Populus 1783 



western representative in Europe of the white poplar. It appears to be common 

 in France, extending eastward to the Rhine valley ; and is known in Belgium and 

 France as franc-picard or grisard. It often attains an immense size in France, the 

 finest that I have seen being one in the Botanic Garden at Toulouse, which was 100 

 ft. in height and 12 ft. in girth in 1912. In Holland, where it is wild on the dunes 

 near Haarlem,^ it is always called abeel, a name which is often erroneously applied to 

 the white poplar by English writers. The grey poplar is undoubtedly a native^ of 

 England, and is the tree referred to by old authors as the white poplar ; but has 

 been probably always better known to woodmen and peasants as the aspe. 



(A. H.) 



Both the grey and white poplars were known to Evelyn,^ who spoke of the first 

 as the white "to be raised in abundance by every set or slip. Fence the ground as 

 far as any old poplar roots extend and they will furnish you with suckers innumerable, 

 to be slipped from their mothers and transplanted the very first year, but if you cut 

 down an old tree you shall need no other nursery." Later on, he says : " There is 

 something a finer sort of white poplar, which the Dutch call abele, and we have late 

 much of it transported out of Holland. They are also best propagated of slips from 

 the roots, the least of which will take, and may in March, at three or four years' 

 growth, be transplanted." The latter was still an uncommon tree in Plot's time, 

 for he says : * "Of unusual trees now cultivated in Oxfordshire is the abele tree, 

 advantageously propagated by Sir J. Croke of Waterstock, by cutting stakes out of 

 the more substantial parts of the wood ; which put into moist ground grew more 

 freely than willows, coming in three or four years' time to an incredible height." 



French and English authors agree that the white poplar will not bear lopping 

 like the black poplars ; and though I have no experience in this matter, yet as I have 

 never seen a pollarded tree I presume that the grey poplar is equally liable to injury 

 when large branches are cut. It seems able to attain its largest dimensions in poor 

 stiff soil, and in cold situations, provided that there is sufficient moisture in summer ; 

 and though I cannot say that the tree is equal to the black Italian poplar from an 

 economic point of view, or equal to P. alba as an ornamental tree, yet as the illustra- 

 tion shows, it is a stately tree when well grown. 



The range of this tree in Great Britain is obscure, because it has been planted 

 for a long period.' Watson® says, "It is given as an unquestioned native in the 

 floras of Surrey, Essex, Herts, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge. In the floras of Tyne 

 and North Yorkshire it is reduced to the grade of denizen. And if I rightly know 

 the distinction between alba and canescens, I should now deem the latter native, and 

 the former planted, as seen in Surrey and elsewhere." 



Though the male tree is found of large size in many counties, the female is in 



' Mr. L. Springer, a distinguished landscape gardener of Haarlem, says that the true white poplar will not endure the sea 

 wind on the coast of Holland. 



2 Clement Reid, Origin of Brit. Flora, 150 (1899), states that leaves collected by Prestwich in interglacial beds at 

 Greys, Essex, suggest P. canescens, though they may belong to P. tremula. The latter species is only recorded from one 

 locality, Caerwys, Flintshire, in neolithic deposits ; so that the geological evidence as to the existence of poplars in England 

 is very scanty. ' Sylva, 78(1679). * Natural History of Oxfordshire, 175 (1705). 



^ Loudon quotes M'Culloch, that it is the only tree found in the island of Lewis, but probably he mistook the aspen, 

 for it. ° Topographical Botany, i. p. 357 (1873). 



