) 
The Garden Magazine, July, 1920 
319 
Tournefort, in his “Corollarium,” page 41, 
published in 1719, who describes it as the 
Oriental Willow with shoots beautifully 
hanging downward. Either he or Wheler 
took it to western Europe. It was intro- 
duced into England before 1730, for in a 
catalogue published by Philipp Miller in 
that year it is stated to be on sale in gardens 
near London. Peter Collinson, whom we 
mentioned when writing about the Horse- 
chestnut, was of the opinion that it was 
introduced by Mr. Vernon, a Turkey mer- 
chant at Aleppo, who planted it at his seat 
in Twickenham Park. Here Collinson saw 
it in 1748, and claims that this tree was 
the original of all the Weeping Willows in 
England. 
But the celebrated poet, Alexander Pope, 
A LOMBARDY POPLAR IN KEW GARDENS 
Towering magnificently above all its neighbors 
and feathered to the ground this is such a 
specimen as proves the tree’s high merits 
w 
THE LIVING EMBODIMENT OF A CHINESE PLATTER 
A Willow beside the inevitable little stone bridge, above 
which its soft branches sway with every lover’s sigh! 
who died in 1744, had a tree in his garden at 
Twickenham, and the story is that he happened to 
be with Lady Suffolk when she received a present 
from Spain — or, as others claim, from Turkey — 
and observing that some of the withy bound round 
it seemed to be alive, took one and planted it in 
his garden, where it grew — and afterward became a 
celebrated tree. It is said that the Empress of 
Russia took cuttings from Pope’s Willow in 1789 
for the gardens at Petrograd. Pope’s tree was 
destroyed either by storm or axe (there are two 
stories) in 1801, and the wood was worked up by 
an eminent jeweller into all sorts of trinkets and 
ornaments, which had an extensive sale. This is 
the commonly told and accepted story of the 
trees’ introduction into the British Isles. 
The famous Napoleon’s Willow on St. Helena was 
planted, by General Beatson, governor of the island, 
about 1810. It became a favorite with Napoleon 
