen. 



A more beautiful tree, perhaps, at least in its young state, 

 than the Nordmann Fir, although still much less well 

 known in American gardens, is the Cilician Fir (Abies 

 Cilicica), a more southern species confined chiefly to high 

 elevations on the Taurus and anti-Taurus, where it is the 

 companion of the Cedar of Lebanon, and to the Lebanon 

 range itself. Rarely seen in western Europe, where it 

 suffers seriously from spring frosts, the Cilician Fir grows 

 admirably in New England, where it forms splendid broad- 

 based, dense pyramids covered with lustrous narrow leaves 

 conspicuously marked with pale stomata. This is a diffi- 

 cult tree to obtain ; it has not been long enough in this 

 country to produce seeds here ; apparently they never 

 ripen in western Europe, and it seems impossible to ob- 

 tain them from the remote and inaccessible forests which 

 are the home of this tree. 



The handsome Algerian Silver Fir (Abies Numidica), 

 which grows well in England and some parts of France, is 

 probably nowhere hardy in the northern states ; and the 

 beautiful Spanish and north African Abies Pinsapo, which 

 is one of the handsomest conifers cultivated in central and 

 western Europe, where it has already grown to a good size, 

 can only be kept alive here in sheltered situations, and will 

 never show its real beauty in the northern states. 



This brief review of the species of Taxids and Conifers 

 which have been tried in our gardens, or which are likely 



