222 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Considering how recent are the works on oaks of Messrs. Elwes, 

 Henry, and Bean, to which I must admit a heavy debt, it must seem 

 rather otiose and unnecessary for me to have written again on the 

 same subject. There must always, however, be some interest in an 

 account of any particular collection, and in this case it is increased 

 by the fact that many of the specimens which I have endeavoured 

 to describe have been written of ten years before by Mr. Elwes. 

 Any value that this paper can have must arise from the extent to 

 which it gives at first hand my own experience ; accordingly I hope 

 that the keenness of my interest in the subject may to some extent 

 countervail my botanical incompetence to deal with it. 



When I started to write this paper I meant to confine it exclusively 

 to oaks actually growing at Aldenham, but as I went on I found that 

 there were so few hardy ones, such as cinerea, glauca, lyrata, obtusata, 

 &c, which though described by English writers on trees, and growing 

 elsewhere in England, are yet unrepresented at Aldenham, that I 

 thought it better to make the paper more complete by adding a short 

 account of these also, and I felt the more justified in doing this as 

 I have taken steps to arrange for these missing ones being grafted 

 and added to our collection. 



Of course there are tender oaks, such as Q. crassipes and Q. glab- 

 rescens from Mexico, and others from India and the warmer parts of 

 China, which are not only not at Aldenham, but could never grow 

 there for any time, and of these no account is given ; all the informa- 

 tion would be second hand, and in my opinion, and doubtless that of 

 my readers, if I had any, quite worthless. Neither have I attempted 

 to describe Chinese novelties such as Q. Baronii, Q. spathulata, &c, 

 which I do not possess, and which are hardly yet, if at all, to be 

 found in European cultivation, but which are dealt with in " Plantae 

 Wilsonianae," vol. iii. 



There is, however, another extensive omission with regard to the 

 Western American oaks, for an examination of Professor Sargent's 

 " Silva " shows that there are no less than thirteen of them, namely, 

 Q. Breweri, Douglasii, dumosa, dumosa munita, dumosa polycarpa, 

 Emoryi, Engelmanni, hypoleuca, reticulata, Sadleriana, tomentella, undu- 

 lata, and undulata grisea, of which no account will be found. Although 

 it is true that in the past both Kew and Aldenham possessed plants of 

 Q. Douglasii, yet to-day, as far as I can learn, not one of these thirteen 

 is in cultivation in England. It does seem strange that when our 

 countrymen should be willing to spend large sums on ransacking 

 Korea and Formosa for new plants, they should have overlooked 

 comparatively accessible trees, which judging from Kellogg's draw- 

 ings of many of them, which I have seen, would form a fine and 

 striking feature in our woods. All the stranger is this neglect when 

 it is remembered that trees from the Pacific coast as a rule thrive 

 well in England. 



Other oaks which I have at one time had, but have lost, are 

 Q. alba X Prinus, borealis, georgiana, and obovata. I have failed to 



