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.
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.
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.
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 1¼ 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.
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.
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.
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 1½ 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.
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 Carrière 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.
The Douglas Fir is of pyramidal outline, with the lowest branches bending to the ground under their weight of branchlets and leaves; above, they spread horizontally, but the uppermost are more or less ascending. The branchlets are given off mostly in opposite pairs, densely clothed with slender, rich green leaves, ¾ to 1¼ inches in length, paler beneath. They endure for six or seven years, and are arranged in three or four ranks. The male flowers will be found clustered at intervals on the underside of the previous year's shoots, whilst the cones are formed at the tips of the lateral branchlets, and hang downwards. These cones are somewhat elliptical in outline, from 2½ to 4 inches long, with large scales, and from the back of each there extends a three-clawed bract, whereof the middle claw or awn is very long. Several well-marked varieties of the Douglas Fir are also to be met with occasionally in parks and gardens.
The Douglas Fir produces excellent timber, and is a most valuable forest tree, not only on that account, but because of its adaptability to varying conditions of soil and climate. It is the most widely distributed of all American forest trees, and the area of its distribution is spread over thirty-two degrees of latitude, and from end to end of this range it has, in the words of Sargent, "to endure the fierce gales and long winters of the north, and the nearly perpetual sunshine of the Mexican Cordilleras; to thrive in the rain and fog which sweep almost continuously along the Pacific coast range, and on the arid mountain slopes of the interior, where for months every year rain never falls." It appears to thrive best where the air is humid and the soil well drained. It begins to bear cones about its twenty-fifth year. The straight tapering trunk is largely used for the masts and spars of ships, its suitability for this purpose being evident to all visitors to Kew who have gazed at the flag-staff set up in the arboretum. This pole is 159 feet long, with a circumference of 6 feet at the base, tapering to 2 feet 2 inches at the top, and weighing about 3 tons. It was brought from Vancouver Island, and an examination of its rings before it was set up showed that it represented the growth of about 250 years. The full life of the Douglas Fir is estimated to be about 750 years.
Between the tall, graceful spire of the Douglas Fir and the squat, heavy, umbrella-like head of the Stone Pine, there is an enormous contrast. It must be confessed that the Stone Pine is less beautiful than picturesque, a point that strongly commends it to the landscape painter working in the countries bordering the Mediterranean, in which region it is native. The date of its introduction to Britain is not known, but it has been in cultivation here certainly for more than three centuries and a half, for Turner mentions it in his "Names of Herbes in Greke, Latin, Englishe, Duch, and Frenche," published in 1548. In its native countries it attains a height of sixty to eighty feet, but in this country the finest examples are only about thirty-five feet, whilst ordinary British-grown examples are only half that height. Its trunk, covered with rugged, and deeply fissured, thick, red-grey bark, forks at no great distance from the roots, and sends off massive spreading branches of great length. For several years the young tree produces short single leaves, but later leaves are five or six inches long, slender, and of a bright green tint, in pairs, united at their base by a pale sheath. These leaves endure for two or three years. The pollen-bearing flowers are crowded into a spike. The female flowers are about three-quarters of an inch long, composed of pale greenish scales. After fertilization, these grow to a length of four to six inches, of a rugged oval form and red-brown colour, ripening in the third year. The scales of these cones are somewhat wedge-shaped, with a stout rhomboid boss, which has a depression round the central protuberance. The seeds, which are eaten for dessert and preserved as sweetmeats in the countries where the Stone Pine is native, are enclosed in a bony shell, and it is from this circumstance that the tree gets its name.
What is known as the Austrian Pine is a variety of the Corsican or Larch Pine, and its botanical name correctly set out is Pinus laricio, var. austriaca. The name has reference to the fact that its chief home as an indigenous tree is in the southern provinces of the Austrian Empire. The range of the type and its varieties together includes Central and Southern Europe, and part of Western Asia. It is a comparatively recent addition to our sylva in both forms, for the type was introduced in 1759, in the belief that it was a maritime form of the Scots Pine, but the variety austriaca was first sent out by Lawson and Son, the Edinburgh nurserymen, in 1835.
The typical species (Corsican Pine) is a slender tree of somewhat pyramidal form, growing to the height of 80 to 120 feet. The Austrian Pine, though a large tree, is of smaller proportions—from 60 to 80 feet high—but with stouter and longer branches, and denser foliage. The leaves, which vary from three to five inches in length, are sheathed in pairs, convex on the outer side, rigid, glossy, dark green, and with toothed margins. The cone is conical (!), with a rounded base, two to three inches in length, and its position on the branch is almost horizontal, the scales somewhat similar to those of the Scots Pine, but with stronger bosses, and of a yellowish-brown colour, polished. It takes about seventeen months to become full grown and ripen the seeds.
The Austrian Pine is one of those that do well on poor soils, and takes kindly to chalk. From the density of its foliage, it makes a good shade and shelter tree. Its timber, though coarse in grain, is very durable, and useful for outside work.
Made familiar, by name at least, from very early times by frequent references to it in the books of the Old Testament, it is rather strange that so hardy a tree was not one of the first of those introduced for ornament into Britain. It is true that local legends attaching to some old Cedars in this country credit them with having been planted in "the spacious times of great Elizabeth"—as the great Cedar at Whitton, Middlesex, blown down in 1779; but, on the other hand, we have the fact that no mention is made of the Cedar by John Evelyn in his "Sylva" (1664). This, it is true, is only negative evidence; but it is strong none the less, for it is not at all likely that so keen and pious an arboriculturist would have omitted mention of so noteworthy a tree had such been growing here when he wrote. There is reason to believe, however, that the still-existing Enfield Cedar was planted about the date of Evelyn's publication by Dr. Uvedale, master of the Enfield Grammar School.
The researches of Sir J. D. Hooker, subsequent to his memorable expedition to Lebanon and Taurus in 1860, established the specific identity of the three Cedars known as the Mount Atlas Cedar, the Cedar of Lebanon, and the Deodar. Though the arboriculturist still treats them as distinct species, they are scientifically regarded as geographical forms of one species. For convenience we here adopt the arboriculturist's view.
The Cedar varies greatly—no tree more so—in height and general outline, according to situation and environment, and though the stature of well-grown trees in this country may be correctly stated as from 50 to 80 feet, we are not without examples of 100 and 120 feet where the conditions have been specially favourable. There is one of 120 feet at Strathfieldsaye, and among the numerous fine Cedars at Goodwood there is the celebrated Great Cedar, 90 feet high, with a bole 25 feet in circumference, and a broad conical head whose base has a diameter of 130 feet. But the Cedar, as usually seen on lawns and in parks, has a low, rounded, or flattened top, the great spreading arms having grown more rapidly than the trunk. Thus grown, the huge bole has seldom any great length, throwing out these timber branches at from six to ten feet from the ground, and immediately afterwards the trunk is divided into several stems. From these the main branches take a curving direction, at first ascending, but the part furthest from the trunk becoming almost horizontal. It is chiefly at the extremity of the branches that the branchlets and leaves are produced.
The evergreen leaves last for three, four, or five years, and are of needle-shape, varying in length from a little less to a little more than an inch. They are produced in a similar manner to those of the Larch—in tufts that are arranged spirally round dwarf shoots, mostly on the upper side of the branchlets. The male flowers are to be found at the extremity of branchlets which, though six or seven years old, are very short, their development having been arrested. The solid, purple-brown cones are only three or four inches long, broad-topped, and with a diameter of about half the length; the scales thin and closely pressed together; they are at first greyish-green, tinged with pink. The development and maturity of these cones takes two or three seasons, and they remain on the tree for several years longer. The seeds are angular, with a wedge-shaped wing.
The trees do not produce cones until they are from twenty-five to thirty years old; but they may be a century old before producing either male or female flowers.
The trunk is covered with thick, rough, deeply fissured bark. On the branches the bark is smooth, and peels off in thin flakes. The Cedar, in its native habitat, produces admirable timber, but that of trees grown in our own country is described by Loudon as "reddish-white, light and spongy, easily worked, but very apt to shrink and warp, and by no means durable." For these reasons the tree is grown almost solely for ornament.
The name Cedar is supposed to be derived from the Arabic kedroum, or kèdre (power), and has reference to its majestic proportions and strong timber.
Although, as we have indicated, the differences between the Cedar of Lebanon and the Cedar of Himalaya are not such as can be scientifically accepted as constituting specific distinctness, they are sufficient to at once strike the ordinary observer. In proportion to the height of the trunk, for example, the main branches are much shorter, the result being a more regular pyramidal outline, terminating in a light spire. The terminal shoots of the branches are longer, more slender, and quite pendulous. These differences, though really slight, transform the rather heavy majesty of the Cedar, as represented by C. libani, into one of graceful beauty. Although the experience of sixty years has sadly falsified the high hopes entertained as to the suitability of the Deodar for cultivation in this country as a timber tree, its value for ornamental purposes and in landscape gardening has not been impaired.
The headquarters of the Deodar are in the mountains of north-west India, where it forms forests at various altitudes above 3500 feet. Its vertical distribution, indeed, extends to a height of 12,000 feet, but its principal habitat lies between 6000 and 10,000 feet. Deodar timber produced in its native forests is exceedingly durable, being compact and even grained, not liable to warp or split, and standing the test of being alternately wet and dry. Loudon states that when a building, which had been erected by the Emperor Akbar in the latter part of the sixteenth century, was pulled down between 1820 and 1825, the Deodar timber used in its construction was found to be so sound that it was again used in building a house for Rajah Shah. And Brandis tells of very much more ancient bridges in Srunagar, whose piers are of Deodar wood, and appear to be as yet unaffected by decay.
It is to the Hon. W. L. Melville that we are indebted for the introduction of the Deodar to Britain in 1831, and during the next ten years many young trees were raised here from seeds. Favourably impressed by the rapidity of growth of these seedlings, the government, fearing a coming shortage of Oak for naval purposes, imported and distributed large numbers of Deodar seeds, and high estimates were formed of the future value of these trees. But in framing these estimates one important factor was omitted—the uncertainty of the British climate, with its rapid changes, "everything by turns, and nothing long." A score or two of years served to demonstrate that such conditions were opposed to the longevity and uniform development that produced sound timber on the Indian mountains; and to-day the Deodar is not mentioned among the trees that are to bring riches to the British timber grower. In spite of this failure, there are to be seen in many parts of these islands fine young Deodars of forty or fifty years, and from fifty to seventy feet in height.
There is no necessity for repeating the particulars already given respecting the Cedar of Lebanon, and which apply to the Deodar with such modifications as are indicated in the first paragraph above. Specimens grown where they have sufficient space for spreading out their long arms, retain their branches to the base of the trunk, and if these are cut off they can reproduce them. Several nursery varieties—with golden (aurea), silvery (argentea), or more intense green (viridis) foliage than the type—have appeared as a result of European cultivation.
Lawson's Cypress belongs to that section of Conifers which includes the Junipers and Thuias, and is a representative of the North American Sylva. It is a native of South Oregon and North California, where it is believed to have been first discovered by Jeffrey, about 1852. Two years later seeds were received by Messrs. Lawson, the Edinburgh nurserymen, from Mr. William Murray, and from these seeds were raised the first young trees of this species sent out by the firm. The name was bestowed in honour of Mr. Charles Lawson, the then head of the firm, and by this name it is generally known in Europe, but in the United States it is the Port Orford Cypress. At Port Orford, on the Oregon coast, according to Sargent, "it forms one of the most prolific and beautiful coniferous forests of the continent, unsurpassed in the variety and luxuriance of its undergrowth of Rhododendrons, Vacciniums, Raspberries, Buckthorns, and Ferns," and any one who has seen well-grown specimens in the pleasure-grounds of this country can easily realize something of the beauty of such a forest, though allowance has to be made for the fact that in forest growth the lower branches are lost at an early age.
In its native home the Lawson Cypress attains a height of between 120 and 150 feet, occasionally reaching 200 feet, with a base circumference of 40 feet. The thick brown bark splits into rounded scaly ridges. The short horizontal branches divide a good deal towards their leafy extremities, which are curved, and commonly drooping. The leaves are little evergreen scales, which overlap, and being closely pressed to the branchlet, completely clothe and hide it. They are bright dark-green in colour, and endure for three or four years. The male flowers are produced at the tips of short branchlets, formed a year earlier. They are of cylindric form, crimson in colour, and each stamen bears from two to six anther-cells. The small "cones" are more or less globular, but instead of a large number of spirally arranged overlapping scales, as in the Pines and Firs, here there are only eight, whose edges at first join to form a box. When the "cone" is ripe these scales separate, to allow the escape of the seeds.
The Lawson Cypress produces a valuable wood, close-grained and strong, yet light. It is considered one of the most important timber trees of North America; but in this country it has been planted solely with a view to its ornamental qualities. Its perfect hardiness and its freedom of growth may, with longer experience than half a century affords, lead to its being regarded as a timber producer here also.
The Common Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) of the Mediterranean region and the East, of which poets have sung in all ages, has been cultivated in this country for at least three hundred and fifty years.
The Chili Pine, or "Monkey Puzzle," is a familiar sight on suburban lawns, where, however, it seldom attains a large size or long retains health. The lower branches drop off, and the upper ones become brown, as though scorched. But away from the smoke-laden atmosphere and uncongenial soils, some handsome and massive Araucarias may be seen rising from fair lawns, with dense branches curving at their tips, and regularly disposed in whorls from the dome-like head of the tree to the grass at its base. Such was the magnificent specimen at Dropmore that died in 1902, such is the fine tree at Woodstock, Co. Kilkenny, which now presumably takes the position of eminence in these islands hitherto held by the Dropmore example.
The Chili Pine is a native of Southern Chili, where it was discovered by a Spaniard, Don F. Dendariarena, in 1780, as he was prospecting for timber. About the same time two other Spaniards, Drs. Ruiz and Pavon, were botanizing in Chili, and came across the Araucaria, of which they sent herbarium specimens to Europe. But in spite of this three-fold opportunity for Spain, the actual introduction of the Araucaria to Europe must be credited to Britain. Archibald Menzies, who accompanied Captain Vancouver as botanist on his celebrated voyage, came across the tree in Chili, and brought home both seeds and young plants. One of these became a fine tree at Kew, where it was for many years the object of admiration and interest, but it perished in 1892.
The Araucaria forms extensive pure forests in the province of Arauco, from which it gets its name, and to whose inhabitants the seeds are a most important item of their food-supply. Not only do the trees in these forests lose their lower branches, but even those growing in the open plains of their native country have similarly bare trunks for nearly half their height. It is therefore a satisfaction to know that the finest specimens grown in this country have really surpassed those grown in their natural home. The height reached by old trees is from eighty to a hundred feet, with a trunk-girth of from sixteen to twenty-three feet. The tapering of this trunk is very slight, and a few of the stiff, spine-tipped leaves, with which its younger extremity is densely clothed, still remain attached in a dried-up condition far down the column. These leaves will have been observed to entirely cover the branches, not being restricted, as in most trees, to the newly formed branchlets and twigs. They are very hard, and endure for about fifteen years; are about an inch and a quarter long, and overlap, though their sharp-pointed ends turn away from the branch.
The cylindrical male flowers are four or five inches long, borne singly or in small clusters. It was formerly supposed that the sexes were on separate trees, but though many individuals only produce flowers of one kind, this is by no means the general rule. The female flowers are about four inches long, almost round in shape, but broader at the base than above. They are covered with long, narrow, overlapping scales, beneath which are found the seeds when the flower has developed into the brown cone, which is six inches in diameter. The scales are then easily detached; in fact, when the seeds are ripe, the cone falls to pieces. The seed is about an inch and a half long, enclosed in a hard, thin shell.
The Chili Pine does not succeed in this country unless it is given pure air, sunshine, abundant moisture, and an open subsoil to carry it off. Yet it will grow to a very handsome tree if these conditions are observed. Very fine effects have been obtained in some places by planting an Araucaria grove. Such an avenue is in fine condition at Woodstock, Co. Kilkenny (running parallel with an avenue of Abies nobilis), every tree with its branches intact from turf to summit, and bearing fertile cones. There is a similar, but less perfectly preserved, Araucaria grove at Bicton in Devonshire.
Order Tiliaceæ.
Order Ilicineæ.
Order Celastrineæ.
Order Rhamneæ.
Order Sapindaceæ.
Order Leguminosæ.
Order Rosaceæ.
Order Cornaceæ.
Order Caprifoliaceæ.
Order Ericaceæ.
Order Oleaceæ.
Order Lauraceæ.
Order Euphorbiaceæ.
Order Urticaceæ.
Order Platanaceæ.
Order Juglandaceæ.
Order Cupuliferæ.
Order Salicineæ.