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Arboretum

Botanical collection composed exclusively of trees

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Arboretum
Unknown author · Public domain

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In Latin, an arboretum is a place planted with trees, not necessarily in this specific sense, and "arboretum" as an English word is first recorded used by John Claudius Loudon in 1833 in The Gardener's Magazine, but the concept was already long-established by then.

An arboretum specializing in growing conifers is known as a pinetum. Other specialist arboreta include saliceta (willows), populeta (poplar), and querceta (oaks). Related collections include a fruticetum, from the Latin frutex, meaning shrub, much more often a shrubbery, and a viticetum (from the Latin vitis, meaning vine, referring in particular to a grape vine). A palm house is a large greenhouse for palms and other tender trees.

History

Egyptian pharaohs planted exotic trees and cared for them; they brought ebony wood from the Sudan, and pine and cedar from Syria. Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt returned bearing thirty-one live frankincense trees, the roots of which were carefully kept in baskets for the duration of the voyage; this was the first recorded attempt to transplant foreign trees. It is reported that Hatshepsut had these trees planted in the courts of her Deir el Bahri mortuary temple complex.

Marco Polo describes how Kublai Khan collected specimens of evergreen trees that he admired from around the Mongol Empire in the late 13th century, and had them brought by elephant to his winter capital at Khanbaliq (modern Beijing), where they were planted on a large artificial mound, "a hundred paces in height and over a mile in cicumference", known as the "Green Mound", with a palace or pavilion at the top. The ground of the mound was also covered in pieces of green stone.

In an arboretum a wide variety of trees and shrubs are cultivated. Typically the individual trees are labelled for identification. The trees may also be organised in a way to aid their study or growth.

Many tree collections have been claimed as the first modern arboretum, with the term applied retrospectively as it probably did not come into use even orally until the later eighteenth century, or later. Probably the most important early proponent of the arboretum in the English-speaking transatlantic world was the prolific landscape gardener and writer, John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843) who undertook many gardening commissions and published the Gardener's Magazine, Encyclopaedia of Gardening and other major works. Loudon's Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, 8 vols., (1838) is probably the most significant work on the subject in British history and included an account of all trees and shrubs that were hardy in the British climate, an international history of arboriculture, an assessment of the cultural, economic and industrial value of trees and four volumes of plates.

Loudon urged that a national arboretum be created and called for arboreta and other systematic collections to be established in public parks, private gardens, country estates, and other places. He regarded the Derby Arboretum (1840) as the most important landscape-gardening commission of the latter part of his career because it demonstrated the benefits of a public arboretum (for more details see below). Commenting on the Loddiges family's famous Hackney Botanic Garden arboretum, begun in 1816, which was a commercial nursery that subsequently opened free to the public, for educational benefit, every Sunday, Loudon wrote: "The arboretum looks better this season than it has ever done since it was planted... The more lofty trees suffered from the late high winds, but not materially. We walked round the two outer spirals of this coil of trees and shrubs; viz. from Acer to Quercus. There is no garden scene about London so interesting". A plan of the Loddiges' arboretum was included in The Encyclopaedia of Gardening, 1834 edition. Leaves from Loddiges' arboretum and in some instances entire trees, were studiously drawn to illustrate Loudon's encyclopaedic book Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum which also incorporated drawings from other early botanic gardens and parklands throughout the United Kingdom.

One example of an early European tree collection is the Trsteno Arboretum, near Dubrovnik in Croatia. The date of its founding is unknown, but it was already in existence by 1492, when a 15 m (49 ft) span aqueduct to irrigate the arboretum was constructed; this aqueduct is still in use. The garden was created by the prominent local Gučetić/Gozze family. It suffered two major disasters in the 1990s but its two unique and ancient Oriental Planes remained standing.

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