Supposed hybrids between the Lebanon and Atlantic cedars have been recorded,' but on insufficient evidence. (A. H.)
Distribution
The best account of the Cedar of Lebanon known to me is the classical paper by Sir Joseph Hooker published in the Natural History Review, vol. ii. p. 11 (1862), and as this gives a careful summary of the facts bearing on the specific identity of the forms of cedar, I summarise it as follows :—In the autumn of 1860 Sir J. Hooker went to Syria in company with Captain Washington, Hydrographer of the Navy, and Captain Mansell, R.N., and arrived at Beyrout on 25th September. The party proceeded to the Lebanon, where Captain Mansell made a detailed survey of the basin where the cedars grow, at the head of the Kedisha valley, 15 miles from the sea in a straight line. At that time the other groves were apparently unknown, though Professor Ehrenberg informed Sir Joseph Hooker that he found many trees in forests of oak on the road from Bsharri to Bshinnate. The Kedisha valley at 6000 feet elevation terminates in broad, flat, shallow basins, and is two or three miles across and as much long. It is three or four miles south of the summit of Lebanon, which is about 10,200 feet in height, the chapel in the cedar grove being about 6200 feet. The cedars grow on a portion of the moraine which borders a stream, and nowhere else; they form one grove about 400 yards in diameter, and appear as a black speck in the great area of the corrie and its moraines, which contain no other arboreous vegetation, nor any shrubs but a few small barberry and rose bushes. The number of the trees is about 400, and they are disposed in nine groups, corresponding with as many hummocks of the range of moraines ; they are of various dimensions, from 18 inches to upwards of 40 feet in girth; but the most remarkable and significant fact connected with their size, and consequently with the age of the grove, is that there is no tree of less than 18 inches girth, and that no young trees, seedlings, nor even bushes of a second year’s growth were found. Calculating from the rings in a branch of one of the older trees, now in the Kew Museum, the younger trees would average 100 years old, the oldest 2500, both estimates no doubt being widely far from the mark. Sir Joseph goes on to say, that the word cedar as used in the Bible applies to other trees, and he doubts whether the cedar of Lebanon is the one which supplied the timber used in building Solomon’s temple. He thinks that the cypress or the tall fragrant juniper of the Lebanon (Juniperus excelsa) would have been not only much easier to procure, but far more prized on every account.? Between individuals from the Lebanon and the common Asia Minor form there is said to be no appreciable difference by those who have examined both, but there are two distinct forms or varieties in Asia Minor, one having shorter, stiffer, and more silvery foliage than the other; this is the silver cedar, C. argentea, of our gardens. Northern Syria and Asia Minor form one botanical province, so that the Lebanon groves,
1 Beissner, Nadelholzkunde, 301, 302 (1891).
2 But at a later period Sir J. Hooker changed his opinion on this subject, and believed that the wood used by Solomon and by Nebuchadnezzar in buildings was the Lebanon cedar.
