BULLETIN NO. 17. 
The climate of New England is usually considered unfavorable to the 
successful cultivation of conifers. As compared with New Zealand, 
northern Italy, Ireland, and the region adjacent to Puget Sound, New 
England is certainly a poor country for these trees. There are worse 
regions for conifers, however, like some of the middle western states and 
Texas, and two of the handsomest trees of this class in the world grow at 
their best in New England, the White Pine, Pinus Strobus, and the 
Hemlock, Tsuga canadensis. No region need be poor in conifers where 
these two trees flourish. The conifers of Europe do not find congenial 
conditions here, although those from the northern and central parts of 
the continent, like the Norway Spruce, and the Scotch, Austrian and 
Swiss Pines, are hardy although generally short-lived. The Himalayan 
species, with the exception of Pinus excelsa which is never satisfactory 
here, are not hardy. None of the conifers of Mexico or South America, 
Australia or Tasmania, can be grown in the northern states in which the 
species of southern China and Japan are not hardy. Unfortunately very 
few of the conifers of western North America succeed in the eastern 
states, as these are the noblest of the trees of this class. The exceptions 
are the western White Pine, Pinus monticola , a tree which bears a gen- 
eral resemblance to our eastern White Pine and which is distributed 
from the sea-level on Vancouver Island up to high altitudes on the Cali- 
fornia Sierra Nevada and the mountains of Idaho. The Sugar Pine of 
the California Sierras, Pinus Lambertiana , the greatest of all Pine trees, 
gives little promise here of ever becoming a large or valuable tree. This 
is also true of Jeffrey’s Pine, Pinus ponderosa var. Jeffreyi, which can 
be seen in its greatest beauty on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. 
The western Mountain Hemlock, Tsuga Mertensiana , or as it is often 
called Pattoniana , Abies amabilis, the lovely Fir of the Cascade Range, 
the Incense Cedar of the Sierra Nevada, Libocedrus decurrens , and the 
Fir of the northwest coast, Abies grandis, and the Red Cedar, Thuya 
plicata or gigantea, are hardy in sheltered positions in the Arboretum 
but do not promise to be very long-lived here or to add much permanent 
beauty to our plantations. All the conifers of the northeastern part of 
this continent are, of course, hardy here but, with the exception of the 
White Pine, the Hemlock, the Red or Norway Pine, Pinus resinosa , the 
White Spruce, Picea canadensis, the Arbor Vitse, Thuya occidentalis, 
the Red Cedar, Juniperus virginiana, and the Larch, Larix americana, 
none of these are of much ornamental value. 
On the slopes of the Blue Ridge in South Carolina, about the head- 
waters of the Savannah River, there is a conifer which seems destined to 
play an important part in the decoration of our northern parks and gar- 
dens. This is the so-called Carolina Hemlock, Tsuga caroliniana , which 
although a smaller tree than our northern Hemlock is even more graceful 
in the droop of its slender branches. This is a tree from which much can 
