63 
The bright red, fragrant wood in contact with the soil resists decay 
for many years; its fragrance makes it the best American wood for 
chests and the lining of closets used for the summer storage of woolens 
as the odor of the wood is repellant to moths. There are a number of 
forms of the Red Cedar in the Arboretum collection and several of 
them are now found in commercial nurseries. The handsomest of these 
are forms with silvery gray foliage, with gracefully pendulous branches, 
and some of the forms of dwarf habit, especially the plant now sold 
in nurseries as Juniperus Kosteriana. The Arborvitae produces dur- 
able fence posts but is not large enough to be profitably sawed into 
lumber. No tree, with the exception perhaps of the Japanese species 
of Chamaecyparis (Retinospora), produces so many distinct seedling 
forms. There are at least fifty of these in the Arboretum collection, 
varying from large or small, dense ball-shaped plants to tall narrow 
pyramids; there are forms with yellow leaves and with pendulous, and 
with slender, whiplike branches. As a garden plant the most valuable 
of them all is perhaps the tall slender pyramid raised many years ago 
by Robert Douglas of Waukegan, Illinois, and generally known as 
“Douglas’s Pyramidal Arborvitae.” This appears to be the best sub- 
stitute in northern gardens for the pyramidal Italian Cypress. There 
are two good specimens of this pyramidal Arborvitae in the Arboretum 
collection. The eastern America Chamaecyparis is a handsome slender 
tree with gray-green foliage and durable wood often used for fence 
posts, but in beauty and importance as a timber tree is far below in value 
the western American and Japanese species. It is established in the 
Arboretum but has grown slowly here and has sometimes suffered dur- 
ing severe winters, although it is common in swamps within twenty 
miles of Boston and formerly grew naturally within three or four miles 
of the Arboretum. Although it has not been cultivated as long as the 
White Pine, the Hemlock and the Arborvitae, the Red or Norway Pine 
(Pinus resinosa) may be expected to become a permanent tree in north- 
eastern plantations. In youth it is a beautiful tree wiih long dark 
green leaves, and the handsomest of the hard wood Pines which can 
be grown in this climate. This Pine once grew naturally in the neigh- 
borhood of Boston, and its adaptability to the soil of the Arboretum is 
shown by the numerous seedlings which spring up here naturally and 
grow rapidly. The other New England Conifer, the Pitch Pine {Pinus 
rigida), becomes sometimes a picturesque tree, but probably will never 
be much planted except on the sands of Cape Cod where it grows bet- 
ter than most trees under such difficult conditions and produces quickly 
good crops of valuable fuel. There are four other eastern Pines in 
the Arboretum, the northern Pinus Banksiana, the short-leaved south- 
ern Yellow Pine {Pinus echinata), one of the valuable timber trees of the 
country, the Appalachian Pinus pungens and the Virginia Jack Pine 
{Pinus virginiana). The last and Pinus Banksiana will probably be 
permanent trees here but they have no particular value beyond the fact 
that they can grow rapidly in the poorest soil. Pinus pungens, too, 
grows on sterile hillsides from Pennsylvania to Georgia and is the least 
valuable of these American conifers. The short-leaved Yellow Pine has 
been growing in the Arboretum for more than thirty years. It has 
grown very slowly, and even the trees raised from seeds collected on 
Staten Island, New York, lose their leaves in severe winters. 
Seventy-five years have not been required to show that some com- 
