fastigiate

Updated: May 22, 2025

The ash, the beach, some willows, many other trees and some finer species of garden-plants, as Sophora japonica, have given rise to weeping varieties, and the yew-tree or Taxus has a fastigiate form which is much valued because of its ascending branches and pyramidal habit. So it is with the pyramidal varieties of oaks, elms, the bastard-acacia and some others.

Hugo de Vries - Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation

The fastigiate trees and shrubs are a counterpart of the weeping forms. Here the tendency to grow in a horizontal direction is lacking, and with it the bilateral and symmetric structure of the branches has disappeared.

Hugo de Vries - Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation

We have said that there were no branches for the first hundred feet or so up the stem. Beyond that there were many and large limbs; which, diverging only slightly, and in a fastigiate manner, carried the tree nearly as much higher. These branches were regularly set; and covered with small, light, green leaves, forming a beautiful round head.

Mayne Reid - Bruin: The Grand Bear Hunt

Both weeping and fastigiate characters are therefore to be regarded as steps in a negative direction, and it is highly important that even such marked departures occur without transitions or intermediate forms. If these should occur, though ever so rarely, they would probably have been brought to notice, on account of the great prospect the numerous instances would offer.

Hugo de Vries - Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation

Among trees the pendulous or weeping, and the broomlike or fastigiate forms are very marked varieties, which occur in species belonging to quite different orders.

Hugo de Vries - Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation

It is considered by some authors as a distinct species, Populus italica, and by others as a broom-like variety of the Populus nigra, from which it is distinguished by its erect branches and other characters of minor importance. It is often called the pyramidal or fastigiate poplar. Its origin is absolutely unknown and it occurs only in the cultivated state.

Hugo de Vries - Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation

They are ordinarily called pyramidal or fastigiate forms, and as far as their history goes, they arise suddenly in large sowings of the normal species. The fastigiate birch was produced in this way by Baumann, the Abies concolor fastigiata by Thibault and Keteleer at Paris, the pyramidal cedar by Paillat, the analogous form of Wellingtonia by Otin.

Hugo de Vries - Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation