JOURNAL 



OF THE 



Royal Horticultural Society. 



Vol. XLV. 1919. 

 Parts II. & III. 



OAKS AT ALDENHAM. 



By the Hon. Vicary Gibbs, F.R.H.S. 



Just seventeen years ago, namely, in 1902, I was in Dresden. 

 Having heard of a fine tree nursery some thirty miles to the east, at a 

 place called Muskau, I made an expedition through the pine woods on 

 a little single line of rails to visit it. I found there, among other 

 interesting trees, a great many out-of-the-way oaks, and, knowing 

 how well our heavy London clay suits this genus, I secured a number 

 of them. These have been planted near the house along a succession 

 of rides in a young wood, which was at that time just being started. 

 As they have now been in their new quarters long enough for one to 

 be able to make a fairly confident prophecy as to their prospects, it 

 may interest Fellows of the Royal Horticultural Society to have some 

 account of them and other trees of the same genus coming at various 

 times and from various quarters to adorn the arboretum, and to know 

 which species have thriven on a cold heavy soil and which not. 



Although arboriculture is in much greater vogue than it was when 

 I first started to collect what an unsympathetic relative spoke of as 

 " Vicary's silly bushes," yet oak-growing is necessarily such a slow 

 business that any comprehensive gathering of the order Cupuliferae * 

 is still, and is likely long to remain, a rarity. 



Setting aside the wonderful show at Kew as hors concours, the only 

 striking assortment of exotic oaks outside our own with which I am 



* I see no advantage in abandoning Bentham and Hooker's name (1880) 

 in favour of Fagaceae, which the German writers Engler and Prantl coined nine 

 years later, in order to cover the tracks of their dependence on previous workers, 

 and to give an air of originality. 



VOL. XLV. M 



