454 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 
Supposed hybrids between the Lebanon and Atlantic cedars have been 
recorded,' but on insufficient evidence. (A. H.) 
DISTRIBUTION 
The best account of the Cedar of Lebanon known to me is the classical paper 
by Sir Joseph Hooker published in the Natural Hestory Review, vol. ii. p. 11 
(1862), and as this gives a careful summary of the facts bearing on the specific 
identity of the forms of cedar, I summarise it as follows :—In the autumn of 
1860 Sir J. Hooker went to Syria in company with Captain Washington, 
Hydrographer of the Navy, and Captain Mansell, R.N., and arrived at Beyrout 
on 25th September. The party proceeded to the Lebanon, where Captain Mansell 
made a detailed survey of the basin where the cedars grow, at the head of the 
Kedisha valley, 15 miles from the sea in a straight line. At that time the other 
groves were apparently unknown, though Professor Ehrenberg informed Sir Joseph 
Hooker that he found many trees in forests of oak on the road from Bsharri to 
Bshinnate. The Kedisha valley at 6000 feet elevation terminates in broad, flat, 
shallow basins, and is two or three miles across and as much long. It is three or four 
miles south of the summit of Lebanon, which is about 10,200 feet in height, the chapel 
in the cedar grove being about 6200 feet. The cedars grow on a portion of the 
moraine which borders a stream, and nowhere else; they form one grove about 400 
yards in diameter, and appear as a black speck in the great area of the corrie and its 
moraines, which contain no other arboreous vegetation, nor any shrubs but a few 
small barberry and rose bushes. The number of the trees is about 400, and they 
are disposed in nine groups, corresponding with as many hummocks of the range 
of moraines ; they are of various dimensions, from 18 inches to upwards of 40 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 
18 inches girth, and that no young trees, seedlings, nor even bushes of a second 
year’s growth were found. Calculating from the rings in a branch of one of the 
older trees, now in the Kew Museum, the younger trees would average 100 years 
old, the oldest 2500, both estimates no doubt being widely far from the mark. Sir 
Joseph goes on to say, that the word cedar as used in the Bible applies to other 
trees, and he doubts whether the cedar of Lebanon is the one which supplied the 
timber used in building Solomon’s temple. He thinks that the cypress or the tall 
fragrant juniper of the Lebanon (/unzperus excelsa) would have been not only 
much easier to procure, but far more prized on every account.? Between individuals 
from the Lebanon and the common Asia Minor form there is said to be no 
appreciable difference by those who have examined both, but there are two distinct 
forms or varieties in Asia Minor, one having shorter, stiffer, and more silvery foliage 
than the other; this is the silver cedar, C. arvgentea, of our gardens. Northern 
Syria and Asia Minor form one botanical province, so that the Lebanon groves, 
1 Beissner, Wadelholekunde, 301, 302 (1891). 
2 But at a later period Sir J. Hooker changed his opinion on this subject, and believed that the wood used by Solomon 
and by Nebuchadnezzar in buildings was the Lebanon cedar. 
