Part 15

The Redwood was first introduced to Great Britain about 1847, and has proved fairly hardy if protected from frost in the seedling stage. It is, however, impatient of wind exposure, and seldom displays its best qualities unless planted in close forest. In suitable environment this tree develops into one of the most beautiful trees imaginable, owing to its stately habit, deeply fissured bark of a rich russet hue, and luxuriant, glossy foliage.

Three Redwoods were planted in a glen at Cuffnells, near Lyndhurst, in 1855; these measured in 1906 from 98 to 105 feet high, with girths from 10 to 15 feet. This shows an average annual increase of height of 2 feet over a period of fifty years, which is far in excess of any other tree grown in the British Isles, not excepting the Wellingtonia. The consequence is that, as the Redwood has nowhere been planted in extensive masses, the leaders are peculiarly liable to be destroyed by high cold winds. Moreover, the quality of the timber produced in Great Britain cannot be rightly estimated until the trees shall have been subjected to close forest treatment, for in isolated specimens the texture of the wood is spoilt by excessive width between the annual rings.

Having regard to the value of Redwood timber exported from America, and the rapidity with which it is developed, this species is well worth attention from any person or corporation planting on a large scale in a sufficiently humid climate, for it is to be noted that it is very impatient of drought. The Redwood Belt, extending from Sonoma County to Del Norte County, enjoys an average annual rainfall of 50 inches. Much less than that will serve the tree in the British Isles, owing to the sun being far less powerful over here than it is in California. Propagation is done from suckers, for, as is the case with some other trees--the English elm, for instance--the production of fertile seed is diminished or disappears with the acquirement of the suckering habit.

It has been claimed for the Redwood that it is the tallest growth in the world; but Australians dispute its title to that distinction on behalf of _Eucalyptus amygdalina_. The data for a verdict are as follows: In 1896 Professor Sargent measured a Redwood felled on the Eel River, and found it to be 340 feet high and 31 feet 3 inches in girth at 6½ feet from the ground. The rings of annual growth numbered 662. On the other hand, the height of two fallen eucalyptus have been recorded as 420 and 471 feet (the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral is 404 feet high); but Mr. Malden, Director of Sydney Botanic Garden, has declined to receive these measurements as trustworthy. It is very much to be desired that the truth should be ascertained before it be too late.

Not far in kin from the Redwood is the Western Hemlock (_Tsuga albertiana_), not to be confused (as it often has been by nurserymen and planters) with the Canadian Hemlock (_T. canadensis_), which is a tree of very inferior beauty and merit to the other. The Western Hemlock forms splendid forests in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, attaining its greatest dimensions near the sea-coast, where Professor Sargent has recorded specimens 200 feet high and 20 or 30 feet in girth. Introduced to Great Britain by Jeffrey in 1851, it has proved itself contented with our climate, and is certainly one of the loveliest of exotic conifers. There are now many specimens in the United Kingdom measuring from 70 to 100 feet high. It is frost-hardy; but, to develop its true grace, must have shelter from wind exposure. Sargent reports very favourably of the timber, which is said to be disliked by rats and mice; but it does not seem to have been imported into Europe. Seed is plentifully produced, wherefore there is no excuse for the nefarious trick of reproduction by cuttings.

The Gingko

The Gingko or Maidenhair-tree (_Gingko biloba_) is among the most interesting of trees, owing to its being, like the Araucaria, a survival of the vegetation prevailing when the aspect of our globe was very different from that which it bears now. Both Gingko and Araucaria were classed as conifers by the older botanists; but certain archaic features in each have been recognised as justifying their rearrangement in two separate natural orders.

The gingko has not been found anywhere in a wild state, and owes its preservation from an extremely remote past to the care which the Chinese have always shown to preserve part of the natural forest round their temples. It is in such situations that it is now found in China, Corea, and Japan; but Dr. Henry suggests that it may not improbably exist in the unexplored forests of central China.

The true affinity of this strange tree is with the ferns and cycads, dominant orders in the Mesozoic world. It is, however, a true phanerogam or flowering plant, the male and female flowers being born on separate trees. The fruit and leaves found in the Lias clay at Ardtun, in the Isle of Mull, have been pronounced indistinguishable from those of the existing species.[29] What a vast chasm of time divides us from the summers when these fruit and leaves were produced! Since they fell our land has been ploughed and scarred by the land ice of successive glacial periods, each enduring for unnumbered thousands of years; yet these fragile relics, drifting into clefts and crannies and overlaid by the clay which the ice ground out of the rocks, have survived the rocks themselves. And now the climate of these islands has been tempered again, so that the gingko finds a congenial home in our pleasure grounds.

It is a very beautiful tree, provided it is raised from seed, or, at least, propagated by layers. Unluckily, planters are very apt to be supplied with young trees reared from cuttings, which never turn out well, for seed is seldom produced in this country, owing to the different sexes not being planted together, and the rapidity with which imported seeds lose their vitality. The foliage is unlike that of any other tree grown in Great Britain, the leathery, light green, fan-shaped leaves suggesting the design of a gigantic maidenhair fern, whence it used to be known botanically as _Salisburia adiantifolia_. The foliage turns a beautiful clear yellow in autumn.

The first European botanist to mention the gingko was Kæmpfer, who found it in Japan in 1690, but it was not introduced to England until more than sixty years later. In Scotland it does not seem to have been often planted, though it is quite hardy in the milder districts. The only considerable specimen I have seen north of the Tweed was one 40 or 50 feet high on the banks of the Ayr at Auchincruive. This was blown down some years ago, but when I saw it last it was growing vigorously from the stool.

There are many fine gingkos in England. The finest known to me are at The Grove, near Watford, 68 feet high, with a girth of 8 feet 5 inches in 1904 (see plate at page 228). One at Panshanger, in the same county, of which I did not measure the height, was reported to be 70 feet, and I found the girth to be 8 feet. Both of these are most graceful, vigorous trees, but they must yield in stature to one at Melbury House, near Dorchester, which has reached a height of more than 80 feet. No tree-lover who has seen such fine examples as these can fail to regret that more frequent use has not been made of the gingko in ornamental planting. That is its proper function with us, for the timber is of no more than mediocre quality.

Many fine gingkos may be seen in the Loire valley, at Geneva, and in northern Italy; but nowhere have I been so much impressed with their decorative qualities as in the beautiful city of Washington, where they have been planted in a long avenue along one of the principal streets. True, they have not yet attained a great stature--from 30 to 40 feet are the tallest--but their verdure is most refreshing in that sun-baked capital, and it is easy to imagine what they may become at their present free rate of growth.

The gingko is particularly well suited for a town atmosphere. In the most malodorous part of evil-smelling Brentford, close to a brewery and opposite a huge gaswork, stands the wreck of a fine one. Jammed in between grimy buildings, it has lost its top, but each spring it still hangs out its fairy leafage over the dingy thoroughfare.

The Araucaria

Very different in habit and appearance from the lightsome gingko is the araucaria or puzzle monkey, but, like the former, it is a survival of the vegetation that flourished in the carboniferous era, when it had to compete with giant ferns, cycads, and horse-tails, and attained its utmost development in the Jurassic landscape. Of the ten known species of araucaria, all indigenous only in the southern hemisphere, only one is hardy in Great Britain--_A. imbricata_--which forms forests on the mountains of southern Chile.

This tree was first brought to England in 1795 by Archibald Menzies, who, visiting Chile with Captain Vancouver, sowed some araucaria nuts on board ship and brought home six live seedlings. It was not till 1844, however, that any fresh supply of seeds reached this country, when William Lobb, collecting for the firm of Veitch, secured a large quantity. The quaint character of the tree, the readiness with which the seeds germinated, and its thorough adaptation to British soil and climate soon caused it to be widely distributed, so that at this day there is no tree with which people are more familiar than the puzzle monkey. At the same time, there is no tree which has suffered so much from injudicious planting among inappropriate surroundings. It is a creature demanding broad light and free, pure air; and I know of no more dismal object in the world of plants than an araucaria stuck down in front of a suburban villa, stifled with smoky deposit, retaining a despairing grip of life, whereof the only visible sign is the green tips of its poor blackened branches. It is treatment such as this which has caused the araucaria to lose favour with British planters. To realise what this tree is capable of in our hands, one has but to visit the Earl of Stair's grounds at Castle-Kennedy and stroll down a wide grassy avenue, two hundred yards in length, bordered on either side by araucarias over 50 feet high (see plate at page 232).

Effective in a different fashion must be the araucaria grove at Beauport, Sussex, which I have not seen. Here a number of these trees were planted about fifty years ago, and allowed to grow in forest canopy, the inner ones clearing their boles naturally. The largest of these, measured by Dr. Henry in 1904, was 74 feet high, with a girth of 7 feet 9 inches.

Again another effect. On the west shore of Loch Fyne, united to the mainland by a narrow neck of shingle, is Barmore Island, a grassy, rocky pile, treeless save for a solitary araucaria which some freakish hand has planted many years ago high on the northern slope. The impression received from this lonely foreigner is very enduring. (Let me not be misunderstood. I do not mean the physical impression, which would be distinctly disagreeable; but the mental one, which is most pleasing.)

Araucaria timber is said to be like good deal, but smoother and heavier. Like most primitive types of vegetation, the trees are of separate sexes, though exceptionally a tree may be found bearing male and female flowers. The male inflorescence is like a large, brown, pendant catkin, 4 or 5 inches long; the huge female cones take two years to ripen, when they open, and each discharges 200 or 300 large seeds, 1 to 1½ inch long. These seeds are freely produced in nearly all parts of Britain; self-sown seedlings spring up where the undergrowth permits them; and as an article of food the kernels are not to be despised when cooked as chestnuts.

The araucaria is one of many South Chilian plants which relish the climate of western Britain and Ireland. The character of climate in these widely-separated regions is curiously similar, though from diametrically opposite causes. In Chile abundant moisture arises from the afflux of a cold ocean current upon a warm coast; in the British Isles a warm ocean current flows upon the colder land.

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, Introduction, p. xv.

[2] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, ii. 334.

[3] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, ii. 328.

[4] _Sylva_, chap. iii. section 2.

[5] _The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, by H. J. Elwes and Augustine Henry, vol. i. p. 20.

[6] Holly.

[7] Sycamore.

[8] Probably the ash.

[9] The summer of 1914 was noted for a similar abundance of seed on the wych elm.

[10] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, p. 1881.

[11] _British Forest Trees_, 1842, p. 208.

[12] _British Forest Trees_, p. 229.

[13] _A Traveller's Notes_, by J. H. Veitch, p. 105.

[14] Selby's _British Forest Trees_, p. 141.

[15] Since writing this I have received from a friendly correspondent a bottle of elder-berry wine, and must confess that I conceived no desire for a second bottle.

[16] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, p. 34.

[17] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, ii. 411-417.

[18] A "dole" (in charity) is merely a dialectic variant of "deal."

[19] One of these, a sycamore at Ellon, was blown down in 1873.

[20] _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, Vol. ii. p. 363.

[21] David Sharp in _Cambridge Natural History_, Vol. vi. p. 583 (1899).

[22] Professor Sargent says, "sometimes 250 feet high."

[23] _The Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, p. 60, by John Lowe, M. D., 1897.

[24] _Ibid._, p. 59.

[25] With all the trees that thou hast tended, Thy brief concern is well-nigh ended, Except the cypress--_that_ may wave Its hateful symbol o'er thy grave. (Horace, _Odes_, ii. 14.)

[26] At Monreith I have many trees thirty feet high and more, raised from seed gathered at Fiesole, near Florence, in 1878; but young plants raised from seed gathered at Gravosa, in Dalmatia, in 1907, were all killed by frost, indicating that the cypress has acquired a hardier constitution in Tuscany than those growing on the hot limestone of Dalmatia.

[27] _Silva of California_, p. 145.

[28] Professor Jepson states that "stands of 125,000 to 150,000 feet, board measure, to the acre, are not uncommon," _op. cit._ p. 151.

[29] It is nowhere truly wild, and is a relic of a very ancient flora. Geological evidence shows that it is the last survivor of an ancient family, which flourished during Secondary times, and can even be traced back to the Primary rocks. In Mezozoic times this genus played an important part in the arborescent flora of north-temperate regions. Fossil remains, almost identical with the present existing species, have been found, not only in this country and North America, but also in Greenland.--_A Naturalist in Western China_, by E. H. Wilson, ii. 45.

End of Project Gutenberg's Trees. A Woodland Notebook, by Herbert Maxwell