INTRODUCTION - EDITORS NOTE - PREFACE - OPENING ADDRESS - LAST WORD

It is a great pleasure to be able to introduce the Proceedings of the International Conifer Conference.
The idea of holding an International Conifer Conference was first raised In November 1994 at a meeting of the Conifer Registration Advisory Committee, the body under which the Royal Horticultural Society runs the International Register. At this meeting there was a strong consensus that there had been a tremendous advance in conifer-related research since the last conference in 1970 as well as an ever-increasing horticultural interest in this garden-worthy group of plants. The Organising Committee, which consisted of 19 members (some of whom were corresponding members), first met in May 1995, followed by eight further meetings. The first few meetings were chaired by Christopher Brickell with Lawrence Banks taking on the Chairmanship for the last few meetings.
From the outset it was felt that this, the fourth RHS Conifer Conference, should have more of an international focus than previous conifer conferences. I am, therefore, so delighted to report that out of the 154 delegates that attended the conference, 70 were from non-UK countries and that 37 of these were authors or speakers. There was also an overwhelming desire by the Organising Committee to broaden the scope of the conference compared with previous conifer conferences which were largely horticultural in their content. Sessions, therefore, were designed to reflect a wide range of interests from conifers in the fossil record to conifers in forestry and the timber trade. Because so many conifer species are now threatened with extinction in the wild, it was also felt necessary to include a session on conservation and sustainability. The variety of titles presented in this volume certainly reflects the wide range of interests in this important and interesting group of plants.
In organising any conference a great number of people and organisations are called upon for their expertise and support. I wish, therefore, to thank all the sponsors for their generous support and these include the International Conifer Conservation Programme, the International Dendrological Society, the Institute of Chartered Foresters, the Forestry Commission, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and by no means least the Royal Horticultural Society. As Secretary of the organising committee I was most fortunate in having the invaluable help of Rose Colangeli from the International Conifer Conservation Programme, RBG Edinburgh who helped enormously with the unenviable task of conference bookings, registration and many other organisational matters. Many thanks are also due to Philip Thomas, also from RBG Edinburgh, for his help during the conference. We were also lucky to have had the skills of Sally Jones for her delightful painting of Pseudolarix amabilis, the subject of the conference’s poster which helped to promote the conference and which is now reproduced on the front cover of these Proceedings. Finally I have to express my profound gratitude to Dr Robert Mill for his meticulous editorship of this volume, a responsibility that he took on at quite a late stage, hence the delay in publishing date.

Dr David Rae
Secretary to the Conference Organising Committee

Editor’s Note

Forty-six papers were presented at the International Conifer Conference, as well as a wide selection of posters. Sixty contributions were received after the conference for possible inclusion in the Proceedings; 45 were papers with the remaining 15 being posters and other items such as reports on the conference tours, exhibits etc. Of the sixty original submissions, 53 are included here; five were subsequently withdrawn by their author(s), usually because the content had been or will be published elsewhere, and two were rejected during the refereeing process. The process of getting these Proceedings from the conference floor at Wye into print has been a much longer one than everyone at the conference (including myself as the author of one of the included papers) had hoped. I was asked by the Head of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to take over editing the Proceedings in November 2001. Manuscripts were sent out for peer review to a total of 52 referees world-wide, to all of whom I am deeply grateful. Their names are listed separately (see List of Reviewers), whether or not the contribution(s) they reviewed made it into the Proceedings as a result. The process of peer review does lengthen the time from submission to publication but the Proceedings have, I believe, been enhanced as a result. I also thank Aljos Farjon (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) for his skilful editing of the papers by Gennady Firsov and Alexey Naryshkin; Martin Gardner and David Rae of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh for liaising with the publishers; and Piers Trehane for converting contributors’ discs (in all kinds of formats) into readable text.

Robert Mill
Editor
4 August 2003

Preface

The papers contained in this volume of Acta Horticulturae form the proceedings of the Fourth International Conifer Conference. Keynote speakers and authors of selected contributed oral and poster presentations were given the opportunity to submit a manuscript for publication.
These manuscripts were reviewed by the conference editors and members of the Editorial Committee. Only those papers judged suitable for publication following the authors consideration of reviewer suggestions appear in this volume of Acta Horticulturae.
The ISHS acknowledges and appreciates the contribution of the editors and the reviewers. They have made a significant contribution to improving the quality of this publication.

The ISHS Board of Directors

The International Conifer Conference - Opening Address
Lawrence Banks, CBE, VMH
Ridgebourne
Kington
Herefordshire, HR5 3EG, UK

It is really a great pleasure to welcome you all here to Wye College today. I might add that Wye has recently become part of Imperial College London, probably the most prestigious science based university college in Europe, of which I have the great honour to be Treasurer. I am only sorry that my co-chairman Chris Brickell is unable to be with us today. I must start by thanking all our sponsors who have made this Conference possible. We have a glittering array; the two Royal Botanic Gardens, at Edinburgh and Kew, the Royal Horticultural Society who was the sole sponsor of the three previous conferences, the Forestry Commission, the Institute of Chartered Foresters, the International Conifer Conservation Programme and the International Dendrology Society. It is a special pleasure to have Professor Peter Crane, the new Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, with us today. I must also thank the organising Committee; in particular David Rae from Edinburgh who has been its secretary and Aljos Farjon from Kew who has acted as programme co-ordinator: without their work we would not be here today. The first Conifer Conference was held 108 years ago in 1891 at the RHS Garden in Chiswick, the second in 1931 and the third in 1970 both at the RHS New Hall in London. Although my family were not there in 1891, I note with some pride that we participated in both the subsequent two, winning a Gold Medal for a display of cultivated conifers in 1970 – so I have some slight reason to be here today. Many distinguished British botanists, horticulturists and arboriculturalists participated in the earlier events. I would single out William Dallimore in 1931 and Alan Mitchell in 1970 amongst a galaxy of distinguished names including Dr Maxwell Masters, H.J. Veitch, F.R.S. Balfour, and Bruce Jackson. Foreign participants were less common and I was amused to read Henry McLaren’s – later Lord Aberconway – comments in 1931: Two of the papers come from overseas, that of Dr Cockayne and that of Dr Slavin … I can only say that they display an amount of knowledge and research which is surprising. By 1970 foreigners were conspicuous by their absence and indeed Charles, Lord Aberconway, Henry McLaren’s son, noted in his opening address that the theme was Conifers in the British Isles. We have, I am pleased to say, become a little less parochial twenty-nine years later. This year’s Conference is bigger, broader and better than any of its predecessors: I am sure that no previous Conifer Conference had as many as 154 delegates. Each of the earlier ones had some 14 or 15 papers, this week we have 46. We have delegates from 26 countries and speakers from 12, who will, I am sure, surprise you with their knowledge and research. Thus, although this is the fourth Conifer Conference, it is the first International Conifer Conference. Some things, however, remain unchanged. Henry McLaren said in 1931: “One of the outstanding points of this conference is nomenclature …. we must re-learn the names and re-label our specimens” and, “It is too much perhaps, to hope that nomenclature is finally settled …. but we shall know that we have got it as right as we can at the present time”. I fear we can only repeat his hopes today. When David Rae was proof-reading my introduction, he sent me a fax on the correct spelling of co-chairman giving a choice of three options and adding that “Opinions are divided … but then most of them are of taxonomists”. Plus ça change. We live in a different and more complex world today than we did 29 years ago. The debate between economic and ecological interests has intensified and will no doubt continue to do so. Conifers and their cultivation, exploitation and conservation are deeply involved in this debate. The beginnings of genetic manipulation are raising the temperature as is the use of exotic conifers in place of native ones. Britain is a microcosm of the world in this, the use of Pinus contorta in the Flow Country of Sutherland is paralleled, if more successfully, by the use of Pinus radiata in New Zealand. These are important and controversial issues which affect not only foresters, scientists, ecologists and landscape architects but all of us who are concerned with the future of our planet. In 1970 Charles Aberconway said: “Britain is one of the poorest equipped countries in the world in native conifers” and despite this, “cultivates as wide a range of conifers as can be seen anywhere”. Should we rejoice in this or regret it? With the gathering of talent we have here this week in Kent, we have the opportunity to add all our knowledge and experience to a debate which becomes more acute and important day by day. I hope that none of us will shrink from controversy and that professional and amateur alike will speak their mind. We have the chance to change things for the fourth time in 108 years. Please seize it: you all have a contribution to make.

Last Words

On leaving the Conference I felt elated and challenged. I think we can truly say that the delegates displayed an amount of knowledge and research which was surprising. It seems to me that we achieved a great deal, not only on the formal sessions, but also in the numerous private conversations between delegates. From a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines we found plenty of subjects to unite us in debate and controversy. I cannot resist the temptation to pick up one or two highlights from the perspective of a non-scientific delegate. There were spirited and sometimes heated debates between taxonomists more interested in horizontal trees, or molecular cladograms, and those following the vertical disciplines of traditional morphological taxonomy. The fervour with which these discussions were pursued would not have surprised our nineteenth century forbears in the age of Huxley and Darwin. Remarks such as “But it’s true!” and “ No way!” will ring in my ears for a long time: from such disputes good science comes. The description of southern pines retreating from the encroaching ice like Napoleon’s troops from Moscow and returning having caught a nasty disease from Mexican oaks was a brilliant example of how to make advanced research accessible to the non-scientific listener. All of us who were privileged to attend will take away happy memories, new friendships and challenges to which to respond in the years ahead. The questions which the Conference raised and in some cases left, partly or wholly, unanswered will be a stimulus to the science of the future. On that science depends the fate of the planet on which we live; an awesome responsibility. I hope it will not be another 29 years before the next conference is convened, maybe in New Caledonia. If we wait that long, I will be 90 and unlikely to make it even if I survive the pests and diseases so convincingly described by some of our speakers. Thank you all for coming; you made the Conference so worthwhile. I was proud and greatly honoured to be your Chairman and much enjoyed it.

Lawrence Banks