Hill, the locust thrives well, reproducing itself freely from self-sown
seed, and forming very lovely objects when covered with fragrant white
blossoms in June. Even in such parts of England where it does best,
it is not profitable to let it stand longer than, say, twenty or thirty
years, when it makes admirable fencing and gate-posts, which are almost
imperishable. At a greater age the trunk becomes coarse and deeply
furrowed, often becoming rotten towards the centre. Elwes mentions a
locust tree at Frogmore, near Windsor, as the largest in Britain, which
he found in 1908 to be 88 feet high by 14 feet 7 inches in girth. One
about the same height at Bowood, Lord Lansdowne's place in Wiltshire,
was slightly taller, but girthed only 8½ feet.
In France and Italy the locusts thrive as vigorously as in their native
continent, and are exceedingly beautiful during the flowering season.
They also make very effective hedges, being regularly cut over, when
they send up long and strong shoots armed with murderous thorns.
Few trees stand the drought, heat, and smoke of London as well as the
_Robinia_, which carries its verdure unchanged long after the limes and
elms have become seared and unsightly. Many a time, when Parliament
continued sitting through and after the dog days, have I refreshed my
eyes by gazing upon a fine _Robinia_ which stood at the corner of the
late Lord Sefton's house in Belgrave Square. But that tree is no more,
for, when the house changed hands after its former owner's death, and
was put into the hands of builders and decorators, they felled my
friendly _Robinia_.
There are three species of _Robinia_ seldom planted in this
country--namely, _R. hispida_, _R. neo-mexicana_, and _R. viscosa_, all
with beautiful pink or rose-coloured flowers. Of these, the first-named,
a native of Carolina, is the most desirable, but it is even more brittle
than the locust or false acacia. Its blossoms are so exquisite as to
entitle the tree to the advantage of being trained on a wall.
There are two other trees of the peaflower order which one would fain
see more frequently planted in the sunnier districts of Great Britain,
namely the Judas tree (_Cercis siliquastrum_) and the white-flowered
Sophora (_S. japonica_). I happen to be writing within a couple of
hundred yards of the finest Judas tree known to me--at Twyford Lodge,
near Winchester. It is 35 feet high, and in these early days of May
presents a sight which cannot easily be forgotten. The branches, still
leafless, are thickly set with blossom; flowers even break out from the
old bark on the stem, and the effect of the whole is a dome of soft
_vieux rose_ (see Frontispiece). It is a native of southern Europe, but
agrees perfectly with the climate of England, except in northerly
districts which are scant of sun, where it should receive the protection
of a wall to encourage the formation of flower buds. The Judas tree (so
named from the fond belief that the false Apostle hanged himself
thereon) is seldom to be seen in our pleasure-grounds, though it has
often been planted there; the reason for this being that it is of slow
growth in its early stages, and gets smothered with ranker things, often
of less merit.
[Illustration: FLOWER OF ROBINIA PSEUDACACIA]
The Pagoda tree (_Sophora japonica_) is a native of China, where from
immemorial time it has been used in medicine, its flowers, seeds and
bark being powerfully purgative. Its blossoms appear in August and
September, varying in hue from white to yellow, with a tinge of purple.
Those which I have seen bear cream-coloured flowers in long, loose
panicles, contrasting finely with the dark, pinnate foliage. The tallest
specimens I have seen are at Syon House, about 70 feet high. There is
also a very large one within the Tilt Yard of Arundel Castle, and Elwes
measured one at Cobham Park, Kent, which was 85 feet high in 1905. At
page 144 is shown a fine Pagoda tree in the Botanic Garden at Oxford. I
do not remember to have seen any specimens in Scotland. Probably the
late flowering habit of the tree would not suit the northern kingdom.
The Elder
In the humid atmosphere of the west there is no more inveterate forest
growth than the elder or, as we call it in Scotland, the bourtree
(_Sambucus nigra_), which, springing from seeds which birds, having
stuffed themselves with the sweet berries, distribute far and wide,
shoots up with amazing rapidity, indifferent as to sun or shade, for it
grows happily under dense forest canopy, although it is only in the open
that it makes full display of its great discs of cream-coloured flowers.
From the earliest times there have been two schools of opinion about the
elder. Pliny put faith in decoction of its leaves as a febrifuge, and in
his day malaria was a terrible scourge in Italy. In 1644 appeared a book
entirely devoted to its virtues--_The Anatomie of the Elder_, translated
from the Latin of Dr. Martin Blockwich by C. de Iryngio; and thirty
years later John Evelyn burst into a coruscation of italic type in
praise of this humble tree.
"If the _Medicinal_ properties of the _Leaves_, _Bark_, _Berries_,
&c., were thoroughly known, I cannot tell what our _Country-man_
could aile for which he might not fetch a _Remedy_ from every
_Hedge_, either for _Sickness_ or _Wound_. The inner _Barke_ of
_Elder_, apply'd to any _burning_, takes out the _fire_
immediately. _That_, or in season the _Buds_, boyl'd in
Water-grewel for a _Break-fast_, has effected wonders in the
_Fever_; and the _decoction_ is admirable to asswage
_Inflammations_ and _telrous_ humors, and especially the _Scorbut_.
But an _Extract_ or _Theriaca_ may be compos'd of the _Berries_,
which is not only efficacious to eradicate this _Epidemical_
inconvenience, and greatly to assist _Longevity_ (so famous is the
story of _Næander_), but is a kind of _Catholicon_ against all
infirmities; and of the same _Berries_ is made an incomparable
_Spirit_ which, drunk by itself or mingled with _Wine_, is not only
an excellent drink, but admirable in the _Dropsy_.... The
_Oyntment_ made with the young _buds_ and _leaves_ in _May_ with
_Butter_, is most soveraign for _Aches_, shrunk _Sinews_,
_Hemorrhoids_, etc."
And so on and so on, much in the strain of modern advertisement of
patent medicines. The boot is on the other leg now, for although hot
elder-berry wine glows comfortably in memories of boyhood, I know not
where I might now get a glass thereof, were I to perish for want of
it.[15] Thoughtful housewives still provide elder flower water on the
toilet tables of their guests, and methinks the ointment may be found in
some conservative nurseries.
Contemporary with mediæval esteem of the elder was the belief that it
was accursed because it was the tree whereon Judas hanged himself. We
know, of course, that in Southern Europe the beautiful Judas tree
(_Cercis siliquastrum_) is stained by that imputation, but Sir John
Mandeville (fourteenth century) assured his countrymen that he had been
shown at Jerusalem the identical "Tree of Eldre" on which the traitor
ended his career. The chief reason for hesitating to accept Mandeville's
evidence is that he never, or hardly ever, told the truth except by
accident. Shakespeare, however, entertained the belief, for in _Love's
Labour's Lost_ he makes Biron say to Holofernes, "Judas was hanged on an
elder," and science has lent assent to the rural fancy which gave the
name Jew's Ears to the flabby black fungus that makes the elder its
peculiar host by calling it _Hirneola auricula-Judæ_.
The pith which bulks so largely in the young growth of elder ceases to
increase after the second year, and becomes compressed, and the wood
that forms round it is exceedingly hard. In old times it was much in
request for making pipes and other musical instruments. Pliny has
preserved a quaint bit of folk-lore about it. He says the shepherds
believe "that the most sonorous horns are made of an elder growing where
it has never heard a cock crow." In our day we put the wood to no use
whatever, unless, in the West of England, butchers still use it for
skewering meat, which it was supposed to guard from taint. But--
No sound shall creak through the solemn pines,
The ocean shall lose its roar,
The wild horse cease to skim the plain,
The alpine peaks be level again,
The eagle forget to soar,
before our boys forget the simple craft that turns whistles and popguns
out of elder shoots. For this, and certain other qualities, the elder
claims a permanent place in our affection. It never winces or
complains under the harshest phases of our climate, and it forgets its
melancholy at midsummer, when an old bourtree, 30 feet high or so, set
with scores of creamy saucers, is a really beautiful object.
[Illustration: ELDER (_Sambucus nigra_) IN JUNE]
[Illustration: ELDER (_Sambucus nigra_) IN DECEMBER]
The elder has given names to many places in our land. In the Cornish
dialect of Celtic, now extinct, it was called _scau_ and _scauan_, and
is preserved in Tresco, Boscawen, Penscauan, etc. In old Celtic it was
_trom_, genitive _truim_, whence, as we learn from the Book of Armagh,
the town Trim, in Meath, was formerly _Ath-truim_, the elder ford.
Galtrim, in the same county, appears in the annals as _Cala-truim_, the
meadow of the elder. Trimmer, Trummer, and Trummery are Irish
place-names, all perpetuating the memory of _tromaire_, an elder wood.
The Truim, a principal tributary of the Spey, probably was originally
Amhuinn Truim, the elder river. In the Scottish lowlands we find
Bourtriehill, Bourtriebush, etc., while in England it is difficult to
distinguish "elder" in composition from "alder." Skeat suggests the two
words are of identical origin, and in each the _d_ is intrusive.
Elderfield, a parish in Worcestershire, Ellerby and Ellerton in
Yorkshire bear a pretty clear stamp.
The Hazel
To admit the hazel to rank among forest trees may seem like magnifying a
molehill into a mountain; but it was a growth so important to the
primitive community, as the only native tree contributing to winter
provender, that it would be ungrateful to omit it. I was greatly
impressed by this fact when, many years ago, we were exploring
"crannogs," or lake dwellings, in the south-west of Scotland, in all of
which nut-shells were found in quantity.
One instance was particularly remarkable. Dirskelvin Loch, a small sheet
of water in Old Luce Parish, contained a very large crannog, built, as
we roughly calculated, with between 2,000 and 3,000 trees. The loch
having been drained away, we proceeded to exfoliate the crannog. In
going along what had been the north-east margin of the vanished loch, I
found it deeply covered with hazel-nut shells--many, many cartloads of
them. Evidently they were kitchen waste from the crannog, drifted to
that quarter before the prevailing south-west wind.
If the reader does not consider that the food it produces justifies
admission of the hazel among forest trees, let him meet me at Merton
Parish Church, on Tweedside, turn off the main road to the left at Clint
Mains, and, as we travel towards Bemersyde, he shall see in the road
fence on his right hand a row of hazels which it would be a misuse of
terms to style bushes. Speaking from recollection, they stand about 25
feet high, with single stems that must girth not less than 18 inches to
2 feet. The fact is, the hazel does not often get a chance of attaining
its full stature, being commonly cut for copse or treated as
undergrowth.
He, however, who aims at growing hazel timber need not waste time in
educating our British _Corylus avellana_, but plant the Turkish hazel,
_C. colurna_, which is perfectly hardy in our climate. It is represented
by very few specimens in these islands, albeit it was grown in England
as "the filbeard of Constantinople" so long ago as 1665. The finest
trees of this species are at Syon House, Brentford, the tallest of which
was 75 feet high in 1904, with a girth of 6 feet 9 inches, and a clean
bole of 30 feet. The timber is said to have a beautiful texture, pinkish
white, and sometimes grained like bird's-eye maple. French cabinetmakers
import it under the name of _noisetier_.
Returning to our native hazel, we no longer depend upon its fruit to
sustain us through the winter, though large quantities of the cultivated
varieties, filbert and cob-nut, are still grown in Kent for the market.
Of the wood, it can only be said that it produces excellent
walking-sticks, and has no equal in hurdle-making. Modern anglers have
no use for it, preferring greenheart and split cane, though of old it
was considered a _sine qua non_ for rod-making. Thus the author of _The
Boke of Saint Albans_ prescribes:
"Ye that woll be crafty in anglynge, ye must fyrste lerne to make
your harnays, that is to wyte your rodde.... And how ye shall make
your rodde crafty here I shall teche you. Ye shall kytte betwene
Myghelmas and Candylmas a fayr staffe of a fadome and an halfe
longe, and arme grete, of hasyll, willowe, or aspe."
The prescription goes on for drying, straightening, and boring out the
middle of the staff, and then--
"In the same season take a fayr yerde of grene hasyll and beth hym
evyn and streyghte, and let it drye with the staffe, and whan they
ben drye make the yerde mete into the hole in the staffe, unto
halfe the length of the staffe.... And thus shall ye make you a
rodde soo prevy that ye may walke therewyth, and there shall noo
man wyte where abowte ye goo."
Seeing that the staff was to be "a fadome and an halfe longe" (9 feet),
and as thick as his arm, the wayfarer's progress might not be so "prevy"
as is set forth if water bailiffs were on the lookout!
[Illustration: AILANTHUS GLANDULOSA
AT WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD]
The Ailanto
In many southern parts of the British Isles _Ailanthus glandulosa_ has
attained forest stature; but it seems to require more sunshine than it
can receive in the average Scottish summer. Loudon, indeed, mentions one
at Dunrobin, in Sutherland, which was 43 feet high about eighty years
ago; but I have found no trace of that tree in the woods there. There
used to be one at Syon 100 feet high, but this has been dead for some
years. Elwes and Henry have recorded several in the home counties
measuring from 70 to 80 feet in height. Dr. Henry found it wild only in
the mountains of Northern China. Elsewhere in China it is cultivated to
support a certain species of silk-worm (_Attacus cynthia_); also a drug
is prepared from the root bark; but its timber is regarded as fit only
for firing, although in this country it has been found serviceable by
wheelwrights. It is said to resemble ash, but is of inferior toughness
and elasticity.[16] He, therefore, would be acting very unwisely who,
having land suitable for ash, should devote it to growing Ailanthus.
Indeed the tree, though handsome and hardy, would hardly deserve
attention from British planters, were it not for its admirable fitness
for street planting. Except the plane, no forest growth adapts itself so
generously to the arid heat, the drought and noxious air of London. For
this purpose, it is important that, as the Ailanthus is dioecious,
only female trees should be planted; the males exhaling a disagreeable
rammish odour. I have never been in Northern China, but I cannot
conceive that the splendid pinnate foliage of this tree can be more
luxuriant in its native forest than it is in a few of the driest,
dustiest London thoroughfares.
The habit of the tree in this country tends to forking, probably because
the leader is apt to be nipped by late frost; wherefore, to secure a
shapely specimen, timely use of the knife is necessary; which attention,
to judge from the trees I have seen, is very seldom paid to it.
The Pines
Except the birch, the Scots pine (_Pinus sylvestris_) is more widely
distributed over northern Europe than any other species of tree, and it
shows more indifference than any other to variations of climate. While
in Eastern Siberia it sustains without flinching a temperature of 40°
below zero (Fahr.), it thrives in Southern Spain under a summer heat of
95°. It seems as much at home in the sun-baked region of Southern France
as it is in the perennially humid atmosphere and cool soil of Western
Scotland and Ireland.
Yet there are limits to its cosmopolitan endurance. Not long ago I spent
a profitable day in the Arnold Arboretum at Boston, Massachusetts, under
the guidance of its presiding genius, Professor C. S. Sargent. After
wandering for hours amid the luxuriant vegetation of that magnificent
park, we stopped beside a mangy, stunted conifer, and he asked me
whether I recognised it. I did not; but guessed at hazard that it was
the Japanese _Pinus parviflora_. I was surprised to be told that this
was the best that could be done in that country with our own Scots
pine. From causes difficult to define, probably similar to those which
prohibit the growth of our common ivy in the Eastern United States, this
tree resists all attempts to make it at home in that atmosphere.
[Illustration: SCOTS PINE WOOD]
It may seem strange that this tree should be known as the Scots pine,
having regard to its enormous geographical range and to the
insignificant area which it occupies in Scotland as compared with the
vast forests in Russia, Scandinavia, and other countries. Its scientific
title, _Pinus sylvestris_--the forest pine--would appear more
appropriate. But it has received its English name because, although at
one time it was spread as a native over all parts of the British Isles,
it is now only to be found in a truly wild state in the fragments of old
forest remaining in Strathspey, Deeside, and here and there in the
counties of Inverness and Perth. From England probably it had entirely
disappeared when, in the seventeenth century, certain landowners
succeeded in reintroducing it; and now it has attained splendid
proportions in Surrey and other southern counties, and spreads freely by
its winged seeds wherever these fall on unoccupied lands. Were it not
for deer, sheep, and rabbits, most of our _dry_ moors and heathland
would be covered with pine forest up to the thousand feet level.
Howbeit, most of the moorland in the United Kingdom is the reverse of
dry. Except in Eastern Scotland and the Surrey uplands, it is usually
clad with a dense coat of wet peat, reeking with humic acid and inimical
to tree growth of any kind. One of the darkest enigmas of natural
science is presented in the remains of pine forest buried under such
a dismal treeless expanse as the Moor of Rannoch, and on Highland hills
up to and beyond 2000 feet altitude, far higher than any tree can exist
now. The explanation seems most likely to be arrived at in the direction
indicated by certain symptoms of the alternation of periods of greater
and less rainfall--periods comprising thousands, perhaps tens of
thousands of years. Trees, it has been suggested, might grow and
reproduce themselves at high altitudes during the drier cycles; but when
the rainfall and atmospheric humidity increased beyond a certain degree,
the soil would become covered with moss, seedlings would be smothered or
never start, and humic acid would render the ground unfit for any growth
except heather and moorland herbs.
Diligent collectors and enterprising nurserymen have ransacked the
remotest forests to furnish British woodlands with profitable
timber-producers and British pleasure-grounds with ornamental trees; yet
among all the scores of exotic conifers which have taken kindly to our
ocean-girt land, the Scots pine, in my judgment, need fear no rival in
beauty after reaching maturity.
It is not a little remarkable, considering how well adapted our moist
climate is for evergreen growth, that the Scots pine and the juniper
should be the only two conifers indigenous to Britain since the glacial
age. (The yew used to be classed as coniferous, but has now been removed
to a separate order.) The Norway spruce, as shown by remains in
pre-glacial deposits in Norfolk, once flourished in our land; but it
has never recovered a footing there since the severance of Britain from
the Continent.
No tree shows a greater difference than Scots pine in the quality of its
timber at different stages of growth. Unlike larch, which yields useful
and durable wood from a very early age, Scots pine is very soft and
perishable until the tree approaches eighty years old. It is true that
young deals and posts may be rendered serviceable by boiling in
creosote; but it is not until the tree reaches maturity that the timber
becomes valuable, without that treatment, for anything except pit-props.
In 1783 Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, sold a great breadth of the
pine forest of Glenmore to an English merchant, who took twenty-two
years to fell it. The logs were floated down the Spey, and built at
Speymouth into forty-seven ships of an aggregate burthen of 19,000 tons.
When Mr. Osborne, the purchaser of the timber, finished his work in
1806, he sent a memorial plank to the Duke, which now stands in the
entrance hall of Gordon Castle. It measures 5 feet 5 inches in width at
the butt end, and 4 feet 4 inches at the top, and is of a rich dark
brown colour. The top of this magnificent tree lies where it was cut off
more than one hundred years ago, on the hill above Glenmore Lodge, 1400
feet above the sea, and is still hard and sound, 3 feet in diameter
where it was cut off. Now, had that been part of a tree, say, fifty
years old, frost and wet would have rotted it to the core in ten years
or less; but the snows and rains of a century have made little
impression on the bones of this giant. Mr. Elwes was shown a tree in the
King's Forest of Ballochbuie, on Deeside, which had been cut up after
lying for seventy years where it fell, yet the timber was quite sound.
Age apart, the value of Scots deal varies much according to the manner
in which it is grown. It is not the most picturesque pines that yield
the finest timber; for the result of growing singly or in scattered
groups is a spreading branchy habit, causing coarse, knotty wood.
Enormous quantities of Scots pine from Scandinavia and pinaster from
France, twenty to thirty-five years old, are imported into Great Britain
for pit-props. These might be just as well grown in the British Isles,
to the great advantage of rural employment; but British foresters are
only now beginning to understand the economic management of timber
crops. The great majority of woodlands in these islands have been ruined
by over-thinning. Welsh mineowners decline to use the knotty
British-grown pines so long as they can get clean-grown French timber.
Happily, a better understanding of the principles of economic forestry
is being arrived at in this country, so that more satisfactory results
may be expected in the future. Scots pine should be grown in close
canopy--that is, with a continuous cover of foliage throughout the
wood--until the trees are seventy or eighty years old. By that time
long, clean boles will have been formed, and the forest may be dealt
with according to the views of the owner, whether his object be profit
or beauty; for, unlike the oak, the Scots pine may be isolated from his
fellows after reaching maturity without suffering in constitution.
The mildness and humidity of the British climate are unfavourable to the
production of the best quality of deal, promoting, as they do,
over-rapid growth and, in consequence, wide annual rings in the stem.
The forester's object should be to check this by growing the trees so
close that increase of trunk diameter may be retarded, and the annual
rings crowded into small space until the trees are near maturity. That
is the secret of the superior quality and durability of Russian and
Scandinavian deals over all but the finest British pine.
[Illustration: FLOWER AND FRUIT OF SCOTS PINE]