Martin Ambuhl wrote in message . 77.22...
(Mike Lyle) wrote (17 Jun 2003) in
om /
alt.usage.english:

Does anybody know the pedigree of the new, presumably American, name?
What is the oldest printed use we have? It's not in OED1, where
*tamarisk" is cited from 1400.

Mike.

It can't be that old, since COD10 has

salt cedar
· n. N. Amer. a European tamarisk with reddish-brown branches and
feathery grey foliage. [Tamarix gallica.]

NOAD has almost the same entry, adding that the family is Tamaricaceae.

'Tis strange that the baby Oxfords cited above have the American term
"salt cedar," but neither AHD4 nor MW10CD do.

The Britannica agrees that this term names not all 54 species of
tamarix: "The salt cedar, or French tamarisk (T. gallica), is planted on
seacoasts for shelter; it is cultivated in the United States from South
Carolina to California."

No, I can't tell you the history of this term.

Many thanks to Donna, Ben, and Martin: your sources aren't available
to me just now. Would it be too much to ask you to get back with
chapter and verse?

As AUE regulars may know, but sci.bio.botany readers may not, I like
tracing the history of our words; and have a healthy suspicion of what
may seem obvious origins. "Saltcedar", for example, seems a quite
obvious name given the American tendency to use "cedar" rather
promiscuously and the genus's well-known tolerance of saline
conditions; but there are plenty of English words and expressions
which superficially look as "logical", but which turn out on
investigation to have quite different origins. I wanted to be sure.

Even the name *Tamarix gallica* once had an alternative *Tamarix
anglica*, though I think the species hails from SW Europe. And
*Tamarix germanica* is listed by Hillier as *Myricaria germanica*,
first known to have been cultivated in Britain in 1582. The two true
tamarisks most common in British Isles gardens are *pentandra*,
flowering in August, and *tetrandra*, flowering in May, and don't
appear on the face of it to have been cultivated in Br before the 19C.
But *gallica* is naturalized on some English coasts -- though not,
perhaps, as destructively as in some US zones. I think work needs to
be done on the precise ancestry of British specimens; and I'd like to
know when the various species first arrived in the US.

(AUE knows me as a word-hack; but with another hat on I've just done
an estuarine garden in which I wanted to include both the common
species, to give a longer flowering season. Material wasn't available
in the limited time I had, so *tetrandra* it was.)

Mike.