"O looks at the trees!" they cried.

Press, 15 March 1980, Page 16

"O looks at the trees!" they cried.

..Robert Bridges (7 “London Snow

Pencil drawing by

OWEN R. LEE

Text by

DERRICK ROONEY

14. TREE OF HEAVEN

The .Chinese tree of heaven, Ailanthus altissima, is a large, suckering tree, perhaps not large enough to reach the sky, as the name implies, but certainly growing very rapidly to a height of 20 metres or more; it is one of the Tastest-growing deciduous trees, and tor that reason is not suitable for a small garden. The tree of heaven is native to northern China, but transplants readily to all temperate zones, and has become naturalised in some countries of Europe, and in eastern North America. When covered with its small, creamy, fluffy flowers in late summer it is pretty, but -it is mainly for the large, handsome leaves that it is plapted. These are a metre or more long, though being pinnate (i.e. constructed like a feather, with numerous leaflets along opposite sides of a central stalk) they have an airiness that belies their size. In autumn they turn soft yellow before. falling. This specimen in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens has been allowed to grow, unfettered, into a tree, but often the ailanthus is treated like a perennial, and cut to the ground every winter —‘a treatment that encourages lush growth, with multiple stems and even larger, glossier leaves. It also prevents flowering, which is no great loss, for despite its beauty the ailanthus is not a tree to be approached lightly at flowering time. The scent is pungent, often unpleasant. Pierre Nicholas le Cheron dTncaryille, the French missionary who sent seeds of the tree of heaven home to. Europe from Peking about the middle .of the eighteenth century, called it “frene puant,” the “stinking ash.” In leaf it does have a superficial similarity to the ash tree, but it is in fact a member of the Simarubaceae, a family of about 30 genera of trees and shrubs, mostly from the tropics, whose common feature is a bitter bark—one of them produces the medicinal extract, quassia. error is understandable, for he was scarcely a botanist. Though he was given the opportunity of a major role in horticultural, history by being the first European to botanise in northern China, he was ill prepared for it, having had a scant six months

instruction in natural history, and, on his own admission, only a “superficial tincture” of scientific knowledge. The Chineses added to his problems by confining him, most of the time, to the capital. When he did manage to collect and despatch a consignment of seeds and bulbs in 1743 they never reached their destination; the ship carrying them was captured by the British. Another consignment, two years later, was lost by shipwreck. When plants that he collected eventually did reach Europe, they were neglected. Most of his herbarium specimens were simply pigeonholed by his patron, the eminent botanist Bernard de Jussieu, and were not properly examined for nearly a century and a half. Many of the seeds he sent were never sown. In his own lifetime, d’lncarville was a forgotten man. He reported assiduously, and regularly, to his patron in Europe, but went for as long as six years at a stretch without a reply. In 1757 he treated a patient for a seemingly minor illness, caught the disease himself, and died.

History has treated him no less unkindly than life did, and although his name is perpetuated in a genus of large-flowered herbaceous plants (incarvillea) he is today almost a forgotten man of horticulture. Yet he deserves an honoured place, for he was responsible for the introduction to France and England of some important trees and shrubs, not only the tree of heaven but the Asian arbor-vitae (Thuja orientals), tfie lovely summer-flowering tree, Koelreuteria panicplata, the “silk tree,” Albizzia julibrissin, and others. His name does not appear in the international register as the authority for any of these introductions. Fie did not name any of his plants. The tree of heaven did not, in fact, receive a valid name until the present century—and that name, ironically enough, js no more than a dog-Latinisation by an American professor of the original Chinese vernacular name. Loosely translated, it means that the tree is tall enough to reach the heavens.