country folk in Italy and Spain, being ground into flour, whence
excellent cakes and pottage are made. British housewives regard them
only as a luxury, and large quantities are imported into this country
annually; but chestnuts are as nutritive and wholesome as they are
palatable, and there are few more appetising odours than that wafted
from the charcoal stove of the itinerant vendor of chestnuts, a familiar
figure in London streets so soon as chill October draws to a close. I
may confess to having partaken, under cloud of night, of this wayside
delicacy; nor do I care how soon the opportunity presents itself of
repeating the treat.
Chestnuts ripen well and regularly in the southern English counties,
though they are considerably smaller than those imported from the
Continent. In Scotland we seldom have enough summer heat to bring them
to maturity. The summers of 1911 and 1914, indeed, were long enough and
hot enough to ripen them; but even so the nuts were so small that there
was more patience than profit in collecting them.
Even though we cannot actually trace the introduction of this noble tree
to our Roman conquerors, there is proof in Anglo-Saxon literature that
it was known in England before the Norman conquest, for it receives
mention by an early writer as the "cisten" or "cyst-beam," "cisten"
being but a form of the Latin _castanea_. Chaucer (1340-1400) is the
earliest English poet to mention it, the list of trees wherein he
includes it being a very interesting one as showing the nature of
English woodland in the fourteenth century.
As oke, firre, birche, aspe, elder, elme, poplere,
Willow, holm,[6] plane,[7] boxe, chesten, laure,
Maple, thorne, beche, awe, hasel, whipultre,[8]
How they were felde shall not be tolde by me.
The right English name is, therefore, "chesten"; modern usage has added
"nut," which is as irrational as it would be to speak of a "hazel-nut"
to indicate a hazel or a "fircone" to indicate a fir.
Shakespeare, of course, was quite familiar both with the tree and its
fruit. Thus one of the witches in _Macbeth_:
A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap,
And mounched and mounched and mounched.
"Give me," quoth I.
"Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Moreover, the chestnut had been long enough established in England to
have its name borrowed to denote a rich shade of russet. So in _As You
Like It_:
_Rosalind._ I' faith, his hair is of a good colour.
_Celia._ An excellent colour; your chestnut was ever the only
colour.
The Spanish chestnut is essentially a southern growth, being found wild
only in Southern Europe, Algeria, Asia Minor, and Northern Persia. It is
remarkable, therefore, that it should thrive so well in the British
Isles, even in the northern part thereof; for although, as aforesaid, it
is shy of fruiting in Scotland, it grows to enormous proportions in that
country.
Probably the tallest chestnut north of the Tweed is one at Yester, in
East Lothian, which in 1908 measured 112 feet high by 18 feet 8 inches
in girth. Next to it comes a fine tree at Marchmont, in Berwickshire,
102 feet high by 14½ in girth, with a clear bole of 32 feet. Still
further north, there is a huge fellow at Castle Leod, in Ross-shire,
which, though only 76 feet high, girths no less than 21 feet 4 inches at
5 feet from the ground.
The finest chestnut I have seen anywhere is in the woodland of Thoresby
Park, near Nottingham, being within the bounds of the ancient Sherwood
Forest. In 1904 it was 110 feet high, with a straight bole quite clear
of branches for 70 feet. Its cubic contents in timber were estimated at
300 feet. Loudon measured this tree in 1837 and found it to be 70 feet
high, with a girth of only 11 feet at 1 foot from the ground. Its girth
at that height is now over 17 feet. It is impossible to imagine a more
perfect specimen of the species than this beautiful tree. It was planted
about the year 1730, and is, therefore, now, say, 180 years old.
Planters may accept a lesson from this tree, which has been drawn up to
its fine stature by being grown in close forest among beeches, some of
which, of the same height as itself, have been cleared away to show its
fine proportions. Without such discipline, it might have expended its
vigour in building up an enormously swollen trunk, instead of towering
to its present height.
This tendency towards breadth instead of height may be seen in countless
places, both in England and Scotland. The Trysting Tree at Bemersyde,
the massive pair in Mr. Wallace's garden at Lochryan, and the great
chestnut at Myres Castle, in Fife (19 feet 9 inches in girth), are
examples in point. At Deepdene, in Surrey, there stands a tree of this
character, the clear bole being only 8 feet high, but girthing
26½ feet _at the narrowest part_. Near to it is one of nobler
proportions--90 feet high, with a girth of 21 feet 5 inches.
There is one characteristic of the chestnut which, while it adds much to
the beauty of the grove, certainly detracts from the value of the
timber. Just as one may see in a Gothic cloister how the architect,
wearying of straight columns, introduces here and there a twisted one,
so the trunk of the chestnut often grows in a regularly spiral manner.
Economically and commercially, the timber of Spanish chestnut, up to a
certain age, is no whit inferior to that of the oak--superior, indeed,
in its young stages, owing to its producing less sap wood. Chestnut
palings, gates, etc., are the most durable that can be made of any
British-grown wood. In 1907 Lord Ducie exhibited at the Gloucestershire
Agricultural Show some fencing posts made from chestnuts which he
planted in 1855 and felled in 1885. These posts remained perfectly sound
after exposure to wind and weather for two and twenty years.
Not only in durability, but in other qualities, the timber of chestnut
is fully equal to that of oak, which it closely resembles; and, as it
grows much faster and to a larger size than the oak, it would soon drive
its rival out of the market, but for its greater liability to one grave
defect, namely, "ring-shake." This is the name given to a splitting of
the wood along one of the concentric annual rings, thereby ruining the
log for the sawing of planks. The cause of this internal rupture is
obscure, but the injury takes place in chestnuts over seventy years of
age more commonly than in any other tree, and, as it cannot be detected
until the tree is felled, merchants are very shy of offering for a
standing lot.
As a coppice tree, the Spanish chestnut has no equal in this country;
the rotation of the crop is far shorter than that of oak, the poles are
more durable, and a steady demand has been created for an admirable form
of paling made up of split chestnut staves, set closely together upright
and bound with wire. This kind of fence, however, ought not to be used
in any fox-hunting country, for high-couraged hounds, attempting to
climb it, get impaled on the sharp tops and frightfully injured.
"Chestnut," it is well known, is uncomplimentary slang for a worn-out
anecdote. They told me in Philadelphia that the phrase had its source in
a theatre in Walnut Street, one of the principal thoroughfares of that
city. This theatre was built in rivalry of an older one in Chestnut
Street: its _répertoire_ lacked originality, and patrons of the other
house, when they recognised jokes they had heard and situations they had
seen there, used to hail the players with the cry--"A chestnut! a
chestnut!" And this explanation may serve as well as another. In this
connection I may be permitted to put on record a _bon mot_ by a
well-known member of the present Radical Government. We had been dining,
a small party, in the House of Commons, shortly after the late Sir M.
Grant Duff had published the third volume of his reminiscences, which,
it may be remembered, contained many anecdotes not told for the first
time. One of the ladies of our party expressed a wish to see
Westminster Hall, and, having been conducted thither, asked me what the
fine roof was made of. "It is of oak," I replied; "some people used to
think it was of chestnuts, but I don't suppose there were enough
chestnuts in England to furnish a roof like that in the reign of
Richard." "No," observed Mr. ----, "Grant Duff had not published his
third volume!"
The Ash
"Oh it's hame and it's hame, at hame I fain would be,
Hame, lads, hame in the north countrie;
Oh the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree,
They a' nourish best in the north countrie."
The bard who was responsible for this ancient jingle assigned that
precedence to the oak which common sentiment has always accorded to it
as the monarch of British woodland. Economically, also, the oak held the
first place so long as Britannia ruled the waves from wooden walls, but
in this ironclad era our Admiralty has little use for oak timber, and
there is now no broad-leaved or "hardwood" tree that can be cultivated
so profitably as the ash. Indeed it is hardly doubtful that this is the
only species of tree, willows, poplars and certain conifers excepted,
which a young man may plant with reasonable expectation of receiving any
pecuniary profit during his lifetime. The properties which ensure to the
ash (_Fraxinus excelsior_) this superiority to all rivals are its
hardihood, the matchless quality of its timber for many purposes, and
its market value from a very early age.
First, as to its hardihood. No British tree, not even the oak, is so
wary of starting into growth before all risk of late spring frost is
past. Tennyson, the very Virgil among British bards for keen observation
of nature, has embalmed this characteristic in a beautiful passage in
_The Princess_:
Why lingereth she to clothe herself in love?
Delaying, as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself when all the woods are green.
Once, and once only, do I remember the prudent ash to have been caught,
namely, in 1897, when after a month of deceptive warmth, the mercury
fell to 10° Fahrenheit on the 22nd May. Twenty-two degrees of frost
within a month of the summer solstice! No wonder the young ash foliage,
which had been lured into precocious growth, was shrivelled and
blackened as by fire. And that, not only in the north, but in Herts and
Hants, as I had occasion to note when trout-fishing in these southern
counties. Even the beech and hawthorn fared no better, but their leaves
were seared brown instead of black.
Then as to wind exposure, what tree can compare with the ash for length
and strength of anchorage against the gale? It is astonishing to what
distance it sends its tough roots, whether they run through free soil or
wind themselves into the crevices of limestone rock. This far-ranging
habit renders it the worst of all neighbours to a garden, and no ash
tree should be suffered to grow within fifty yards of ground where herbs
or fruit are cultivated.
[Illustration: MANNA ASH (_Fraxinus ornus_)
AT WAKEHURST PLACE]
For toughness and strength the timber of ash has no equal, even among
foreign woods; and it is always in request at a good price for
waggon-building, implement-making, and other purposes. Moreover, British
ash, properly grown, is more highly esteemed than ash imported from
other countries. Unfortunately, owing to our neglect of systematic and
economic forestry, as distinct from arboriculture and the management of
game covert, ash is very seldom to be seen grown under proper conditions
in the United Kingdom. It should be grown in woods sufficiently close to
draw the stems up to such a height as will ensure a good length of clean
bole. Standing in the open or in hedgerows, it sends out huge side
branches which destroy the quality of the timber.
In consequence of our misuse of this tree, which ought to be the most
valuable of all assets to British forestry, good ash timber has become
exceedingly scarce; although undoubtedly there are an immense number of
excellent stems in most parts of the country, which, if landowners
generally understood their own interest and the true welfare of their
woodland, would be felled and sold before they reached an unmanageable
size.
In one respect the ash possesses a merit superior to any other hardwood
tree, except, as aforesaid, willow and poplar, in that it reaches
commercial maturity soonest. Grown under forest conditions in good,
well-drained soil, it is most fit for the market at from fifty to
seventy years of age. But, as it is readily saleable from twenty years
old upwards, an ash plantation may be reckoned on bringing in some
revenue from thinnings long before the main crop is ripe for the axe.
For instance, I was lately offered a very good price for ash poles
averaging nine inches in diameter for the manufacture of billiard cues.
The regular supply is drawn from Switzerland; but could most easily be
furnished from British woodland if the necessary care were bestowed upon
the saplings. The trees should not be allowed to stand after attaining
eighty years of growth; for the timber, even if it continued sound,
hardens after that age, and, losing much of its characteristic
elasticity, does not command such a good price.
Homer says that the spear of Achilles had an ashen shaft, and all true
Scots should hold the ash in special honour, forasmuch as of yore it
furnished staves for their national weapon, the pike. It was from the
long ashen pike-shafts of Randolph Moray's handful of Scots that de
Clifford's cavalry recoiled on the Eve of St. John, 1314, after thrice
attempting to break that bristling fence of steel; it was through the
staunchness of his pikemen that next day, on the slopes of Bannockburn,
Edward Bruce was able to bear the brunt of attack by the English
columns, hurl them into unutterable ruin among the Milton bogs, and so
set seal, once for all, to Scottish independence and freedom.
It was probably owing to the high value that the Scots had learnt to set
upon ash timber, both for military and domestic use, that this tree was
more commonly planted than any other in compliance with the statute of
James II. (fourteenth Parliament, cap. 80), requiring every landowner
to cause his tenants to plant and maintain trees in number proportioned
to the extent of their holdings. This was in 1424; in 1573 it was
re-enacted, along with "sindrie louabil and gud Acts," by 6 James vi. c.
84; whereof the effect may still be traced in the landscape of many
parts of Scotland in the shape of old ash trees standing round
farmhouses and other homesteads. Often, where two or more farms have
been thrown into one, the trees remain long after the disused buildings
have been removed.
Belief in the medicinal virtues of the ash was very general in early
times, probably derived from the Orient, where the manna ash (_F.
ornus_) abounds. Yet Pliny, who recognised the difference between the
two species, not only recommended extract of the common ash as a draught
to cure snake-bites and as superior to any other remedy when applied to
ulcers, but solemnly affirms that he has himself proved that if ash
leaves are laid in a circle round a snake and a fire, the snake will
crawl into the fire rather than touch the leaves. Even sage John Evelyn
recommended ash extract to cure deafness, toothache and other ailments,
and, later still, Gilbert White of Selborne describes the superstitious
practice of passing sickly children through the stems of ash-trees,
split for that purpose, in the belief that, if the clefts grew together
again after the wedges were removed, the patients would recover. For
household purposes, ash provides excellent firewood, which burns as well
green as dry.
The tallest ash measured by Mr. H. J. Elwes in 1907, stood 146 feet
high, and was 12 feet 7 inches in girth 5 feet from the ground. This
fine tree is growing with many others of about equal height in Lord
Darnley's park at Cobham, in Kent. The tallest ash recorded in Scotland
was one at Mount Stuart, in the Island of Bute, stated to have been 134
feet high in 1879; but this has now disappeared. The loftiest certified
by Messrs. Elwes and Henry as still standing is a great tree at
Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire, which, in 1904, stood 110 feet high, with
a girth of only 8 feet 3 inches. Sir Archibald Buchan-Hepburn, however,
claims to have one at Smeaton Hepburn measuring 124 feet in height and
11 feet in girth in 1908.
Weeping ashes have rather gone out of vogue, but they are very pretty
things if the sport is grafted on a sufficiently high stem and the stock
be not suffered to outgrow the graft, as it will do if not attended to.
By far the most successful example of this kind of freak tree is the one
at Elvaston Castle, near Derby, 98 feet high with branches hanging to a
length of 60 or 70 feet, a truly remarkable object, and beautiful
withal, as may be seen from the fine plate in Messrs. Elwes and Henry's
book. Although its requirement of a deep, cool and generous soil render
the ash unsuitable for London conditions, yet there are a few handsome
weeping ashes in that city, notably one at the south-west corner of
Bedford Square.
Like all our indigenous trees, the ash has impressed itself upon our
place-names. Ashby, Ashton, Ashridge, Ascot--the map of England is
peppered freely with such names; that of Scotland more sparsely, owing
to the preponderance of Gaelic in the topography. The Gael employed
several forms of his name for the ash, namely, _fuinnse_, _fuinnsean_,
and _fuinnseog_ (pronounced funsha, funshan, and funshog), whence many
names in southern and western Ireland such as Funcheon, a river in Cork,
Funshin, and Funshinagh several times in Connaught. But the initial
consonant soon dropped off, and in northern Ireland and among the
Scottish Gaels the word became _uinnse_ (inshy) preserved in the name
Inshaw Hill (Wigtownshire), Killyminshaw (Dumfriesshire), etc.; or
_uinnseog_ (inshog), recognisable in Inshock (Forfar), Inshaig (Argyll),
Inshog (Nairn), Drumnaminshoch and Knockninshock (Kirkcudbright). The
plural _uinnsean_ (inshan) has assumed a very grotesque form in
Wigtownshire, where there are two farms twenty miles apart named
Inshanks.
Liability to disease is an important consideration in regard to forest
trees, and the ash has the merit of being remarkably free from ailments.
The worst malady from which it is liable to suffer seriously is known as
ash canker, whereby the timber is rendered worthless except for firing.
Happily it does not seem very contagious; for I have known badly
cankered trees standing for twenty years and more without imparting the
disease to their healthy neighbours. The late Dr. Masters attributed the
mischief to the work of the larva of a small moth (_Tinea curtisella_).
That creature may start the injury, but it is certainly taken up and
aggravated by the fungoid organism _Nectria ditissima_. Although, as
aforesaid, the disease does not appear to be readily communicable to
healthy trees, it is not advisable to leave the unsightly invalids
standing. The sooner they are cut down and burnt the better.
There are between fifty and sixty exotic species of ash, but among them
there is only one known to me as specially desirable for ornamental
planting, namely, the Manna Ash (_Fraxinus ornus_), producing a
profusion of creamy-white plumes of blossom in June. This pretty tree is
the source of the manna of commerce, a sweet and mildly laxative
substance obtained by tapping the stem in late summer and allowing the
sap which flows from the wound to coagulate.
Manna of various sorts is collected from many different kinds of plant;
that which supported the Israelites in the desert is supposed to have
been an exudation from the tamarisk; but Sicilian manna is the only kind
that is recognised as an article of European trade. In Sicily the manna
ash is planted in _frassinetti_ or ash-yards, grown for eight years and
regularly tapped, till the main stem is exhausted, when it is cut down,
and a fresh growth is allowed to spring from the root. The active
principle in manna is mannite, a hexatomic alcohol, chemically expressed
as C_{6}H_{8}(OH)_{6}. The manna ash is not often seen in this country;
those specimens which are of any size are invariably grafted plants; but
a stock is easily raised from seed, which Continental nurserymen
readily supply. In Dalmatia and Montenegro, where this tree abounds,
drivers stick the flowers thereof in the harness of their horses to keep
off flies, which dislike the peculiar odour. A Chinese species (_F.
mariesii_) is near of kin to _F. ornus_, and is said to bear flowers of
superior beauty to that tree; but of this I can only write from
hearsay.
The Linden Tree or Lime
When we speak of a lime tree we conform to a corrupt usage, for the
right English name is "line" or "linden tree," linden being the
adjectival form of the Anglo-Saxon "lind," just as "asp" and "oak" give
the adjectives "aspen" and "oaken." The late Professor Skeat, foremost
authority in English etymology, observed that "the change from 'line' to
'lime' does not seem to be older than about A.D. 1700"; but he
overlooked the use of the modern form by John Evelyn, who, in his
_Sylva_ (1664), writes always of "the lime tree or linden," showing that
the change had taken place between his day and Shakespeare's.
_Prospero._ ... Say, my spirit,
How fares the King and his?
_Ariel._ Confin'd together
In the same fashion as you gave in charge;
Just as you left them, sir; all prisoners
In the line grove which weather-fends your cell.
(_Tempest_, Act v. sc. 1.)
The root meaning of the word is "smooth," referring to the texture of
the timber, which caused it of old to be in great request for making
shields, so that in Anglo-Saxon _lind_ meant a shield, as well as being
the name of the tree.
[Illustration: COMMON LIME (_Tilia vulgaris_)]
It is strange that Tennyson, so sensitive to delicacy of sound, should
have used the modern form in his frequent mention of the tree. Only one
instance comes to mind of his preferring the more musical dissyllable.
When Amphion set the forest dancing--
The _Linden_ broke her ranks and rent
The woodbine wreaths that bind her,
And down the middle--buzz! she went,
With all her bees behind her.
The limes form a somewhat perplexing family, inasmuch as, of the score
or so of species recognised by botanists, several cannot be reputed as
more than hybrids or sports. The only species claimed as indigenous to
Britain is the small-leaved lime (_Tilia cordata_), and even about this
botanists are not of a certain mind. For instance, the joint authors of
_The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_ have formed different opinions,
Dr. Henry considering it to be "a native of England, ranging from
Cumberland southward," while Mr. Elwes fails to reconcile this with the
facts that no fossil remains of this tree have been identified in the
British Isles, and that he has never been able to find, or to find
anybody else who has found, a self-sown seedling.
There are many fine specimens of the small-leaved lime in England,
ranging from 80 to 110 feet high; but it has never been known to attain
the dimensions of the common lime (_T. europæa_), which, although it is
an exotic species, has made itself thoroughly at home between the
Straits of Dover and the Moray Firth, and is the tree which those who do
not scrupulously discriminate regard as _the_ lime tree _par
excellence_.
It would require much space to mention all the notable limes in our
country, for they were very extensively planted 200 or 300 years ago,
and, being long-lived, many of them have grown to great size. Mr. Elwes
gives the palm to the lime grove at Ashridge, Lord Brownlow's fine park
in Hertfordshire. These trees were planted in 1660, and average 120 feet
in height and 10 feet in girth. They have been grown in a close row,
only 12 to 15 feet apart, and have thereby escaped the defects to which
limes are so prone as ornamental trees--namely, spreading to ungainly
breadth instead of rising to height, and covering their trunks with an
unsightly mass of brush.
[Illustration: FLOWER OF THE LINDEN TREE (_Tilia europæa_)]