In Ireland the Lebanon cedar has been rarely planted in comparison with its frequency in England; and Henry has not seen any large trees except one at Carton, which in 1903 was 93 feet by 14 feet 9 inches, and is said to have been the first planted in Ireland; and six fine trees’ at Anneville near Dundrum, Co. Dublin, the largest of which was 143 feet in girth in 1904.
There is an excellent article on cedars by Dr. Masters in the Gardeners’ Chronicle for Oct. 17, 1903, giving an illustration of the historic tree in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, about which many incorrect statements have been published. Carriére? gives 1736 as the date at which it was planted, from seed brought from England by Bernard de Jussieu in 1735. From this seed was also derived the cedar at Montigny (Seine et Oise), and the one at Beaulieu, near Geneva. Carriére states that the cedars at Geneva produce seeds so freely that but for the scythe of the mower it would form forests on the shores of the Lake. In a letter from M. Maurice de Vilmorin I learn that the Montigny cedar® is now probably the best in France. About 1855 it was 7 metres in girth at two metres from the ground, and it is now 7.90 metres at the same height. There is another tree at Vrigny, the residence of M. Duhamel de Monceau, near Pithiviers, Loiret. His notes of 1874 state that this tree, planted in 1744, had suffered much from the frost of 1870-71, when two-thirds of its branches were frozen. It measured about 8 metres in girth.
I saw a very fine cedar in the grounds of M. Philippe de Vilmorin at Verriéres, near Paris, in May 1905, which measured 87 feet by 13 feet; and also visited the tree in the grounds of Madame Chauvet at Beaulieu, near Geneva, which is now considered to be the finest on the Continent, though not equal to several English trees. It is a well-shaped spreading tree about 100 feet high, though difficult to measure exactly, and 16 feet in girth, with a spread of 102 feet.
Timber
What is called cedar in commerce is usually the wood of Cedrela odorata, a tree found in the West Indies and Central America. The wood of the so-called pencil cedar, Juniperus virginiana, is also often known as cedar,’ and this can be distinguished at once by its colour and smell from the true cedar. A case was recently tried in London with regard to the quality of the cedar used in panelling a room at Packington Hall, in which it was stated in evidence by a so-called expert that there were three kinds of cedar known in the trade, “ English grown, pencil cedar, and Californian cedar,” “ the latter used for inferior work.” This is a not unusual instance of the gross ignorance which prevails in England among users of timbers as to their names and native countries, and this ignorance has led to many costly lawsuits. The Lebanon cedar grows so fast in England under favourable circumstances that the wood is of a much softer character than it is in Syria, but it may be used for
1 These are said by Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. i. 114 (1838), to have been brought direct from the Lebanon by an
ancestor of Lord Tremblestown, and to be the oldest in Treland.
2 Traité Conif. 78 (1867).
3 An account of it in Revue Horticole, 1907, p. 465, gives the dimensions as 105 feet high by 24 feet in girth at one metre from the ground.
- In the Eastern States it is known as red cedar, but this term is applied to Thuya plicata in the Pacific States.
