April i, 1B91.J 
THP TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
717 
AVAtTLES : TIAI13ER AND FUEL TREES 
AND INDISCRLMINATE PLANTING. 
(From the Hills) 
THE WEARY BEWILDERING WxVi'TLES. 
If, as Professor Maiden of the Sydney Technologi- 
cal Museum indicates, the fine, thin-leaved and small- 
blossomed specimen he has so courteously sent of the 
Sydney Black Wattle correctly represents the normal 
Acacia decurrens, then, I quite agree with Dr, 
Trimen that it has not yet been grown in Ceylon. 
I have grown and seen many of the Australian 
“ wattles,” but anything with such minute le.sfiet3 
as Dr. Maiden’s specimen of what he regards as 
the true A, decurrens has never come under my 
notice. On the o.her hand we have on Abbotsford 
some magnificent trees, the foliage and blossoms 
of which exactly agree with Dr. Maiden’s specimeu 
of the “ Green Wattle,” A. decurrens, var. mollis- 
sima, the prince of all the wattles for yield of 
tannin. Our Abbotsford trees also agree with Mr. 
Kellow’s and the fine specimen at Hakgala. But 
I hope to do what Mr. Kellow suggests, taka the 
Australian specimens and some of our own to 
compare with his. To a non-botanioal eye the 
moUissima variety of A. decurrens would seem to be 
the type, luxuriant in leaf and blossom as it is 
robust of stem. Although it is not tannin but 
timber and firewood that we want here in Ceylon, 
W8 cannot help feeling that Baron von Mueller’s 
mollissima is the variety of decurrens which we 
should grow at altitudes about 4,500 feet, for I 
have heard that at lower altitudes the Australian 
wattle shave not been a success in Ceylon. AVhat 
will the Baron say to the variety about whose 
merits ha has written in such enthusiastic terms 
being botanieally abolished ? It is beyond measure 
puzzling to find the Victorian botanist, whose 
fame is world-wide, after giving a general des- 
cription of A, decurrens, Willdenow, the tan wattle, 
as a small or middle-sized tree, which, besides 
timber, “ supplies excellent firewood,” adding, ‘ the 
* typical A, decurrens 
WITH LARGER LEAELET3, 
occurs particularly in New South Wales, rises 
seldom above 30 feet ; it has, according to the 
Hon. Dr. J. Cox, a bark of less tannic strength 
than the tree distinguished as A. moUissimaW So 
that the Victorian A. decurrens, probably A. mol- 
Ussima, which we have got in Ceylon, cannot be 
Dr. Maiden’s typical species. If by ‘‘larger leaf- 
lets,” longer branchlets and spines are meant, the 
statement is quite correct, but with our popular 
conception of leaflets, those of the var, mollissima, 
certainly convey the idea of being larger because 
so much denser. Von Mueller also describes the 
seed of mollissima as ‘‘ somewhat smaller, com- 
paratively ehorter, rounder and not so flat as those 
of A. dcalbala, while the funicular appendage docs 
not extend so far along the seeds, nor is the pod 
quite so broad; from those of A. pi/crantha 
they differ in being shorter, thus more ovate than 
elliptical.” In our warm moist Ceylon climato 
A. decurrens, like other Australian trees, grows 
more rapidly and to greater size than it generally 
does in iis native habitat, Von Mueller gives a 
separate place to A. mollissima, and stat s that 
‘‘most of the notes under A. decurrens refer moro 
particularly to A. mollissima." The reason, there- 
fore, why the A. decurrens grown in Ceylon is var. 
mollissima, is probably that all the seed was 
obtained from Melbourne. Maiden says of the 
normal A. decurrens, what is probably true of the 
variety wo are growing in Ceylon, that oven iu a 
green state it furnishes an excellent fuel. One of 
90 
the merits of A. decurrens, so far as ray obeervalion 
goes, is, that it does not send up su.'kors so freely 
from its sproaditjg roots as other kinds do, es- 
pecially that which has formed so dense a grove 
at the Nuwara Eliya church, and A. dcalbala. Tho 
specimen of this latter species, the eiiver wattle, 
sent by Dr. Maiden, is doubtless, as Dr. Trimoa 
st-.te.l, identical with the kind grown in Nuwara 
Eliya which so seldom flowers. It is the least 
beautiful of all the wattles grov/ing on the Plain. 
I wish, however, that, besides seed pods, Ihs speci- 
men sent by Professor Maiden show-d tho 
inflorescence also, for I am now puzzled what to call 
the acacia, beautiful alike in stun and leaf and 
blossom, so lloucishiog near tho oburc'n and 
elsewhere in Nuwara Eliya, and which was popu- 
larly known as 
‘‘ THE GOLDEN W’AT'i'LS,” 
until the exclusive title of A. pycnantha to thit 
name was asserted. The truth is that many, 
perhaps fifty out of the three hundred or so, of 
acacias in Australia, bear yellow blossoms and are 
popularly known as ‘‘ golden wattles,” tho flowers 
being used ns a substitute for the ” may ” or 
white-thorn blossoms of Britain. What troubles mo 
is the fact that the denizens of Ootaca.mand, on 
the Nilgiris, who are waging war against tho wver- 
prevaleni A. dealbata, write of it as ‘‘ the yeliow 
wattle,” a name surely more descriptive of the 
aeacia we have mentioned as forming the grove 
at tha church in oar sanatorium, than of the 
silver wattlo which so rarely flowers ? A. dealbata 
is described by Baron von Mueller as sometimes 
attaiuiog a height of 150 feet, and besides bsing 
useful as timber, serving principally as 
SELECT rUEL OF GREAT HEATING QUALITY. 
This would render it very valuable to tea planters, 
but the inhabitants of Ootacamund complain that 
when the trees first grown, so long ago as 1840, 
were cut down, the ground got filled with inter- 
lace 1 roots, from which there have sprung in- 
numerable suckers, so dense in growth as to consti- 
tute an insanitary nuisance. On the occasion of a 
former crusade againstthe a'l prevalent and encroach- 
ing wattle the Madras Mail wrote of the myriads of 
suckers which come up with renewed vigour and 
amazing rapidity as fast as Ihey aro cut down, 
and form an inexhaustible fuel rcserre. Col. Bed- 
dome, however, stated that although this wattlo 
grows very readily from the stjol (after being 
coppiced), it comes up in a dense mass of small 
twig like stems, so that it can only bo depended 
on for very small firewood. Dwellers in Nuwara 
Eliya, before further extending the cultivation of 
A. dealbata and the beautiful golden-blossoined 
species, which sends up suckers even more readily, 
may well take warning by the experience of 
Ootacamnnd, where the Municipality is invoking 
the aid of Government to get rid of what all agree 
has become 
AN IN'TOLiaUBLE EVIL, 
while secondary and indescribably dense stems are 
not to be compared, so they assert, p.s firewood 
with blue-gum, original stem and coppiced. We 
can testify from our own experisnoo that bluo-gum 
coppices most roidily, at almost any ago, tha 
secondary stems being even more luxuri;°nt arod 
healthy looking than tho original trees, There 
is one thing to be said, howevc'-, as to the en- 
croaching tendency of A. dcalbala suckers,— that tha 
soil of Nuwara Eliya is considerably poorer,— wo 
speak of the grassy rioin— thau that of Oota- 
cainiiiid. Dwellers in the Ceylon sanatorium aro 
not likely, iu imitation of those in the Nilgiii 
health resort, to pass from a porfeot furore for 
planting groves of firewood trees, to a wild demand 
