In spreading knowledge and promoting poplar and willow cultivation, IPC activities have not been limited to preparing the monographs mentioned earlier. When a country has organised a session it has been an opportunity for mobilising the media in favour of poplar and willow cultivation, with potentially important consequences. It has been an indirect effect, but it must not be neglected.
The IPC was directly involved in the creation of the Populetum mediterraneum proposed by the participants in the VIII Session (Spain 1955), who approved a recommendation to that effect. The first plantations were made in the spring of 1956 on a farm at Tivoli, near Rome, of the ENCC Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Centre. The plantings were continued in the following years, and now a living collection of some 300 clones of several poplar species has been assembled. In 1966, the IPC sponsored the establishment of another populetum near Cologne, Germany, which grouped about 60 clones cultivated in Central and Western Europe. Another populetum for the Near East was established near Ankara, Turkey. The Italian, German and Turkish Poplar Commissions have been requested to report on their observations and growth measurements. The data gathered in this way would permit useful comparisons and are a remarkable source of information on the behaviour of the species or varieties represented.
