1674

ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM.

PART III.

slender twiggy branches, and leaves nearly lanceolate. There areplants in Messrs. Loddiges’s arboretum.

HI P. b. 3 latifolia Hort. has the leaves rather broader than those of thespecies. There is a tree of this kind, in the London HorticulturalSociety’s Garden, 12 ft. high.

i P. 4. 1 intermedia Hort., Pall. FI. Ross., t. 41. A, is a native of Dahuria,with stout, short, thick branches, knotted with wrinkles; and ovate,long, and rather narrow leaves; and generally attaining only theheight of a large shrub. There is a plant, in the London Horticul-tural Society’s Garden, 10 ft. high, by which it appears to be quitedistinct from P. b. viminalis.

P. b. 5 suaveolens ; P. suaveolens Fischer, and Lodd. Cat., ed. 1836. Thenew sweet-scented poplar of the nurseries. — The plant in Messrs.Loddiges’s collection is not 1 ft. high; and we have not been able toidentify it in any other collections; though it must have been plen-tiful in 1834, since in the wholesale priced Catalogue of the Ken-sington Nursery for that year the price of plants is stated to be10s. per hundred.

i P. b. 6 foliis variegatis Miller has varie-gated leaves. There is a tree of thiskind in the London Horticultural So-ciety’s Garden.

Description. The balsam poplar, in NorthAmerica, according to Michaux, attains theheight of 80 ft., with a trunk 3 ft. in diameter,and roots spreading close under the surface, andthrowing up numerous suckers. In Siberia, ac-cording to Pallas, it is only a middle-sized tree ;and in Dahuria and Altai, a low tree, or largeshrub. According to Franklin, in the northernparts of North America, the trunk of the balsampoplar attains a greater circumference than thatof any other tree. The head of the tree, inNorth America, is conical; but in Russia it isroundish. The trunk is covered with an ash-coloured bark; and the wood, in Siberia, is saidto be reddish, being closer and a little harderthan that of other poplars. In the moist plains of Dahuria, the tree isshrubby, because, according to Pallas, the grass is annually fired there; andthe young shoots of all the trees being thusinjured, they are seldom found rising with a clearstem. In the spring, the balsam poplar is knownfrom all other species by the fine tender yellowof its leaves when they are first developed; theabundance of the yellow glutinous balsam withwhich the buds are covered, the very strongodour which this balsam diffuses throughout thesurrounding atmosphere, and the comparativelyrigid and festigiate habit of growth of the tree,which approaches, in the latter respect, nearer toP. fastigiata than any other species. Whenmature, the leaves become of a deep green colourabove, and of a rusty silvery white beneath.

This is one of the hardiest of poplars, though notof rapid growth ; except the first three or fouryears in the nursery. Bose observes that bota-nists often confound this species with P. can-dicans ; but that cultivators never do so, fromthe very different manner of its growth, and from