The Silva of North America profiles all the known native trees of Canada and the United States, each species described in the wild by author Charles Sprague Sargent.
This research took over a decade at the turn of the 20th century and was still the authority almost 50 years later when this set was published. It served as an important reference work for the Arboretum library and is still of value today, especially for the exquisite illustrations by Charles Edward Faxon, who accompanied Sargent on his research trips.
Sargent and Faxon also published “Trees and Shrubs: Illustrations of new or little-known ligneous plants,” shortly after the North American work. In this 2-volume set, Sargent defined the subjects as “new or little-known trees and shrubs of the northern hemisphere which may be expected to flourish in the gardens of the United States and Europe.” None overlapped with species profiled in The Silva. Most were already in the collections at the Arnold Arboretum near Boston, where Sargent was the director, and that was a source of both plants and ideas for our Arboretum.
Reviewed by: Brian Thompson on February 24, 2025
Excerpted from the Spring 2025 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin