1875. 
181 
THE GARDENER’S MONTHLY. 
ing tho Doctor to be a Horticulturist and Botan¬ 
ist of considerable prominence, and realizing 
themselves the eminent fitness of the term, readily 
adopted the suggestion, and catalogued the new 
comer accordingly As speciosa, as applied in 
Botany, signifies fine, beautiful, making a good 
appearance, we knew of no % better or more fitting 
word to distinguish our improved vamtjf of 
Catalpa from C. Bignonoides. \Th^#^mbit of 
growth of the two trees are as dip^nt as can 
well be imagined, at all ages from ond\,jear to 
twenty; Speciosa beinjj^ery upright, Be^ular 
in form, and much m@fe vigorous, while the 
age, flowers, and seed pods are each twice as large * 
as in Bignonoides. I have recently compared 
hundredsbf trees in various localities, on different 
soils, aha ofdifferantages, and find the distinction 
uniformly so well marked that any observer can 
distinguish them. I will distribute seeds of C. 
Speciosa to any one willing to phy the postage 
on a few.” [Mr. Teas seems to have a peculiar 
weakness in imagtnfiig himself “charged” with 
something, wjbieh no one but himself ever thought 
of. Wptfftould not suppose it a 44 crime,” much 
less “a” great crime for Mr. Teas or any¬ 
body else to name a Catalpa or any other 
thing. As we suppose our paragraph was 
clear enough to every one except Mr. Teas, we 
need make no further explanation. We prefer 
“ The Teas Catalpa ” as a name for a marked 
variety like this. We are opposed to la tin names 
for garden forms. We prefer the simple 44 Rose 
%.Y. Teas,” to the Bosa Theana, or any thing 
like it. But if we must have a Catalpa 4 4 speciosa, ’ y . 
please^lhf it be Catalpa bignonoides, var. speciosa, 
and the only- ones to object will be the general 
tree planter at the awfully long and as we think 
rSLiievcituve, e ®>v<xx>el& 
COMMUNICATIONS. 
THE CONIFER® OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 
BY DR. GEO. ENGELMANN. 
Lecture before the Washington University . 
(Continued from page 153 ) 
Leaving these more strictly scientific investiga¬ 
tions, and turning to the utilitarian aspect of this 
family of plants, we find its members to be of the 
utmost interest, of the utmost importance to the 
human race— 
FROM THE CEDARS OF LEBANON, 
which built Solomon’s Temple, to the spruces of 
Northern Europe, Which furnished the masts and 
spars for all the navies of the period; to our own 
white pines, which, together with some other 
pines of the South and East, and the pines and 
red woods of the West, supply the indispensa¬ 
ble material for building, on land as well as at 
sea. 
I have mentioned the red woods, one the Se¬ 
quoias—more important to man than the other 
—the mammoth tree, and scarcely less colossal. 
They, too, are conifers, and so are the junipers, 
the cypresses, and even our taxodium—the 
bald cypress of the South—not all conifers, you 
Sc QPer solicit oies. 
see, are evergreens. The larches, you know, 
and some others, also, lose their foliage in win¬ 
ter. 
The pines then, with their woods, principally, 
and also their other products, which I have not 
mentioned, e. g., turpentine and pitch, are the 
most important trees to man—at least in the 
northern hemisphere; and wherever soil or 
climate do not produce them, commerce carries 
them. 
I have alluded before to the distribution of 
conifers, and that they are often more or less mix¬ 
ed with deciduous trees, but on the higher moun¬ 
tains, and in high northern latitudes, do they ex¬ 
clusively constitute the forest. We touch here 
at that peculiar feature of the distribution of 
plants over our globe so odd at first sight, and so 
easily explained, when we look closer at it. I 
mean the similarity of a high northern and a 
high mountain vegetation. This similarity goes 
so far that the circum-polar vegetation is, to a 
great extent, the same in America, Asia and 
Europe ; it sends its colonies southward on the 
high mountains or isolated peaks, which rise 
much like islands in an ocean, and retain their 
identity or similarity of vegetation, after the 
great geological changes of p^ist epochs have 
