Populus 1799 



in this season, though there are staminate trees at no great distance. It opens its 

 flowers at the same time as the Lombardy poplar. The latter is about three weeks 

 earlier than the native black poplar, an indication of its southern origin.^ The 

 history of these pistillate trees is quite unknown ; but they may have arisen as the 

 result of hybridisation between the staminate Lombardy and the ordinary poplars. 



The staminate Lombardy poplar appears to have originated on the banks of the 

 river Po in northern Italy, probably in the beginning of the eighteenth century, as it 

 was unknown to classical writers ^ and is not mentioned by mediaeval Italian authors.^ 

 Moreover, it was not noticed by Ray and other English travellers in Italy in the 

 seventeenth century. S%uier,* an old writer, states that it was known anciently in 

 Lombardy, and mentions a superb avenue, which he saw in 1763 at Colorno, the 

 residence of the Duke of Parma. It was apparently carried^ by the Genoese to 

 the Levant ; and there are no grounds for supposing that it originated in Asia 

 Minor or Afghanistan, as Royle,^ who first made this statement, simply relied on the 

 fact that it bore a native Persian name.'^ W. G. Browne,* who travelled in Asia 

 Minor in 1798, makes the first reference to its occurrence in western Asia, where 

 he states that it abounds all over the plain of Damascus, and when old becomes 

 rugged and uncouth, as usual in other regions. 



It was introduced from Lombardy into France in 1749 ; and is usually stated to 

 have been brought into England and planted at St. Osyth's in Essex, in 1758, by the 

 Earl of Rochford, who was ambassador in Turin at the time. It was possibly, how- 

 ever, first planted at Whitton some years earlier by Archibald, Duke of Argyll, who 

 died in 1761, as the tree still growing there in 1838 was much larger than any of the 

 others recorded by Loudon, being 115 ft. high and 1 9 ft. 8 in. in girth at 2 feet from 

 the ground.^ 



1 Sargent, Silva N. Amer. ix. 154, note (1896), says that the fact that the Lombardy poplar does not suffer in the cold 

 of the Canadian winter, shows that it originated in a climate much more severe than that of northern Italy. (The winter in 

 the plain of the Po, it may be stated, is very cold, the mean temperature being below 35° Fahr. ; and in Milan the thermo- 

 meter sometimes sinks below zero.) Prof. Budd, quoted by L. H. Bailey, Cornell Univ. Bull. Agric. No. 68, p. 228 (1894), 

 however, explains that the Lombardy poplar, grown in Canada, was imported from Voronej in central Russia, where it has 

 become acclimatised, and is perfectly hardy. The Russian botanists assured him that its hardiness depended on the region 

 from whence it was obtained. Bailey, Survival of the Unlike, 297 (1896), in an interesting chapter on acclimatisation of trees, 

 states that cuttings of the white poplar, taken from trees at Montpellier and at Geneva, which were plsmted at the latter place, 

 differed as much as twenty-five days in their time of coming into leaf; and similar results were obtained at Ithaca (New York) 

 with cuttings of the Lombardy poplar. 



2 The often quoted lines of Ovid, Met. ii. 345-360, and of Virgil, jEneid, x. 190, do not refer to this tree, as has 

 been supposed. The poplars depicted by Perugino (1446-1524), as in a picture in the London National Gallery, are 

 slender, but not with vertical branches, and are probably Populus alba. Cf. Rosen, Die Naiur in der Kunst, 293 (1903). 



3 Rostafinski, in Verhandl. K. K. Zool. Bot. Gesell. Wien, xxii. 170 (1872), states that it was introduced from Italy into 

 Poland by King Sobieski, who reigned from 1624 to 1696, and that the original trees are still standing in the garden of the 

 Wilanow Castle, near Warsaw. Miss Ivanovska, at my request, examined the old poplars there, which proved to be all of the 

 ordinary wide-spreading form ; and Prof. Rostafinski in a letter acknowledges that he made a mistake. 



* Hist. Plant. Nat. Envir. Virone, ii. 267 (1745)- 



5 Fougeroux de Bondaroy, in M(m. d Agric., Paris, 1786, p. 84. 



° Illust. Bot. Him. i. 344 (1839). Griffith's statement that it is wild near Kabul, at 7000 ft. altitude, is not confirmed. 

 Aitchison, in Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. xviii. 162 (1891), says: "I only met with this tree cultivated in orchards or near 

 houses in Afghanistan and north-east Persia." 



' Boissier, Fl. Orient, iv. 1194 (1879), doubts its existence in the wild state in western Asia; and his reference to it 

 being perhaps wild in the Karatau mountain in Turkestan is an error, as the wild fastigiate poplar in this locality is P. alba, 

 S3X. pyramidalis. Cf. p. 1778. 



8 Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, 397, 408 (1799). Siehe, in Mitt. Deut. Dend. Ges. 1912, p. 123, states that 

 in Asia Minor the Lombardy poplar is extensively cultivated and is a most useful tree, producing after twenty or thirty years' 

 growth, long slender but tough beams, which are much used in house-building. 



9 Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. i. 58 (1838). 



