THE TAMARISK — continued. 
blood or for making brooms ; and from the river Tamaris, now the Tambro, in the 
Pyrenees, on whose banks the tree abounds. Turner, in his “ Names of Herbes,” 
writes : — 
“ Myrica, otherwyse named tamarix, and of the Herbaries Tamariscus, is named in duche tamariske, in french tameris. 
I dyd never see thys tree in Englande, but ofte in high Germany, and in Italy. The Poticaries of Colon before I gave them 
warning vsed for thys, the bowes of vghe, and the Poticaries of London vse nowe for thys quik tree, the scholemaisters in 
Englande have of longe tyme called myrica heath or lyng, but so longe have they bene deceyved altogether. It maye be called 
in englishe, tamarik.” 
In the face of this statement we do not know why Sir J. E. Smith says that the 
Tamarisk was “commonly planted in English gardens and shrubberies, long before 
Archbishop Grindal imported it.” Grindal returned from the Continent in 1558, 
and the following year became Bishop of London ; whilst it is said that Elizabeth 
visiting him at Fulham complained that he had planted so many trees round his 
house that she could not see out of the windows. 
The Tamarisk commonly reaches ten or fifteen feet in height but may attain to 
double that size. The branches are free from hairs, but bear the scars of many 
fallen leaves and numerous cork-warts. They change with age from red to purple 
and brown. The leaves are also smooth, but slightly glaucous. The spikes of 
blossom open from July to October and are both terminal and lateral, reaching about 
an inch in length and crowded with the tiny flowers which are but an eighth of an 
inch across and arise in the axils of minute bracts. In a careful paper, published in 
“Hooker’s Journal of Botany” in 1841, Philip Barker-Webb first pointed out that 
there are two distinct kinds of Tamarisk on the shores of France. The loftier 
Tamarix gallica Linne (the Tamariscus narbonensis of Pena and Lobel), on the 
Mediterranean, has its five red-anthered stamens springing from between the five 
bilobed crenellations of the little hypogynous disk : its capsule tapers gradually 
from base to apex, like a pyramid ; and the tufts of hair on its seeds do not quite 
reach the apex of the capsule. The other species is that which grows along the 
western and northern shores of France and is found in England, for which reason 
Webb named it T. anglica. Its stamens spring from the points of the five lobes of 
the disk : its capsule is flask-shaped ; and the tufts of hair on the seeds are 
distinctly shorter than the capsule. 
Various suggestions have been made as to the introduction of the tree into 
England, independently of Bishop Grindal’s alleged action. Smugglers from 
France are said to have brought it to St. Michael’s Mount. A carter from the 
Mount gathering one of the flexible branches for a whip is said to have stuck it into 
the ground at the Lizard ; whilst a tree in the garden of the rectory on the island 
of F'oulness is said to have been planted by one of the Dutchmen who embanked 
the island in the seventeenth century. 
