PINUS COULTERI 
o 
Dr. Thomas Coulter was born in Ireland, and received a medical education, in the course of which 
he passed two years at Geneva as a pupil of the elder De Candolle. It was the wont of that distin¬ 
guished Professor to encourage or require his pupils to write a thesis upon any particular family they 
might select, and if deserving, he published the thesis in the Memoirs of the Geneva Society of Physics 
and Natural History, or in the “Transactions” of some other scientific society. Coulter selected the 
family of Dipsacece , and his thesis, which is an excellent one, was published in the Memoirs of the Geneva 
Society just mentioned (vol. ii. p. 11, 1826). After taking his degree as Doctor of Medicine, he went to 
Mexico on a scientific expedition. Remembering his ties to Geneva, he sent to its Botanic Garden a 
great many new species of plants, more particularly of Cactus, of which a list was published in De Can¬ 
dolle’s review of that family. Humboldt, Bonpland, and Kunth named a new genus of the family of 
Leguminosce after him ( Coulteria ). After leaving Mexico, he passed to California, at a time when the 
rattlesnake was still undisturbed by the hordes of gold-seekers who have since turned much of that country 
into vulgar ground. He there discovered many new trees and plants, among which may be specially 
mentioned Abies bracteata and the present species. 
Properties and Uses. —Not much is yet known of the quality of the timber of this tree. There is to 
be seen in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Garden at South Kensington a section of a tree upwards 
of a foot in diameter, grown at Mr. Hope’s property, the Deepdene, in Surrey. The annual rings in this 
specimen are large, and are interrupted by wide lacunae or sinuses of a hard resinous matter. 
Culture. —It springs easily and strongly from the seed, but is apt to suffer when young from the 
winter’s frost, especially in the North of England. When fairly started, it seems to make fair progress. 
The tree of which a section is above spoken of shews what it will do in Surrey. There is another specimen 
at Nettlecombe, in Somersetshire, 21 feet high; at Blenheim Park, in Oxfordshire, 30 feet high; one of 
the same height at Castle Ashby, in Northamptonshire; and one at Dropmore, 32 feet high. There is 
a fine specimen at Kew, which was unhurt by the winter of 1879-80 and 1880-1881. 
Commercial Statistics. —Price in 1850, seedlings, small, in pots, 21s. each; grafted, 17s. 6d. each; 
in 1863, 3 to 4 feet, 7s. 6d. each; in 1873, 1 to 2 feet, 3s. ; 2 to 3 feet, 3s. 6d. to 4s. each; in 1883, 12 
to 15 inches, 2s. 6d. ; 2 to 3 feet, 5s. each. 
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