Part 13

The late Sir Joseph Hooker visited the cedar grove on Mount Lebanon in 1864, and found about 400 old trees producing plenty of seed, by which the forest would soon regenerate itself if the ground were protected from goats, which devour every seedling. Besides this grove at the head of the Kedisha Valley there are four others in the Lebanon district, the largest of which, at Baruk, was reported in 1903 by Dr. A. E. Day as containing many young trees; but the older trees were being recklessly hacked for fuel and house timbers. Besides the Lebanon groves, which are specially interesting from their connection with biblical history and the prodigious age of some of the trees, there are extensive forests of _Cedrus libani_ in the Taurus Mountains, where the winter is very severe.

In Britain this tree responds to excess of moisture by growing far more rapidly than in its native forests; and, notwithstanding that exaggerated views are entertained about the age of certain specimens, it seems certain that it never will attain with us anything approaching the age of the patriarchs of Lebanon. Assuming that none were planted in Britain before the middle of the seventeenth century, and that very many have died, showing all the signs of senile decay, we cannot calculate on a duration of life exceeding 250 years, or rather more than the normal life span of the beech and ash.

Fifteen years ago or so I was appointed to represent the Privy Council on a Committee formed to take over the Chelsea Physic Garden from the Apothecaries Company. One of the first problems that presented itself was how to deal with an aged cedar of Lebanon that stood in the grounds. Probably it was one of the oldest in Great Britain, for it was one of those mentioned by Sir Hans Sloane in 1685 as having been planted in the Physic Garden, but the dwellers in Chelsea had conceived a fabulous estimate of its age, and, although it was stone dead, the mere whisper of the need for removing it sent a wave of indignation through the neighbourhood. Howbeit, the dead tree was an eyesore and a harbour for wood-lice and other pests, so it had to go. It was felled and taken away; but in deference to popular feeling this was done under cloud of night!

The cedar of Mount Atlas (_C. atlantica_) was pronounced by Sir Joseph Hooker to be, like the Indian deodar (_C. deodara_), really no more than a geographical and climatic variety of the cedar of Lebanon; but whereas the difference in habit and appearance is well marked and constant, modern classifiers have assigned each of the three specific rank. For the British planter the distinction between them is of considerable importance. The Mount Atlas cedar, which forms great forests in the mountain ranges of Morocco and Algeria at high altitudes, is far more erect in growth, and has less tendency to wide branching, than the cedar of Lebanon. The glaucous variety, with foliage of a charming silvery bloom, is one of the loveliest conifers that can be planted, provided it is raised from seed; but nothing except disappointment is prepared for those whom nurserymen supply with plants raised from cuttings or grafts, which are invariably lacking in the graceful carriage and erect habit which distinguish this species among all other cedars. There is the less excuse for propagation by these means, inasmuch as the Atlantic cedar ripens its cones in our country as freely as the Lebanon cedar, and seed gathered from glaucous parents will produce a considerable proportion of seedlings with the hereditary tint.

The cedar of Mount Atlas was not introduced to England until about 1845, but there are already many handsome specimens, measuring 50 to 80 feet high. The tallest I have seen in Scotland is at Smeaton-Hepburn, in East Lothian, which was 69 feet high and 6½ feet in girth in 1902.

The deodar, _C. deodara_, may be distinguished at a glance from either of the other forms of cedar by the graceful drooping of the young growth. A native of the Western Himalayas, at altitudes from 4,000 to 10,000 feet, it has not adapted itself very successfully to our mild, restless winters and cool summers, the very reverse of its native climate. It grows in its own country to an immense size, 150 to 250 feet high, and as much as 35 feet in girth, with long clean boles. Elwes records how a fallen deodar lay for at least one hundred years in one of the leased forests of the North-West before it was cut up, when it sufficed for 460 railway sleepers, narrow gauge.

Deodar seed was first sown in Britain in 1831, at Melville in Fife and Dropmore in Bucks. Ten years later large quantities were raised and planted in the New Forest, but so many of these died without apparent cause between the ages of forty and fifty years that their cultivation there has been discontinued. Similar results have been experienced elsewhere, so it does not seem that this tree, however desirable as an ornamental species, can ever be of importance for forestry in the United Kingdom. Moreover, it is not so hardy as the other two cedars, many having succumbed in all parts of the country during the severe winter of 1860-61. There are, however, many fine specimens in the southern counties of England and in Ireland, ranging from 75 to 85 feet high. In Scotland, Elwes has recorded nothing taller than a tree at Smeaton-Hepburn, which measured 55 feet high in 1902. There are several of about the same height at Galloway House in Wigtownshire.

On the whole, the best species of cedar for planting in this country, whether for timber or ornament, is the cedar of Mount Atlas.

The Larch

The European larch was known in England fully one hundred years before it arrived in Scotland, having been introduced into Southern Britain early in the seventeenth century. But it was long before this tree was grown except for ornament and by those curious in exotics; it was John Evelyn who first drew attention to the value of its timber, upon which he reported very favourably after seeing it in Continental forests. Writing in 1678, he refers to one growing near Chelmsford, "arriv'd to a flourishing and ample tree, [which] does sufficiently reproach our negligence and want of industry"--for not planting more larches.

The introduction into Scotland of the larch, the most valuable of all European conifers, was delayed a full century after the tree had become known to English planters. When it did come, it opened a new era in the forestry of that country; and, if credit may be given to local traditions, its coming was not devoid of romance.

Among the other resources of the northern realm, which had been sorely exhausted during three centuries of war with England, Scottish woodland, once so rich and extensive, had well-nigh disappeared, and so bare was the country that when Dr. Johnson made his tour in 1773 he declared that in the whole of it he only saw three trees big enough to hang a man upon.[19] Nevertheless, after the Legislative Union in 1707, landowners very generally set about planting on their estates, none of them more diligently than James, second Duke of Atholl, who received from a neighbour returning from the Continent the present of a few seedling trees which he had brought in his portmanteau from the Tyrol. It is said that these were given to the gardener, who tried to grow them in a greenhouse. Having languished under such unsuitable conditions, the plants were thrown out upon the rubbish heap, where two of them, reviving in the free Highland air, took root and grew vigorously.

The date of this incident is variously given between the years 1727 and 1738; anyhow, there the pair of "Mother Larches" stood, close to the west end of Dunkeld Cathedral, until 1909, when the larger of them was destroyed by lightning, after attaining the age of 170 years or thereby. It measured 102 feet high, with a girth of 15 feet 1 inch at 5 feet from the ground, and contained about 530 cubic feet of splendid timber.

The Duke of Atholl was so well pleased with the growth and appearance of these two trees, and of three others of the same age, which, I believe, are still standing at Blair, that before his death in 1764 he had wholly altered the appearance of the landscape by planting many square miles of hillside with larch. His example was followed by other landowners, so that during the nineteenth century larch was planted in greater quantity than any other tree, except perhaps Scots pine, for it was found that, owing to the durable character of the wood even in trees from ten to twenty years old, the thinnings of a larch plantation were serviceable and readily saleable.

Unfortunately, it became the practice to plant larch and Norway spruce in mixture. No more mischievous combination could have been devised, owing to a peculiarity in the life history of the spruce-gall aphis (_Chermes abietis_), a plant louse which bores into the buds of young spruce and lays eggs therein, causing the tree to throw out a cone-like gall from the site of the puncture. This gall is the nursery whence issues a swarm of sexual and sexless aphides. The sexless form has wings, and, alighting on a larch, speedily lays numerous eggs, which in turn are hatched into minute sexless lice, each with a coat of white down, easily detected as snowy dots on the foliage. In a few weeks these creatures acquire wings, and, despite their sexlessness, lay fertile eggs, successive swarms being produced till the fall of the leaf. Feeding by suction of the juices in the leaves, these creatures seriously, often fatally, reduce the vitality of the tree, the foliage appearing as if blighted by frost.

It must be admitted that this diagnosis of the life-history of the spruce and larch louse is to some extent tentative. It is true that no instance is recorded of the male _Chermes_ being found on the larch, and it is also true that, as stated by Elwes, larches are often infested with _Chermes_ where there are no spruces near.[20] But it is well known that many, if not all, of the _Aphidæ_ multiply by parthenogenesis (that is, without the intervention of the male), and although it has not yet been ascertained that this can be continued for more than four years,[21] that is a period quite long enough to allow of the swarms inflicting deadly injury to any tree not in the most robust health.

Now, whereas larch and spruce may often be found growing together in natural woods on the continent of Europe, it may be asked why the result of planting them together in British woods should be attended with such evil consequences. The explanation is to be found in the climatic conditions to which the larch is exposed in these islands. Naturally a mountain tree, in regions where a high summer temperature, long and strong sunshine, with little rainfall, but with much subterranean moisture from melting snow, promote vigorous growth, to be followed by total rest during severe winter weather, the larch meets in Britain with the reverse of these conditions--namely, a cool, cloudy, generally wet, summer, and an open and still wetter winter. The wonder is that the tree can adapt itself to the change as well as it does; there can be no doubt that its constitution does not remain so well able to resist attack by insect or fungoid parasite. Nature, which is ever as solicitous to provide for the perpetuation of what we consider ignoble vermin as she is for that of more admirable forms of life, has adapted the spruce-gall for a dual existence upon two species of tree growing in company; but she has also endowed these trees with a constitution vigorous enough not to suffer materially from the presence of the parasite. When that constitution becomes impaired by unnatural conditions of climate and environment, the parasite gets the upper hand, just as lice multiply upon a diseased bird or mammal. In the case of the larch, the mischief does not end with the aphides.

Another enemy lies in wait for the tree that has been weakened by loss of its sap. A minute fungus (_Dasicypha calycina_), gaining access by its spores through any lesion of the bark, causes that incurable ill known as larch canker, which has now become so generally spread through British woodlands as to cause many landowners to give up planting larch at all. In this case, also, we have a parasite which may be found on larches in their native forests, but which the inherent vigour of the trees keeps in check. That this is the true and only reason for the excessive prevalence of larch canker in this country, causing incalculable pecuniary loss to many owners of woodland, is shown by the behaviour of the Japanese larch (_Larix leptolepis_). The fungus may easily be found upon this species; but so great is the vigour of the young trees that the fungus exists, and no more. The tree repels the inroads of mycelium into its tissues affording the invader foothold merely as a harmless guest.

Serious doubts are entertained as to whether the Japanese larch will prove as valuable a tree commercially as the European species; it has not been grown long enough in Britain to prove its quality as a timber producer. But the extraordinary rapidity and vigour of its growth in early years, its beauty and the readiness with which it takes hold when planted out, have induced many people to discard European larch in favour of this Asiatic species. Travellers in Japan report that the larches of that country never attain the bulk and stature of European larches; but it does not follow from this that they may not do so in this country. The holm oak, more commonly known as ilex, is a native of the hot and dry Mediterranean region, yet what is probably the tallest specimen in the world is growing in the moist atmosphere of County Wicklow. So with the horse chestnut, only to be found wild in a few spots in Macedonia and Asia Minor, lands which can show none to equal the noble trees of this species at Bushey and elsewhere throughout the British Isles.

Meanwhile, the lesson of our experience is that we must still treat the European larch as a foreigner of great distinction. Let it never be exposed to contact with the Norway spruce, a useful tree in its way, but, commercially, not half the value of larch. Let it not be planted as a pure crop, but let it be mixed with other trees, as it is usually found in a wild state. There is no better companion for it than the beech, none, indeed, equal to that beneficent tree, owing to the manner in which it screens the soil from evaporation and radiation, and refreshes it with an abundant annual leaf fall. Finally, let the utmost care be bestowed upon the critical operation of planting; see that in removal from the nursery the roots are not suffered to get dry, as they often become when sent to a distance by rail; and let these roots be fairly spread in the pit dug for them, instead of being rammed in a bunch into a mere notch in the ground, as is too often done. It is worth much effort to retain such a desirable denizen of our woodlands in health and vigour.

Attention has been drawn within the last few years to the Western Larch (_L. occidentalis_) of North America, a tree which Douglas found in British Columbia in 1826, and mistook for _Larix europæa_. It has now, however, been recognised as a distinct species, the mightiest of the genus, reaching a height of 180, perhaps 200 feet.[22] In habit and outline it is very different from the European larch, still more so from the Japanese species, for the side branches, though horizontal, are short, which gives the tree a fine columnar habit. Owing to the great height of the trees in Montana and British Columbia, and to the cones opening and scattering the seed as soon as ripe, it is difficult to collect a supply of seed, which can only be done from trees in September. Dr. Henry visited Montana in the autumn of 1906 on purpose to obtain a supply. Unluckily, very few cones were formed that year; but a good supply was obtained in 1907, whereof I was given some. It germinated freely; the seedlings grew as rampantly as those of Japanese larch, forming beautifully rooted plants; I cleared the hardwood off three acres of good land, and planted it with 12,000 western larch, fine rooted plants, in the spring of 1910. The result has been discouraging; about 50 per cent. died outright, and by the end of 1914 the remainder have made poor growth. On the other hand, a dozen seedlings which Mr. Elwes sent me, raised from seed in 1904, and planted on moist but well-drained bottom land, have grown fast and well, being now 14 to 18 feet high. Evidently this tree, like the Sitka spruce, requires moist deep land; the other place, though far from being poor, was not wet enough for it.

There are three specimens of the western larch at Kew, one being 34 years planted and about 35 feet high; but the soil of Kew is too dry to nourish without much coddling a tree whereof all reports go to show that it demands so much moisture at its roots as would be fatal to the European and Japanese species. Sheltered valleys on the western side of Great Britain seem to be the likeliest environment for the development of this most valuable timber tree, and probably nearly all parts of Ireland.

The Yew

What the ash was to the Scots of old, the yew (_Taxus baccata_) was to the English; for while the ash furnished staves for the national weapon, the pike, which the Scots learnt to handle from their Flemish allies, the most powerful longbows were fashioned of yew, and it was as archers that the English excelled all other infantry until gunpowder came into general use. Even long after the smoke and stench of "villainous saltpetre" had altered the conditions of battle, much attention was given to archery in the English army. Despite the many Acts of Parliament enjoining the planting of yews, the supply had run short before Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, so that in 1571 it was enacted that bow-staves should be imported from the Continent (13 Eliz., c. xiv.).

Apart from military association, the yew is a tree of gloom, taking the place in British churchyards which the cypress, "like Death's lean lifted forefinger," occupies in Eastern cemeteries. Tennyson was least likely of poets to miss the significance of this tree's melancholy; at first he could recognise in it nothing else but that and its changelessness:

Old yew, which graspest at the stones That name the underlying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.

Oh not for thee the glow, the bloom, Who changest not in any gale! Nor branding summer suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom.

Shakespeare received a similar impression:

But straight they told me they would bind me here Unto the body of a dismal yew.

Sir Walter Scott applied the self-same epithet:

But here 'twixt rock and river grew A dismal grove of sable yew.

* * * * *

Seem'd that the trees their shadows cast The earth that nourished them to blast; For never knew that swarthy grove The verdant hue that fairies love; Nor wilding green, nor woodland flower, Arose within its baleful bower. The dark and sable earth receives Its only carpet from the leaves.

Anyone who has stood on a summer noon within one or other of the two remarkable yew woods on Lord Radnor's property near Salisbury cannot fail to recognise the truth of this picture in every detail. The sense of gloom and envious shade in those "swarthy groves" must oppress him who enters it. They are known respectively as "the Great Yews" and "the Little Yews," the former being of the greater extent--about 80 acres--but the largest trees are growing in the Little Yews. Although these two woods are almost certainly of natural origin, traces of replanting may be recognised here and there by the regular lines in which some of the great trees are disposed, telling of a time when the timber was in request for bow-making.

Tennyson came to realise that the yew really responds in its own fashion to the summons of spring as briskly as any rose or lily, and that a sparrow cannot alight upon it in April without disturbing a puff of pollen:

Old warder of these buried bones, And answering now my random stroke With fruitful cloud and living smoke, Dark yew, that graspest at the stones And dippest toward the dreamless head, To thee, too, comes the golden hour When flower is feeling after flower.

Surely there is nothing more delightful in English verse than the delicate phrase in which Tennyson touches upon some of the less obvious workings of nature.

Evelyn observes regretfully in the seventeenth century: "Since the use of bows is laid aside amongst us, the propagation of the eugh is likewise quite forborn; but the neglect of it is to be deplored." Howbeit, on the whole, one cannot regret that this sombre tree is less often planted than it was when the Kings of England were striving desperately to retain their rich lands in France. The yew requires two or three centuries to acquire dignity. Such venerable ruins as the great yew in the churchyard of Leeds, in Kent, measuring 32 feet in girth at 3½ feet from the ground, command admiration akin to awe from creatures whose span is but three-score years and ten. So do the yews on Merrow Down, near Guildford, reputed to have marked the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury; and the yews of Borrodale and Inch Lonaig, on Loch Lomond, we cherish as traces of the primæval forest. But for decorative work, for sheltering hedges in garden and pleasure ground, let us take some more lightsome evergreen from the wealth of choice that the enterprise of collectors has furnished us withal. The Lawson cypress, the giant thuja, the so-called Albert spruce, and many others, are of far nobler growth than the yew and equally patient of the shears, if clipped they have to be. True, they are foreigners, but so are the Spanish and horse-chestnuts, the silver fir, the sycamore, the English elm, and many other growths which have become integral parts of our home landscape; assuredly our forbears would not have hesitated to plant better things than yews if they had been given the chance. That they did plant what they had may be seen from the note made by Giraldus Cambrensis when he visited Ireland in the year 1184:

"Here the yew with its bitter sap is far more abundant than in all the other countries where we have been, but chiefly in old graveyards; and of these trees you may see plenty planted of old in these sacred places by the hands of holy men who did what they could to honour and adorn them."

Given elbow room, the yew takes liberal advantage of it, and is apt to spread to a breadth equal to or greater than its height. A singular departure from this habit was made by a seedling found in 1767 on the hills near Florence Court, in County Fermanagh, which grew in a strictly fastigiate or columnar form, and became the progenitor (by cuttings) of what is now known in all temperate parts of the globe as the Irish yew.