The Elder is more a tree of the wayside than of the woodland, often of low bushy growth; but where it finds good loamy soil with abundant moisture it attains a height of twenty feet. None of our trees grows more rapidly in its earliest years, and any bit of its living wood will readily take root, so that its presence in the hedge is often due to planting for the purpose of rapidly erecting a live screen. Its quickly grown juicy shoots soon harden into a tube of tough wood with a core of pith which is readily extracted, and renders the tube available for a peashooter, a pop-gun, or a music-pipe. Such uses have been known from remote antiquity—probably one might say from the beginnings of the human race. The ancient Greeks called it Sambúke, from its wood having been used in the making of musical instruments. In the north of Britain it is known as Bourtree, Bore-tree, or Bottery, from the ease with which this clearing out of the pith is effected, and it is pretty clear that the more general name of Elder also has relation to the tubular shoots. Piers Plowman calls the tree Eller, a name that survives in Kent, Sussex, Lincoln, East Yorks, and Cheshire. This word, according to Prior, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon eller and ellarn, and seems to mean "kindler"—"a name which we may suppose that it acquired from its hollow branches being used, like the bamboo in the tropics, to blow up a fire." It is thus probable that the housewife got her bellows, the musician his pipe, and the schoolboy his pop-gun, all from the same source.
The stems are coated with a grey corky bark, and the younger divisions of the branches show an angular section when cut. When old, the wood becomes hard and heavy, and has been used as a substitute for Box. The leaf is divided into five, seven, or nine oval leaflets with toothed edges. The flower is of the form that botanists describe as rotate, that is, the corolla forms a very short tube, from the mouth of which five petal-like lobes spread flat. This is a quarter of an inch broad, and creamy-white in colour, giving out an odour which some persons like, but which the writer considers offensive. Large numbers of these small flowers are gathered into flat-topped cymes, five or six inches in diameter. The primary stalks of these cymes are five in number. The flowers are succeeded by small globular berries, ultimately of a purple-black hue, and of mawkish flavour, which are yet much sought after by country people for the making of Elderberry wine, which they credit with marvellous medicinal powers. In truth, the Elder still retains among rustic folk much of the reputation it had when John Evelyn praised it so highly in his "Sylva," where he says, "If the medicinal properties of the leaves, bark, berries, etc., were thoroughly known, I cannot tell what our countryman could ail for which he might not fetch a remedy from every hedge, either for sickness or wound."
Occasionally one may find in the hedgerow an Elder with its leaflets deeply cut into very slender lobes, so that the leaf has resemblance to that of Fool's Parsley. This is an escape from cultivation—a garden variety (laciniata) known as the Cut-leaved or Parsley-leaved Elder.
Though frequently to be met with in parks and ornamental grounds, there are only a few places in this country where the Box is really indigenous. These are in the counties of Surrey, Kent, Buckingham, and Gloucester. On the famous Box Hill, near Dorking, in Surrey, it may be seen attaining its proper proportions as a small tree, and in sufficient abundance to form groves covering a considerable area. It grows to a height of fifteen or twenty feet, with a girth of about twenty inches. Its slender branches are clothed with small, oblong, leathery leaves, which give out a peculiar and distinctive odour. They are about an inch in length, polished on the upper side, evergreen, and opposite.
The flowers may be looked for from January to May, and will be found clustered between the leaf and the stem. These are quite small and inconspicuous, of a whitish-green colour, and the sexes are in separate flowers. The uppermost one in the centre of each cluster is a female flower; the others are males. The males consist of four petals, enclosing a rudimentary ovary, from beneath which spring four stamens. The sepals of the female flower vary in number, from four to twelve, and enclose a rounded ovary with three styles, which are ripe and protruded before the males open. This develops into the three-celled capsule with three diverging beaks, which correspond with the styles, and in each cell there are one or two black seeds.
The growth of the tree is very slow, and, in consequence, the grain of its wood is very fine. It is also very hard, and so heavy that alone among native woods it will not float in water. On account of its fine grain and hardness, it is in request by the turner and mathematical instrument maker, and was formerly largely used by the wood-engraver for "woodcuts." Since the introduction of the photographic "process" blocks, the industry of preparing Box-wood for the engraver must have become all but extinct, and for that reason Box plantations must be less valuable assets than formerly. It is on record that when the Box Hill trees were cut in 1815, the "fall" realized nearly £10,000. Box Hill is in no sense a plantation; its slopes and summit are clothed with a natural mixed wood of Box, Oak, Beech, and Yew. Beneath every Box-tree will be found hundreds of seedlings of various ages. Some of these may be seen in our photograph, which depicts naturally grown Box-trees on the famous hill. It will be noted that their "habit" is widely different from that of the more bush-like forms so familiar in gardens.
We have already given descriptions and illustrations of several exotic species in Part I., where it seemed more advantageous to the reader to include them with British species of the same genus; those now to be dealt with are in all cases members of genera not represented in our native Flora.
In spite of the fact that the Plane is an exotic of comparatively recent introduction, it seems in a fair way of being associated in the future with London. It has taken with great kindness to London life, in spite of the drawbacks of smoke, fog, flagstones, and asphalt. Its leaves get thickly coated with soot, which also turns its light-grey bark to black; but as the upper surface of the leaves is smooth and firm, a shower of rain washes them clean, and the rigid outer layer of bark is thrown off by the expansion of the softer bark beneath. This is not thrown off all at once, but in large and small flakes, which leave a smooth yellow patch behind, temporarily free from soot contamination. A variety of trees has been tried for street-planting, but none has stood the trying conditions of London so well as the Plane, and therefore before many years the capital will be the city of Planes.
Two species are recognized—the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) and the Western Plane (P. occidentalis); but it would probably be more accurate to regard them as geographical varieties of one species, the points in which they differ being small and not very important. Thus the leaves of the Oriental Plane are described as being so much more deeply lobed than those of the Western Plane that the former are botanically described as palmate; but the two forms of leaf may often be found on the same individual. The Western Plane, too, does not shed its bark in small flakes like the Oriental Plane, but in large sheets.
Planes normally rise to a height of something between seventy and ninety feet, and the trunk attains a circumference of from nine to twelve feet; but there is a record of a portly Plane whose waist measurement was forty feet! Many persons imagine because the leaves of the Plane resemble those of the Sycamore that the two are closely related; but this is not so, and a comparison of the flowers and fruit will show that they are not. The catkins of the Plane take the form of balls, in which male or female flowers are pressed together; and the fruits, instead of being winged samaras, are the rough balls that so closely resemble an old-fashioned form of button, that the tree is known in some parts of the United States as the Button-wood. (It is also known there as Sycamore and Cotton-tree.)
The Plane is supposed to have got its name Platanus from the Greek word platus (broad), in double allusion to the broad leaves and the ample shadow which the tree throws. These leaves are five-lobed, and, as already indicated, those of the Oriental species are much more deeply cut. Further distinction is found in the colour of the petiole or leaf-stalk, which is green in P. orientalis, and purplish-red in P. occidentalis, and in the larger and smoother seed-buttons of the latter. Instead of the leaves being attached to the stem in pairs, as we saw in the Sycamore, those of the Plane are alternate—that is to say, leaf number two of a series will be halfway between one and three, but on the opposite side of the shoot.
The outline of the tree is not so regular as in most others, the leaves being gathered in heavy masses, with broad spaces between, rather than equally distributed over the head. This is, of course, due to the freedom with which the crooked arms are flung about. The pale-brown wood is fine-grained, tough, and hard, and is extensively used by pianoforte-makers, coach-builders, and cabinet-makers, but is not highly esteemed for other purposes to which timber is put in this country.
The Oriental Plane is popularly supposed to have been introduced to England from the Levant by Francis Bacon, but if Loudon's statement that it was "in British gardens before 1548" rests on good evidence, Bacon's claim is dismissed, for he was not "introduced" until 1561. It was nearly a hundred years later (1640) that the Occidental Plane was first brought from Virginia by the younger Tradescant, and planted in that remarkable garden of his father's in South Lambeth Road. The form that has done so well in London, and of which many fine examples are to be seen in the parks and squares, is a variety of the Oriental Plane, with leaves less deeply divided than those of the type, and therefore more nearly approaching the Occidental Plane in this respect. It is distinguished by the name of the Maple-leaved Plane (Platanus orientalis, var. acerifolia). It is this variety we have chosen as the subject for our photograph.
In the Golden Age, when man lived happily on a handful of acorns, the gods fed upon walnuts, and so their name was Jovis glans—the nuts of Jupiter—since contracted into Juglans. Those who delight in obvious interpretations by appealing to the modern meanings of words similar in construction may be pardoned for supposing that Walnut-trees were formerly trained against walls; but, like many other obvious interpretations, this is wide of the mark. Some have gone back to the Anglo-Saxons for help, and though the result arrived at is in all probability the correct one, it is almost certain that the Anglo-Saxons knew nothing of the matter, and would scarcely trouble to give a name to something they had never seen. The Walnut is a native of the Himalayas, the Hindu Kuh, Persia, Lebanon, and Asia Minor to Greece. The learned Roman, Varro, who was born B.C. 116, and died B.C. 28, mentions it as existing in Italy in his day; and Pliny tells us it was brought thence from Persia. The date of its introduction to Britain is usually set down as about the middle of the sixteenth century, but it was probably at least a century earlier, for Gerarde, writing at the close of the sixteenth century, describes it as a tree commonly to be seen in orchards, and in fields near the highways, where a very new importation was not likely to be found. But to return to the name: there can be little doubt that it is a contraction of Wälsh-nut (in modern spelling, Welsh-nut), meaning foreign. This is German, and while the modern sons of the Vaterland write it Wallnuss (occasionally Wälshenuss), the Dutch form is Wallnoot. That this is the true derivation is made pretty certain by Gerarde, who calls it "Walnut, and of some Walsh-nut."
That the new importation was fully appreciated in Europe for its fruit may be judged by the extent to which its cultivation had spread in Evelyn's day, for he tells us the trees abounded in Burgundy, where they stood in the midst of goodly wheat-lands. He says: "In several places betwixt Hanau and Frankfort in Germany no young farmer is permitted to marry a wife till he bring proof that he hath planted and is a father of such a stated number of [Walnut] trees, and the law is inviolably observed to this day, for the extraordinary benefit the tree affords the inhabitants."
The Walnut is a handsome tree, growing to a height of forty to sixty feet, with a bole twenty feet or more in circumference, and a huge spreading head. The bark is of a cool grey colour, smooth when young, but as the tree matures deep longitudinal furrows form, and it becomes very rugged. The twisted branches take a direction more upward than horizontal, but in early summer they are almost completely hidden by the masses of large and handsome leaves of warm green colour and spicy aroma. I once rejoiced in the occupation of a garden that held two Walnut-trees, and though they had not attained to the fruiting age, their possession was a delight to me; but then I am one of those who enjoy their fragrance, which is unbearable to some persons. The large leaves are formed after the fashion of the Ash-leaf—broken up into a variable number of lance-shaped leaflets with scarcely perceptible teeth.
The flowering of the Walnut is much on the plan of the Oak and the Hazel, the sexes being in different flowers, but borne by one tree; the males forming a long drooping catkin of slender cylindrical form, the females being solitary, or a few grouped at the end of a shoot. Separated from the catkin, the males will each be seen to consist of a calyx of five greenish scales, enclosing a large number of stamens. The calyx of the female closely invests the ovary, which has two or three fleshy stigmas. The flowering takes place in early spring, before the leaf-buds have burst. The fruit is a plum-like drupe, only the enveloping green flesh becomes brown, and, splitting irregularly, discloses the "stone," which in this species takes the form of a hard but thin-shelled nut—the well-known Walnut, with its wrinkled kernel of crisp white flesh, from which a fine oil is obtained. The ripening of these nuts—which is accomplished by the beginning of October—can only be relied upon in the southern half of Britain, and even there the crop is often spoiled by late frosts in spring. Its chief value in Europe is as a fruit-tree, though the light but tough wood is much esteemed for the manufacture of furniture. Owing to its rapid growth, the grain is coarse, but the dark-brown colour is esteemed, especially as it is relieved by streaks and veins of lighter tints and black. It is easily worked, and bears a high polish. The wood of young trees is white, gradually deepening to brown as maturity is approached. All the juices of the tree, whether from wood, bark, leaves, or green fruit, are rich in the brown pigment to which the hue of the timber is due. The combined lightness and toughness of the wood led to its adoption as the favourite material for making the stocks of guns and rifles. It is said that so great was the demand for this purpose during the Peninsular War, that a single Walnut-tree realized £600 for its timber, and this created a boom that led to the cutting down of all our finest Walnut-trees. Some of these were doubtless the very trees referred to by Evelyn, who tells us the Walnut was extensively planted at Leatherhead in Surrey, also at Cassaulton (Carshalton) and Godstone in the same county, where the rambler may come across fine Walnut-trees to this day, and occasionally to young ones growing wild in hedgerows and wastes.
The old doggerel adage, "A dog and a wife and a walnut-tree, the more they are beaten the better they be," has reference to the manner of harvesting the ripe fruit. Evelyn says: "In Italy they arm the tops of long poles with nails and iron for the purpose [of loosening the fruit], and believe the beating improves the tree; which I no more believe than I do that discipline would reform a shrew." He expresses no opinion on the question of beating dogs.
Until about the middle of the last century the Chestnut was generally regarded as a genuine native of these islands. It is true that botanists felt that so large and longevous a tree, if native, should be found in the natural forests of this country, or even forming pure forest. These things they did not find, but, on the other hand, they were shown beams in ancient buildings, including Westminster Abbey, which were believed to be Chestnut-wood, and this evidence seemed to point to the fact that Chestnut timber was grown much more plentifully in this country at the period when these old buildings were erected. Dr. Lindley, however, set the matter at rest by examination of the reputed Chestnut beams in the roof of Westminster Abbey, and proved that they were of Durmast Oak. A similar examination of the timbers of the old Louvre in Paris, which were also reputed to be Chestnut, gave a similar result. A comparison of sections across the grain of Oak and Chestnut allows of no possibility of mistake, and it is now known that whilst the wood of young Chestnuts is tough and durable, that from old trees is brittle and comparatively worthless, except for firewood, which is exactly the opposite of Oak-wood. It is now generally agreed that its real home is in Asia Minor and Greece, whence it was introduced to Italy in very remote times, and has since spread over most of temperate Europe, its seeds ripening and sowing themselves wherever the vine flourishes. We appear to be indebted to our friends the Romans for its introduction to Britain, who no doubt hoped to utilize the fruit for food, as at home—a hope that must have been disappointed, for its crops, even in the South of England, are very fitful, and the nuts quite small.
In suitable situations the Chestnut is of larger proportions and greater length of life even than the Oak. In the South of England it will attain a height of from sixty to eighty feet in fifty or sixty years, and if growing in deep porous loam, free from carbonate of lime, and sheltered from strong winds and frosts, it builds up an erect massive column. Hamerton has said of such a tree: "His expression is that of sturdy strength; his trunk and limbs are built, not like those of Apollo, but like the trunk and limbs of Hercules." Under less suitable conditions the undivided trunk is little more than ten feet long; then it divides off into several huge limbs, and so the general character of the tree is altered, and it presents much the appearance of having been pollarded. The branches have a horizontal and downward habit of growth, the extremities of the lowest ones often being but little above the earth. The fine elliptical leaves are nine or ten inches in length, of a rich green, that is enhanced by the polished surface, which "brings up" the colour. Their edges are cut into long pointed teeth. Towards autumn they pale to light yellow, and then deepen into gold on their way to the final brown of the fallen leaf, which, by the way, is a great enricher of the soil where the Chestnut is grown.
The flowers, though individually small and inconspicuous, are rather striking, from their association in cylindrical yellow catkins, about six inches long, which hang from the axils of the leaves. The upper part of this catkin consists of male flowers, each with a number of stamens enclosed in a perianth or calyx of five or six green leaves. The female flowers, on the lower part of the catkin, are two or three together, in a prickly four-lobed "cupule," or involucre, and consist each of a calyx closely investing a tapering ovary, whose summit bears from five to eight radiating stigmas, the number corresponding with the cells into which the ovary is divided. Each cell contains two seed-eggs, but as a rule only one in each flower develops. As development of the ovary and seeds progresses, the cupule also grows, and ultimately entirely surrounds the cluster with the hedgehog-like coat in which the nuts are contained when ripe. Then it splits open and discloses the two or three glossy brown nuts. The Chestnut is in flower from May to July, and the nuts drop in October. They form an important article of food in South Europe, where they are produced in abundance, and there can be little doubt that the importers of the tree to this country believed it would prove equally valuable here. Evelyn had this in mind when he recommended the nut as "a lusty and masculine food for rustics at all times, and of better nourishment for husbandmen than cole and rusty bacon." Well, there is plenty of Chestnut grown around Evelyn's estate at Wootton to-day, but it is chiefly as coppice, to provide hop-poles, and hoops for barrels, for which purpose the long straight shoots are split in two. Grown as coppice, the Chestnut also provides fine cover for pheasants and other game. The trees begin to bear when about twenty-five years old, and from thence on to the fiftieth or sixtieth year the timber is at its best, but later it develops the defect known as "ring shake," and becomes of little use. That is probably why one meets with so many hollow wrecks of what were once noble Chestnuts.
The young wood is covered with smooth brown bark, but later this becomes grey, and its surface splits into longitudinal fissures, which give a very distinctive character to the trunk. In older trees the fissures and the alternating ridges have a slight spiral twist, which gives the tree the appearance (shown in our third photo) of having been wrenched round by some mighty force. The average age of the Chestnut is about five hundred years, but there have been in this country many old trees that were much older, if any reliance could be placed in local tradition. There was—we fear there is little of it still remaining—the great Tortworth Chestnut in Lord Ducies' park at Tortworth Court. In 1820 it was found to have a girth of fifty-two feet. Evelyn refers to it in his "Sylva," and tells us that in the reign of King Stephen it already bore the title of the Great Chestnut of Tortworth.
The name Chestnut appears to be a modification of the old Latin name Castanea, through the French form Chataigner. The Latin is said to be derived from Kastanum, a town in Thessaly, but it is more likely that the presence of Chestnut-trees gave a name to the town, as has happened so many times in our own country with various trees, the Chestnut included.
Our placing the Chestnut and the Horse Chestnut into juxtaposition must not be understood as a recognition of any relationship that may be implied in their names, but rather the reverse—to accentuate the differences that exist between them, and which have led botanists to separate them widely in all systems of classification. Although the fruits are sufficiently similar to have suggested the name Chestnut being applied to this, with a qualifying prefix, they have been produced by flowers of entirely different character. Evelyn tells us that the word Horse was added because of its virtues in "curing horses broken-winded and other cattle of coughs," a statement for which he was no doubt indebted to Parkinson (1640), who says, "Horse Chestnuts are given in the East Country, and so through all Turkie, unto Horses to cure them of the cough, shortnesse of winde, and such other diseases;" but seeing that, in this country at least, horses refuse to touch them, there can be little doubt that the name was given to indicate their inferiority to the Sweet Chestnut, and by a process only too well known to the student of early botanical literature, the name was afterwards held to be proof of their medicinal value to horses.
The Horse Chestnut is a native of the mountain regions of Greece, Persia, and Northern India, and is believed to have been introduced to Britain about 1550. It is not a tree that will be found in the woodlands, or even by the wayside, except when it is behind a fence; yet it constantly greets the rambler who has left the suburban gardens behind him, and in the public parks—notably the magnificent avenue of Bushey Park—where by contrast it exhibits itself as the grandest of all flowering trees. Though the stout cylindrical bole is short, its erect trunk towers to a height of eighty or a hundred feet, supporting the massive pyramid, beautiful on account of its fine foliage and handsome flowers alike. The stout branches take an upward direction at first, then stretch outward and curve downwards, though in winter, when relieved of the weight of foliage, their extremities curl sharply upward, and the great buds in spring are almost erect.
These brown buds, with their numerous wraps and liberal coating of varnish, afford considerable interest to the suburban dweller in early spring. He watches their gradual swelling, and the polish that comes upon them through the daily melting of their varnish under the influence of sunshine. Then the outer scales fall flat, the upper parts show green and loose; there is a perceptible lengthening of the shoot, which leaves a space between those outer wraps and the folded leaves. Next the leaflets separate and assume a horizontal position as they expand. Then probably there comes a frost, and next morning the leaflets are all hanging down, almost blackened, flaccid and dejected-looking. A warm southerly rain, followed by sunshine, reinvigorates them, and we see that the lengthening of the shoot has actually brought the incipient flower-spike clear into view. By about the second week in May the pyramid is clothed with bold handsome foliage, against which the conical spikes of white blossoms, tinged with crimson and dotted with yellow, stand out conspicuously.
The leaves are almost circular, but broken up, finger-fashion, into seven toothed leaflets of different sizes, which appear to have started as ovals, but the necessity for not overcrowding their neighbours has necessitated the portion nearest the leaf-stalk taking a wedge shape. The large size of these leaves—as much as eighteen inches across—leads the non-botanical to regard the leaflets as being full leaves. On emerging from the bud the leaves are seen to be covered with down, but as they expand this is thrown off.
The flowers consist of a bell-shaped calyx with five lobes, supporting five separate petals, pure white in colour, but splashed and dotted with crimson and yellow towards the base of the upper ones, to indicate the way to the honey-glands. There are seven curved stamens, and in their midst a longer curved style proceeding from a roundish ovary with three cells. In each cell there are two seed-eggs, but as a rule only one egg in two of the cells develops into a "nut." The ovary develops into a large fleshy bur, with short stout spines, which splits into three valves when the dark-red glossy seeds are ripe. In the Sweet Chestnut the brown skin of the nut is the ovary, which had been overgrown by the prickly involucre; here the spiny green shell is the ovary, and the "nut" a seed. Though horses will not eat this bitter fruit, cattle, deer, and sheep are fond of it. Pounded in water, it becomes one of the numerous vegetable substitutes for soap. Under the name of Konker, or Conqueror, it affords a seasonal joy to the average boy, who first bombards the tree with sticks and stones to dislodge the fruit, and then threads the ruddy konkers on string and does battle with a chum similarly equipped, the one whose string is broken or pulled from his hand by the conflict of weapons being the vanquished. In some parts the game is led off by the recitation of the rhyme, "Oblionker! my fust konker."
The growth of the tree is very rapid, and consequently the timber is soft and of no value where durability is required. Still, its even grain and susceptibility to a high polish make it useful for indoor wood, such as cabinet-making and flooring. It is also used for making charcoal for the gunpowder mills. Although Salvator Rosa and other landscape painters have made such good use of the Sweet Chestnut pictorially, they have utterly neglected the Horse Chestnut; and Hamerton hints that the cause of this neglect is the artist's inability to represent its large flowers and leaves by the landscape painter's ordinary method of laying on masses of colour: this requires drawing. The tree begins to produce fruit about its twentieth year, and continues to do so nearly every year. Its age is estimated as about two hundred years. The bark, at first smooth, breaks into irregular scales and in old trees a twist may be developed, as illustrated by our photo of the bole.
The generic name Æsculus (from Latin esca, food) has no real 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 (Æsculus 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 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.
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.
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 (Leguminosæ), 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.
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.
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. Linnæus 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.
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.