LOMBARDY POPLAR. 



205 



ately recognized and readily distinguished from all other 

 species of the genus ; the trunk also is much more deeply 

 furrowed than that of any other 

 Poplar, and the grooves often 

 assume a spiral or twisting di- 

 rection, and give the entire stem 

 the appearance of being made 

 up of several plants that had 

 united and become connected 

 together. It grows in favour- 

 able situations and in good soil 

 with great rapidity, often at- 

 taining a height of sixty or 

 eighty feet in less than thirty 

 years, and one instance is mentioned in the " Arboretum 

 Britannicum," of a tree, still we believe growing at 

 Great Tew in Oxfordshire, that at fifty years old had 

 reached the spire-like height of one hundred and twenty- 

 five feet. 



As might be expected in a tree of so rapid a growth, 

 its duration is very brief compared with the longevity of 

 slower-growing trees, and most of the plants first intro- 

 duced into the kingdom, which took place about eighty 

 years ago, are now either dead or in a state of decay ; 

 such is the case with those at Blenheim mentioned by 

 Gilpin, which were planted about the year 1760, or soon 

 after Lord Rochford had imported the first cuttings of 

 this Poplar from Turin. 



By some dendrologists the Lombardy Poplar is con- 

 sidered indigenous to that province or district of Italy, 

 and the fact of young plants of this kind as well as of 

 Pop. nigra springing up on the banks of the Po, where 

 the surface soil has in part been washed off by the over- 



