PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The studies of the trees of North America (exclusive of Mexico) which have been carried on by the agents and correspondents of the Arboretum in the sixteen years since the publication of the Manual of the Trees of North America have increased the knowledge of the subject and made necessary a new edition of this Manual. The explorations of these sixteen years have added eighty-nine species of trees and many recently distinguished varieties of formerly imperfectly understood species to the silva of the United States, and made available much additional information in regard to the geographical distribution of American trees. Further studies have made the reduction of seven species of the first edition to varieties of other species seem desirable; and two species, Amelanchier obovalis and Cercocarpus parvifolius, which were formerly considered trees, but are more properly shrubs, are omitted. The genus Anamomis is now united with Eugenia; and the Arizona Pinus strobiformis Sarg. (not Engelm.) is now referred to Pinus flexilis James.
Representatives of four Families and sixteen Genera which did not appear in the first edition are described in the new edition in which will be found an account of seven hundred and seventeen species of trees in one hundred and eighty-five genera, illustrated by seven hundred and eighty-three figures, or one hundred and forty-one figures in addition to those which appeared in the first edition.
An International Congress of Botanists which assembled in Vienna in 1905, and again in Brussels in 1910, adopted rules of nomenclature which the world, with a few American exceptions, has now generally adopted. The names used in this new Manual are based on the rules of this International Congress. These are the names used by the largest number of the students of plants, and it is unfortunate that the confusion in the names of American trees must continue as long as the Department of Agriculture, including the Forest Service of the United States, uses another and now generally unrecognized system.
The new illustrations in this edition are partly from drawings made by Charles Edward Faxon, who died before his work was finished; it was continued by the skillful pencil of Mary W. Gill, of Washington, to whom I am grateful for her intelligent coöperation.
It is impossible to name here all the men and women who have in the last sixteen years contributed to this account of American trees, and I will now only mention Mr. T. G. Harbison and Mr. E. J. Palmer, who as agents of the Arboretum have studied for years the trees of the Southeastern States and of the Missouri-Texas region, Professor R. S. Cocks, of Tulane University, who has explored carefully and critically the forests of Louisiana, and Miss Alice Eastwood, head of the Botanical Department of the California Academy of Sciences, who has made special journeys in Alaska and New Mexico in the interest of this Manual. Mr. Alfred Rehder, Curator of the Herbarium of the Arboretum, has added to the knowledge of our trees in several Southern journeys; and to him I am specially indebted for assistance and advice in the preparation of the keys to the different groups of plants found in this volume.
This new edition of the Manual contains the results of forty-four years of my continuous study of the trees of North America carried on in every part of the United States and in many foreign countries. If these studies in any way serve to increase the knowledge and the love of trees I shall feel that these years have not been misspent.
C. S. Sargent. Arnold Arboretum
September, 1921