Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. VIII 
NO. 17 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
.HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. OCTOBER 31. 1922 
Conifers. The value of institutions like the Arboretum appears in 
the fact that several cone-bearing plants which were first cultivated 
in this country at this Arboretum are now generally recognized as the 
best plants in their different classes which can be grown in the north- 
eastern United States. The most important of the conifers introduced 
by the Arboretum are Tsuga caroliniana, Picea Engelmannii, Picea 
Omorika, Picea Glehnii, the Colorado form of Abies concolor, the in- 
terior form of Thuya plicata, Juniperus chinensis var. Sargentii and 
Picea glauca var. albertiana conica. 
Tsuga caroliniana, the Carolina Hemlock, as it grows in the Arbor- 
etum is generally considered the most graceful and beautiful cone- 
bearing tree in the collection. It is a native of the Blue Ridge, the 
eastern range of the Appalachian Mountains on which it grows from 
southwestern Virginia to northern Georgia usually in scattered groves 
on the rocky banks of streams usually at elevations between two 
thousand five hundred and three thousand feet. It escaped the atten- 
tion of the numerous botanists who explored the southern Appalachian 
Mountains during the last half of the eighteenth and the first half of 
the nineteenth century, and its distinct character was first noticed in 
1850 by Dr. L. B. Gibbes of Charleston, S. C., although it was not until 
thirty-one years later that it was described by Dr. Engelman. This 
Hemlock was first raised at the Arboretum in 1880 and the tallest tree 
here is now nearly forty feet high. On the Blue Ridge the Carolina 
Hemlock is usually not more than forty or fifty feet high, although 
occasionally trees up to seventy feet in height occur, and the trunk 
66 
