connection with the tree, the ancients having given it to some species
of Oak with edible acorns (_vide_ Pliny), but by some unknown means it
has become transferred to a tree whose fruit is far too bitter to be
eaten by man.
The Red-flowered Horse Chestnut (_Aesculus carnea_) is a smaller and less
vigorous tree. Its origin is unknown, but it is believed to be a garden
hybrid that made its appearance about 1820.
The Bay Tree (_Laurus nobilis_).
The Bay is the true Laurel, of whose leaves and berries the wreaths were
made in ancient days for poets and conquerors. Naturally it is more of a
shrub than a tree, for though it often attains a height of sixty feet,
it persists in sending up so many suckers that the tree-like character
is lost. In cultivation, however, it is often grown on a single stem, as
well as formed by cutting into arbours and arches. We call to mind a
Cornish village, where a garden enclosure in its square (or "plestor,"
as Gilbert White would say) was surrounded by about a dozen Bays so
grown. Bays grow abundantly in the gardens of South Cornwall, and we
always connected their general cultivation with the pilchard fishery.
Certainly, these trees in the plestor were very convenient in the autumn
and winter, for the leaves are an essential ingredient in the proper
composition of that seductive dish, marinated pilchards, to which they
impart their peculiar aromatic flavour.
The Bay is a native of Southern Europe, whence it was introduced at some
date prior to 1562. Prior says the name is the old Roman _bacca_ (a
berry), altered "by the usual omission of 'c' between the two vowels,"
this plant having become the _bacca par excellence_, because its
berries were articles of commerce.
[Illustration: Bay. A, flower; B, fruit.]
The evergreen leaves are lance-shaped, without teeth, and arranged
alternately on the branchlets. Not all the trees produce the berries,
for the sexes are in distinct individuals, and all the white or
yellowish four-parted flowers on one tree are stamen-bearing, whilst on
another individual they all bear ovaries and no stamens. The berries, at
first green, ultimately become of a dark purple hue. The flowers will be
found in April or May; the ripe berries in October. The Bay is grown
chiefly as a shrubbery ornament, and can only survive our winters
out-of-doors in the South of England.
[Illustration: _Pl. 148._ Bay.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Pl. 149._ Laburnum.]
Laburnum (_Laburnum vulgare_).
Although the Laburnums of our parks and gardens have all come from seed,
and themselves produce an abundance of it, we do not meet with wayside
"escapes" as we might expect to do, having regard to the habit of the
tree and the fact that it is comparatively indifferent respecting
character of soil. Possibly a remark of Loudon's may explain this. He
says that rabbits are exceedingly fond of the bark, and it may be that
they destroy any young trees that are unprotected by palings or netting.
The tree produces such a glorification of many an ordinary suburban
road, when its flowering time comes round, that one would like to note
its effect as a common object of the hillside and the woodland, against
a background furnished by our more sober native trees.
The Laburnum is at home in the mountain forests of Central and Southern
Europe, but there is no record of its introduction to Britain. We do
know, however, that it has been with us for more than three centuries,
for Gerarde, in his "Herbal," published 1597, refers to it as growing in
his garden. It belongs to the great Pea and Bean family (_Leguminosae_),
and is very closely related to the Common Broom, whose solitary flowers
those of the Laburnum's drooping racemes nearly resemble. Ordinarily it
is only a low tree of about twenty feet in height, but in favourable
situations it may attain to thirty feet or more. Some of the larger
Laburnums, however, are of a distinct species (_L. alpinus_).
The pale round branches are clothed with leaves that are divided into
three oval-lance-shaped leaflets, covered on the underside with silvery
down. Both leaves and golden flowers appear simultaneously in May, but
from the fact that the latter are gathered into numerous long pendulous
racemes, their blaze of colour makes the leaves almost invisible.
Tennyson's description of its flowering--"Laburnum, dropping wells of
fire"--is fine, but we rather prefer Cowper's "rich in streaming gold,"
as embodying a more exact colour idea. The flowers are succeeded by long
downy legumes or pods, like those of the bean and pea, containing many
seeds, which are of a dangerously violent emetic character when
introduced to the human stomach. The dark wood is of coarse grain; but,
in spite of this, hard and enduring, and taking a good polish. It is
chiefly used by musical instrument makers, turners, and cabinet-makers.
[Illustration: Laburnum. A, seed-pod.]
Laburnum is the old Latin name, which is thus rather fancifully
explained by Prior, "an adjective from _L. labor_, denoting what
belongs to the _hour of labour_, and which may allude to its closing its
leaflets together at night, and expanding them by day." Common local
names are Golden Chain, suggested by the strings of flowers, and
Bean-trefoile and Pea-tree, having reference to the leaves and legumes
respectively.
The Locust Tree (_Robinia pseudacacia_).
Although the Locust, or False Acacia, is little planted now, it is only
paying the penalty for having had its merits enormously exaggerated;
just as human reputations sometimes sink into oblivion after a season of
popularity achieved by the persistent "booming" of influential friends.
The friend in this case was William Cobbett, who, on his return from the
United States, about 1820, preached salvation to the timber grower
through the planting of Robinia; "nothing in the timber way could be so
great a benefit as the general cultivation of this tree." So great was
the demand thus created that Cobbett himself started a nursery for the
propagation and supply of Robinias, and so great is the virtue of a name
that people refused the Locust-trees that every nurseryman had in stock
and wished to sell, and would be content with nothing but Cobbett's
Robinias, which could not be produced fast enough for the demand! They
thought it was an entirely new introduction, though it had been grown in
this country as an ornamental tree for nearly two centuries! Its wood is
hard, strong, and durable, but liable to crack, and of limited utility.
The Locust was introduced to Europe from North America early in the
seventeenth century, and was then thought to be identical with the
African Acacia. Linnaeus named the genus in honour of Jean Robin, a
French botanist, whose son, an official at the Jardin des Plantes, was
the first to cultivate the tree in Europe.
It is a tree of light and graceful proportions, its branches being long
and slender, and the long narrow leaves being broken up into a large
number of small oval leaflets, arranged _pinnately_, that is,
featherwise. The stipules, which are found at the base of the leaf-stalk
in many plants, are in this genus converted into sharp spines. The
flowers, of similar pea-shape to those of the Laburnum, are white and
fragrant. They are in long loose racemes, which droop from the axils of
the leaves in May. The legumes are very thin, and of a dark-brown hue.
[Illustration: False Acacia, or Locust Tree. A, seed-pod.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 150._ Locust Tree--summer.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 151._ Bole of Locust Tree.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 152._ Locust--winter.]
This was one of the first American trees introduced to Europe, and its
name of Locust came with it, the missionaries believing it must be the
tree upon whose fruit, with the addition of wild honey, John the
Baptist supported himself in the wilderness. It is also known as Silver
Chain, in contradistinction to the Gold Chain or Laburnum; also as White
Laburnum.
The Larch (_Larix europaea_).
An enormous number of exotic Coniferous trees are at the present time
commonly grown in our parks and pleasure grounds, and even our woods
show a considerable variety beyond the Scots Pine and Yew that Nature
has alone given us as timber trees in this order. To attempt to give
even a very brief account of all these in a pocket volume, in addition
to almost the entire woody Flora indigenous to these islands, would be
manifestly absurd. We can, however, deal with a few representative
species of these exotics, and we give the Larch the first place by
reason of its present plentifulness in extensive unmixed woods and
plantations.
The Larch is naturally a tree of the mountains, and ascends to a greater
elevation even than the Spruce Fir. Unmixed forests of Larch in the
Bavarian Alps occur between 3000 and 6000 feet above sea-level, and on
the central Swiss Alps it ascends to nearly 7000 feet. A long winter of
real cold is necessary for its full development and the ripening of its
wood, and for that reason the timber of Larch grown in England is
inferior to that grown in its native countries, because our winters are
either short or mild, and neither gives the tree the full rest it needs.
It is a European tree, and was introduced--though not in any numbers--to
England at some date prior to 1629. For 150 years it appears to have
been cultivated here merely as an ornamental garden tree. Then attention
was called to its value as a timber tree, and the Society of Arts
offered gold medals for Larch planting and essays upon its economic
importance. Already (1728) the second Duke of Atholl had begun those
experiments in Larch growing for timber which have been continued by
his successors on a vast scale, the fourth Duke planting 27,000,000
Larch-trees on 15,000 acres of barren land. Their example has been
copied on a smaller scale all over the country.
[Illustration: Larch. A, flower.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 153._ Larch--summer.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 154._ Larch--winter.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 155._ Bole of Larch.]
The Larch is a lofty tree, with a very straight tapering trunk
ordinarily attaining a length between 80 and 100 feet, but under very
favourable conditions 120 feet, with a girth of bole from 6 to 12 feet.
The brown bark is easily separable into thin layers, and the growth of
the tree causes it to split into deep longitudinal fissures. The long
lower branches are spreading, with a downward tendency, and the tips
turned upward again. The twigs are mostly pendulous, and bear long and
slender light-green leaves, in bundles of thirty or forty. All the other
families of Coniferous trees are evergreen, their leaves lasting for
several years; but at the beginning of winter the Larch leaves wither
and fall, and the Larch-wood takes on a more lifeless aspect than is
assumed by any of our native trees in their leafless condition. But in
spring, when the fresh green leaves are just showing in spreading tufts,
and the reddish-purple female flowers--Tennyson's "rosy plumelets"--hang
brightly from the gaunt branches, the Larch wears an entirely different
appearance, and in summer the light grace of branches and foliage makes
the Larch a beautiful object. That is, one should say, the trees that
grow on the very outer edge of the wood, or, better still, one that has
been planted as a specimen tree, where it has room to fling out its arms
on all sides without touching anything, and can get the abundant light
it needs. The straight rows in the plantation, with every tree at an
equal distance from its neighbours, and its lower branches dead, may be
very pretty from the timber-merchant's point of view, but one likes to
think of the tree as a living thing of beauty rather than as a detail in
a factory where scaffold-poles and telegraph-posts are being grown to
regulation size and shape.
The brown cones are egg-shaped, little more than an inch in length, the
scales with loose edges. The wood is very durable, and it has the great
recommendation of being fit for ordinary use when the tree is only forty
years old. It is most valuable for those purposes where exposure to all
weathers is a necessity, for it endures constant change from wet to dry.
Larch-bark is used for tanning, and Venice turpentine is a product of
the tree. Unlike most Conifers, it has the power of sending out new
shoots when the branches have been removed close up to the stem.
Larch plantations sometimes present the appearance of death whilst they
are still covered with foliage, but the leaves are yellow and twisted.
This most frequently occurs in the case of trees between the ages of ten
and fourteen years, and is due to the depredations of a leaf-mining
caterpillar, which ultimately changes into a minute moth, the
Larch-miner (_Coleophora laricella_). It feeds in the interior of the
Larch-needles, and therefore is beyond the reach of destruction, except
by felling and burning affected trees, to prevent the spread of the
pest. Its ravages keep the tree in ill-health, and apparently prepare
the way for the deadly attack of another small enemy, known as the Larch
Canker--the fungus _Peziza willkommii_. Sickly trees are also liable to
the attentions of a Wood-wasp (_Sirex juvencus_), whose appearance is
usually the cause of a little terror in nervous persons. It has two
pairs of smoky transparent wings, and its stout, straight, blue body
terminates in a long slender point. Its large white grub spends two or
three years tunnelling towards the heart of the tree and out to the bark
again, but rarely attacks sound trees. It sometimes makes its appearance
in a house from wood that has been used for building purposes.
[Illustration: _Pl. 156._ Flowers and Cone of Larch.]
The Silver Fir (_Abies pectinata_).
Evelyn has left on record the fact that a two-year-old specimen of the
Silver Fir was planted in Harefield Park, near Uxbridge, in the year
1603, and this is usually regarded as the date of its introduction to
England, though the evidence is by no means conclusive. Its home is in
the mountain regions of Central and Southern Europe. Its highest
range appears to be on the Pyrenees, where it is found at an
elevation of 6500 feet, forming pure forests of considerable area.
Specimens have been recorded in Southern Germany that have attained a
height of nearly 200 feet, but in this country a more usual stature is
from 100 to 120 feet, with a bole girth between 10 and 15 feet. Its
trunk is straight and erect, tapering gently, and covered with smooth
bark, of a greyish-brown colour, which in aged specimens becomes rugged
and fissured longitudinally, as shown in our photo, and of a silvery
grey colour. It retains its lower branches for a period of forty to
fifty years, but after that age they begin to fall off. Whilst the tree
is growing up--which is, roughly speaking, during its first two hundred
years--the crown forms a slender bush; but its vertical growth
completed, the crown grows laterally, and becomes flat-topped. Its
life-period covers about four hundred years.
[Illustration: _Pl. 157._ Silver Fir.]
[Illustration: Silver Fir. A, cone.]
The leaves are flat and slender, not in bundles, as in the Scots Pine,
but arranged along the branchlets in two or three dense ranks. They are
dark, rich green above, about an inch long, and on the flattened
underside there is a bluish-white stripe on each side of the midrib,
which gives a silvery appearance to the foliage when upturned, as is
usual on the fertile branches. These leaves endure from six to nine
years. The flowers appear in May at the tips of the branches. The male
flowers are about three-quarters of an inch long, and consist of two or
three series of overlapping scales, enclosing the yellow stamens. The
cones are cylindrical, with a blunt top, always erect, 6 to 8 inches
long, and from 1-1/4 to 2 inches in diameter. On the back of each of the
broad scales there is a long, slender, pointed bract, which extends
beyond the scale and turns downward. At first these cones are green,
then become reddish, and when mature are brown; but maturity is not
reached until eighteen months after their appearance. The angular seeds
are furnished with a broad wing twice their length. They are shed by the
cones in the spring following their maturity, the scales falling at the
same time and leaving the core of the cone on the tree.
As a rule, the tree does not produce fertile seeds until it is about
forty years of age, but seedless cones are formed from its twentieth
year. Although the flowers of both sexes are found on the same tree, it
may be that for a series of years only cones are produced. Until the
Silver Fir is about twelve years old its growth is slow, and its annual
increase is only a few inches, but later it will be as many feet. During
this early stage spring frosts often destroy the leader-shoot, but its
place is taken by another shoot; and soon the symmetry of the tree is
restored. If this occurs at a later stage, however, the tree bears
evidence of it in a forked trunk. It is a deep-rooting species, with a
branching tap-root, and succeeds best in an open soil that is moist
without being wet.
[Illustration: _Pl. 158._ Bole of Silver Fir.]
The timber, which has an irregular grain, is strong, and does not warp;
but it is soft, and not enduring where it is exposed to the weather. It
is yellowish-white in colour, and is largely used for all interior work.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Pl. 159._ Spruce Firs.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 160._ Bole of Spruce Fir.]
The Spruce Fir (_Picea excelsa_).
Although we are compelled to class the Spruce among introduced species,
it can lay claim to have been one of the older forest trees of Britain,
for the upper beds of the Tertiary formations contain abundant evidence
that the Spruce was a native here when those strata were laid down. Of
its modern introduction there is no record, but from mention of it by
Turner in his "Names of Herbes in Greke, Latin, Englishe, etc.," we know
that it was at some date anterior to the publication of that work
(1548). It is widely distributed as a native tree throughout the
continent of Europe, with the exception of Denmark and Holland. It is
the principal forest tree on the elevated tracts of Germany and
Switzerland, and on the central Alpine ranges it reaches an altitude of
6500 feet. It is an extremely variable tree, but we cannot here deal
with the varieties beyond saying that two principal forms, different in
habit and in timber, are outwardly distinguished by one having red, the
other green, cones.
The Spruce Fir is a tall and graceful tree with tapering trunk, 120 to
150 feet in height, though in this country its more usual stature, when
full-grown, would be about 80 feet high, with a bole circumference of
about 9 feet. At first covered with thin, smooth, warm-brown bark, in
later life this breaks up into irregular scales, thin layers of which
are cast off. Instead of a bushy crown, such as we see in the Silver
Fir, the Spruce ends in a delicate spire, so familiar in the
Christmas-tree, which is a Spruce Fir in the nursery stage. The branches
are in very regular tiers from base to summit, and the branchlets go
off almost opposite each other, densely clothed with the short
grass-green needles. These are from a half to three-quarters of an inch
in length, four-sided, and ending in a fine sharp point. They endure for
six or seven years.
[Illustration: Spruce Fir.]
The flowers are produced near the ends of last year's shoots, those with
stamens being borne singly or in clusters of two or three. They are
about three-quarters of an inch in length, and of a yellow colour,
tinged with pink. The cones, which hang downwards, are almost
cylindrical, about 5 inches long and 1-1/2 inches in diameter. The pale
brown scales are thin, and loosely overlap. The seeds, of which there
are two under each scale, are very small, with a transparent brown wing,
five times the length of the seed. The flowers appear in May, and the
seeds are not ripe until nearly a year later.
The tree is a shallow rooter, the roots going off horizontally in all
directions a little below the surface, and becoming intimately matted
with those of neighbouring trees. This surface-rooting often leads to
disaster in plantations and forests of Spruce, for it is least able of
all the firs to withstand a gale, which will sometimes make a broad
avenue through the plantation by toppling the trees one against another.
The wood of the Spruce Fir, though light, is even grained, elastic, and
durable, and the straightness of its stem makes it very valuable for all
purposes where great length and straightness are required, as for the
masts of small vessels, ladders, scaffolding, telegraph-poles; as well
as for the varied uses the builder finds for its planks. It supplies
resin and pitch, and most of the cheaper periodicals now issued largely
owe their existence to the Spruce, for its fibres reduced to pulp are
made into the paper upon which they are printed. Although its growth
during the first few years is rather slow, progress during the next
twenty-five years is tolerably rapid, being at the rate of two or three
feet per year, if in a favourable situation, and on moist light soil.
When grown in a wood the Spruce loses its lower branches early, but when
given sufficient "elbow-room," these remain to a good old age, so that
from spire to earth the graceful cone of bright green is continuous.
The name Spruce is from the German _sprossen_ (a sprout), in allusion to
the numerous short branchlets that are a characteristic of the tree.
[Illustration: _Pl. 161._ Douglas Fir.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 162._ Bole of Douglas Fir.]
[Illustration: _Pl. 163._ Cone of Spruce Fir.]
The Douglas Fir (_Pseudotsuga douglasii_).
Although the name of this tree in English and Latin might reasonably
lead one to suppose that David Douglas, the intrepid botanical explorer,
was the discoverer of it, that is not really so. It was Archibald
Menzies who first made it known to science, by means of herbarium
specimens collected in 1792, when, as the companion of Vancouver, he
visited the western coasts of North America. But Douglas, in his
capacity of collector to the Royal Horticultural Society, landed at Fort
Vancouver on the Columbia River in 1825, and not only sent home
herbarium specimens, but seeds also, of this and several previously
unknown Conifers. It was by means of these seeds that the Douglas Fir
was introduced to Britain. It was already known by Lambert's name of
_Abies taxifolia_, but Dr. Lindley, a short time previous to Douglas'
untimely death, selected the tree as a suitable and enduring memorial of
the enormous services Douglas had rendered, and named it _Abies
douglasii_. Since then Carri[e']re has split up the old genus _Abies_ and
placed _douglasii_ in the new genus _Pseudotsuga_.
Under the most favourable natural conditions, as around Puget Sound and
on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the Douglas Fir grows to a
height of 300 feet, with a girth of 30 to 40 feet, but on the drier
slopes of the Rocky Mountains it is not more than 100 feet high. In
Colorado, forests of Douglas Fir are found at an elevation of 11,000
feet. The tree has not been sufficiently long established in this
country to say what dimensions it will reach, though it appears to have
taken kindly to Ireland and to Devon and Cornwall, where the rate of
growth of young trees is about 30 inches per annum. There are plenty of
trees in these islands, planted about the year 1834, which have reached
or passed 100 feet, and there is no doubt that towards our western
coasts this height will be greatly exceeded. Some of these trees have
long since produced cones, and from their seeds many young trees have
been raised.
[Illustration: Douglas Fir. A, female flower; B, male flower.]