Part 4

Manna of various sorts is collected from many different kinds of plant; that which supported the Israelites in the desert is supposed to have been an exudation from the tamarisk; but Sicilian manna is the only kind that is recognised as an article of European trade. In Sicily the manna ash is planted in _frassinetti_ or ash-yards, grown for eight years and regularly tapped, till the main stem is exhausted, when it is cut down, and a fresh growth is allowed to spring from the root. The active principle in manna is mannite, a hexatomic alcohol, chemically expressed as C_{6}H_{8}(OH)_{6}. The manna ash is not often seen in this country; those specimens which are of any size are invariably grafted plants; but a stock is easily raised from seed, which Continental nurserymen readily supply. In Dalmatia and Montenegro, where this tree abounds, drivers stick the flowers thereof in the harness of their horses to keep off flies, which dislike the peculiar odour. A Chinese species (_F. mariesii_) is near of kin to _F. ornus_, and is said to bear flowers of superior beauty to that tree; but of this I can only write from hearsay.

The Linden Tree or Lime

When we speak of a lime tree we conform to a corrupt usage, for the right English name is "line" or "linden tree," linden being the adjectival form of the Anglo-Saxon "lind," just as "asp" and "oak" give the adjectives "aspen" and "oaken." The late Professor Skeat, foremost authority in English etymology, observed that "the change from 'line' to 'lime' does not seem to be older than about A.D. 1700"; but he overlooked the use of the modern form by John Evelyn, who, in his _Sylva_ (1664), writes always of "the lime tree or linden," showing that the change had taken place between his day and Shakespeare's.

_Prospero._ ... Say, my spirit, How fares the King and his?

_Ariel._ Confin'd together In the same fashion as you gave in charge; Just as you left them, sir; all prisoners In the line grove which weather-fends your cell. (_Tempest_, Act v. sc. 1.)

The root meaning of the word is "smooth," referring to the texture of the timber, which caused it of old to be in great request for making shields, so that in Anglo-Saxon _lind_ meant a shield, as well as being the name of the tree.

It is strange that Tennyson, so sensitive to delicacy of sound, should have used the modern form in his frequent mention of the tree. Only one instance comes to mind of his preferring the more musical dissyllable. When Amphion set the forest dancing--

The _Linden_ broke her ranks and rent The woodbine wreaths that bind her, And down the middle--buzz! she went, With all her bees behind her.

The limes form a somewhat perplexing family, inasmuch as, of the score or so of species recognised by botanists, several cannot be reputed as more than hybrids or sports. The only species claimed as indigenous to Britain is the small-leaved lime (_Tilia cordata_), and even about this botanists are not of a certain mind. For instance, the joint authors of _The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_ have formed different opinions, Dr. Henry considering it to be "a native of England, ranging from Cumberland southward," while Mr. Elwes fails to reconcile this with the facts that no fossil remains of this tree have been identified in the British Isles, and that he has never been able to find, or to find anybody else who has found, a self-sown seedling.

There are many fine specimens of the small-leaved lime in England, ranging from 80 to 110 feet high; but it has never been known to attain the dimensions of the common lime (_T. europæa_), which, although it is an exotic species, has made itself thoroughly at home between the Straits of Dover and the Moray Firth, and is the tree which those who do not scrupulously discriminate regard as _the_ lime tree _par excellence_.

It would require much space to mention all the notable limes in our country, for they were very extensively planted 200 or 300 years ago, and, being long-lived, many of them have grown to great size. Mr. Elwes gives the palm to the lime grove at Ashridge, Lord Brownlow's fine park in Hertfordshire. These trees were planted in 1660, and average 120 feet in height and 10 feet in girth. They have been grown in a close row, only 12 to 15 feet apart, and have thereby escaped the defects to which limes are so prone as ornamental trees--namely, spreading to ungainly breadth instead of rising to height, and covering their trunks with an unsightly mass of brush.

At Knole Park, in Kent, advantage has been taken of this spreading habit to allow the formation of a very remarkable grove. The parent tree was described by Loudon as covering a quarter of an acre in 1820; the boughs have drooped so as to root themselves, and have risen again, forming trees 80 and 90 feet high, which in their turn have repeated the process, forming a second circle of trees 20 to 40 feet high, and these again are engaged in forming a third concentric circle, the total diameter of the grove, all connected with the central stem, being 36 yards. The great lime at Gordon Castle, known as the Duchess's Tree, has behaved in a similar way; but, as the supplementary growths have not been trained into trees as at Knole, the whole forms a dense thicket, impenetrable save where a passage has been kept clear to the interior. A tree of this description covers almost enough ground, if not for a small holding, at least for an allotment, for the total circumference of this mass of branches is 480 feet or 160 yards.

It is as an avenue tree that the lime is seen at its best, disputing pre-eminence for that purpose with the beech. Moreover, although the beech must be accounted the more beautiful tree, its rival has advantage over it in the delicious fragrance of its blossom, which is produced in great profusion, powerfully attractive to bees. Strange to say, although the fragrant flowers are of a pale yellowish, greenish white, the honey extracted from them is deep brown, darker than heather honey, and of inferior flavour.

Fine avenues of limes are innumerable in Britain, many of them being over 200 years old. At Newhouse Park, Devon, Mr. Elwes describes a remarkable one, which was planted about 200 years ago as an approach to a house which never was built. The rows are only 20 feet apart, and the trees, which are only 10 feet apart in the rows, have risen to an immense height, averaging over 120 feet.

Among other notable lime avenues may be noted those at Stratton Park, Hants (Lord Northbrook's); Cassiobury, Herts (Lord Essex's), said to have been planted by Le Notre, the designer of the gardens at Versailles; at Braxted Park, Essex (Mr. Du Cane's), composed of three rows on each side; at Wollaton Hall, Notts, and Birdsall, Yorks (both places belonging to Lord Middleton). In all these avenues the trees range from 120 to 130 feet high; but none can compete in length with an avenue planted at Clumber by the Duke of Newcastle in 1840, which is only 200 yards short of two miles long. Unfortunately, these trees were planted far too wide apart in the rows, 31 feet from tree to tree, and, having been afterwards neglected in the matter of training, have squandered their luxuriance in bushy growth. To form a fine avenue timely pruning is indispensable.

The lime, being more tolerant than the beech of drought, parching heat and a smoky atmosphere, thrives vigorously in towns of moderate size, and also in large cities where the chief fuel is not coal. The well-known thoroughfare, Unter-den-Linden, in Berlin, corresponds to the Mall in London. I have not identified the species with which it is planted; certainly of late years they have been planting in Berlin a natural hybrid known as the smooth-leaved lime (_T. euchlora_), which has the merit of keeping its glossy foliage later in autumn than the common lime. The trees in Unter-den-Linden are remarkable neither for size nor vigour, but they provide grateful shade and verdure in summer.

The atmosphere of Berlin is certainly not so hurtful to tree growth as that of London, where poplars, planes, ailanthus, and acacia (_Robinia_) are practically the only forest trees that can do battle successfully with the parching heat and stifling fogs of that city; conditions which the limes that used to stand in the Mall resented by casting their foliage in disgust before August was sped. The limes in the Cathedral close of Winchester afford an example of felicitous association of foliage with noble architecture. Perhaps there is a remembrance of them in Tennyson's _Gardeners' Daughter_:--

Over many a range Of waning lime the gray cathedral towers, Across a hazy glimmer of the west, Reveal'd their shining windows.

The smooth white timber of lime was once in much more request than it is now. Pliny praises it as worm-proof and useful, describing how the inner bark was woven into ropes, as it now is into bast for the mats with which gardeners protect their frames from frost. These mats are chiefly made in and exported from Russia. Lime timber, being less liable to split than other woods, was the favourite material for wood-carving; indeed, Evelyn writes of it as being used exclusively in their work:--

"Because of its colour and easy working, and that it is not subject to split, architects make with it models for their designed buildings; and the carvers in wood use it, not only for small figures, but for large statues and entire histories in bass and high relieve; witness, beside several more, the festoons, fruitages, and other sculptures of admirable invention and performance to be seen about the choir of St. Paul's and other churches, Royal Palaces, and noble houses in city and country; all of them the works and invention of our Lysippus, Mr. [Grinling] Gibbons, comparable, and for aught appears equal, to anything of the antients. Having had the honour (for so I account it) to be the first who recommended this great artist to His Majesty Charles II., I mention it on this occasion with much satisfaction."

It is owing to the neglect of British planters and the consequent irregularity of the home timber trade that this fine timber has been ousted from its former pre-eminence by imports of other kinds.

In writing of the common lime, I have used the scientific name, _Tilia europæa_ as conferred on it by Linnæus, rather than the more recent title of _T. vulgaris_. There seems a special reason for retaining the old name, inasmuch as Linnæus considered his own family name was derived from the linden tree.

The Elms

It is a matter of doubtful argument how many species go to compose the genus Elm--_Ulmus_--owing to the uncertainty of distinguishing true permanent species from varieties and natural hybrids. Foremost botanists have differed widely on the question; for whereas Bentham and Hooker recognised in 1887 only two true species growing naturally in the United Kingdom, Elwes and Henry describe five native species, besides nine varieties of the wych elm, as many of the English elm, and no fewer than thirteen varieties of _Ulmus nitens_, a species hitherto classed as a form of the English elm.

The distribution of the elm family is somewhat peculiar, extending all the way from Japan, through Northern China and Europe to North America, but not crossing to the Western States; nor is any species to be found south of the temperate zone, except in the mountain ranges of Southern Mexico. Of all the cities of the New World, Boston reminds the British traveller more vividly of home scenes than any other, by reason of the massive English elms which enrich the landscape. Pity it is that we cannot return the compliment by planting the beautiful white elm (_Ulmus Americana_), the glory of Washington city, for it does not take kindly to our island climate.

The elm with which we are most familiar in the North is the wych elm (_U. montana_), easily to be distinguished from the English elm by the fact that it throws up no suckers from the root, whereas the English elm hardly ever ripens seed, and propagates itself entirely by suckers which it sends out as colonists to an astonishing distance--50 yards and more. There are exceedingly few authentic records of the English elm ripening seed in Great Britain; on the other hand, the wych elm sometimes produces a prodigious crop. In the spring of 1909 this tree presented a curious appearance. The foregoing summer had been a very warm one, stimulating the wych elm to such extraordinary efforts at reproduction that, before the leaves appeared, the trees seemed to be covered with fresh young foliage, which was really the crowded leaf-like seed vessels. In June these leaf-like membranes had become dry scales, each acting as parachute to a single seed, so that, under a hot sun and a high wind, the air was full of them--so full that they actually choked the eave-gutters of my house. Each of these little monoplanes carried the potentiality of a majestic forest tree; given a suitable resting-place, any one of these minute seeds might develop into an elm like those at Darnaway, in Morayshire, which in 1882 were 95 feet high, with clean boles up to 24 feet. So great was the exhaustion following upon the abnormal seed crop of 1909 that some of my elms were crippled by it, and two or three died outright.[9]

To produce well-shaped wych elms, timely pruning is essential, followed by close forest treatment, for no other tree spreads more wildly and wantonly, and unless means are taken to keep a single leader on each, the result will be very different from those lordly examples which stood, not many years ago, on the banks of the White Cart at Pollok, four of which were figured by Strutt in his _Sylva Britannica_ in 1824. The largest of these measured in that year 85 feet in height and 11 feet 10 inches in girth, and contained 669 cubic feet of timber. Two of this group were blown down in the great gale of 22nd December, 1894, and the remaining pair were felled in 1905, being respectively 90 and 96 feet high. The age of these giants was shown by the annual rings to be about 300 years.

The weeping elms which one sometimes sees in gardens is a variety which originated in a Perthshire nursery about one hundred years ago. It is very ornamental, though it never attains much height, being perfectly flat-topped. As it can only be propagated by grafts, a sharp lookout must be kept to prevent the stock outgrowing the scion.

The wych elm is indigenous over the whole of the northern part of Great Britain, the largest recorded being at Studley Royal, in Yorkshire--105 feet high and 23 feet in girth at 5 feet up in 1905. As an element of the primæval Scottish forest, the wych elm must have been held in high esteem, judging from the number of Gaelic place-names commemorating it. The old Gaelic name for it was _leam_, plural _leaman_ (pronounced "lam" and "lamman"). Ptolemy's _Leamanonius lacus_ is now Loch Lomond, the lake of elms, out of which flows the Leven, which is the more modern aspirated form _leamhan_ (pronounced "lavan"); and we find the same association of names in eastern Scotland, where the Lomond Hills overlook the town of Leven. The Lennox district was formerly written Levenax, which is the adjectival form _leamhnach_ (lavnah), an elm wood. The rivers Lune and Leven in Lancashire (Ptolemy's Alauna), the Leven in Cumberland, and the Laune at Killarney all seem to indicate the former existence of elm woods on their banks. In the name Carlaverock is probably preserved another derivative--_caer leamhraich_, the fort among the elms.

It was long supposed that the English elm (_U. campestris_) was not indigenous to England, seeing that it never propagates itself in these islands by seed. Its presence was explained by the convenient device of attributing its introduction to the Romans; but there is not a shred of evidence in support of this conjecture. The elm of Italy is quite a distinct species, according to Elwes and Henry, a fact with which Shakespeare, though familiar with "Warwickshire weeds" (as elms are called near Stratford-on-Avon), may not have been acquainted when he made Adriana plead with him she believed to be her husband:

Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine; Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine; Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate.

The English elm, however, grows luxuriantly in Spain, and ripens seed abundantly there, the tradition being current that it was introduced from England to the Royal Park at Aranjuez when Philip II. was laying out that demesne. Dr. Henry, however, considers it not improbable that this tree is truly indigenous in Spain, and that it is certainly so in the southern counties of England, where, as aforesaid, it reproduces itself only by suckers. Other examples are not wanting of certain plants yielding to climatic conditions, by resorting to reproduction by suckers and ceasing to produce seed.

Perhaps the most striking display of the true English elm to be found anywhere is the magnificent quadruple avenue known as the Long Walk, at Windsor. Many of these are 120 feet high and 15 feet in girth. The avenue leads from the Castle gates to the statue in the park, a distance of two miles and three-quarters. Taller individual elms may be seen elsewhere, as in the grounds of King's College, Cambridge (130 feet), Boreham House, in Essex (132 feet), and Northampton Court, Gloucestershire (150 feet by 20 feet in girth). The last-named tree, by the way, may no longer be seen, for it was blown down in 1895, but there can be no doubt about its dimensions, which were accurately ascertained as it lay on the ground. It was probably the champion of that particular species in England; but it was inferior in bulk to the great elm which stood in the grounds of Magdalen College, Oxford, until it was blown down in April, 1911, pronounced by Mr. Elwes to be "the largest elm I have ever seen and the largest tree of any kind in Great Britain."[10] Mr. Elwes carefully measured the fallen giant, finding it to be 142 feet high, 27 feet in girth, and containing 2787 cubic feet of timber. He and Dr. Henry pronounce it to have belonged to the variety or sub-species classed as the smooth-leaved Huntingdon or Chichester elm (_U. vegeta_, Lindley), although in this case no suckers had been produced, which the Huntingdon elm usually sends up in profusion.

It is usually stated in forestry manuals that the English elm is not suited for Scottish conditions. My own experience is directly opposed to that view, for, having some score or so of these trees now about 110 years old to compare with wych elms planted at the same time, the English species exceeds the other in height and equals it in bulk. Two English elms at Loudon Castle, in Ayrshire, were measured in 1908, and were found respectively to be 107 feet by 15 feet 4 inches and 105 feet by 16 feet 4 inches.

I have found, however, that by far the shapeliest and best elm for Scottish planting is the smooth-leaved elm, formerly, and probably correctly, considered to be merely a permanent variety of the English elm (_U. campestris_), but now distinguished as a species under the title of _Ulmus nitens_. It certainly resists violent winds better than the English elm, being therefore preferable for sea exposure. Moreover, its timber is esteemed more highly than that of other elms, being remarkably tough. Dr. Henry has distinguished a variety of this elm as _Italica_--the Mediterranean elm--which is the kind used by Tuscan vine-dressers to train their vines on.

The smooth-leaved elm is of less sprawling habit than the wych elm, but occasionally it takes advantage of space to spread out of all measure. Of this there is an example at Sharpham, near Totnes, where a tree of this species has covered the space of a quarter of an acre, some of its side branches being 104 feet long. The total height was between 80 and 90 feet in 1906, in which year it was figured in the _Gardeners' Chronicle_ as a wych elm. Mr. Elwes, however, pronounces it to be of the smooth-leaved kind. On the other hand, the Cornish elm, which is a variety of _U. nitens_, is usually of columnar habit.

The Sycamore and other Maples

"Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane, East wind and frost are safely gone; While zephyr mild and balmy rain The summer comes serenely on."

A north countryman, reading Clough's beautiful lines, is pretty sure to apply them to the wrong tree, because, when a Scots forester speaks of a plane tree, he is understood to mean what in the south is called a sycamore. But even that is a misnomer, the true sycamore, mentioned in Holy Writ, being a fig-tree (_Ficus sycamorus_).

The sycamore and the plane are quite distinct, belonging to separate natural orders, the sycamore being a maple (_Aceraceæ_), the largest of all the maples, and the plane constituting a single group in the order _Platanaceæ_. The confusion of names has arisen from the success with which the sycamore masquerades as a plane, imitating its foliage and aping it in its habit of shedding the bark in thin flakes. Botanists have given recognition to this peculiarity by the scientific title they have conferred on the sycamore, viz. _Acer pseudo-platanus_, or the false plane. But in its flower and fruit the sycamore cannot disguise its true affinity. Its flowers are arranged in triplets on long hanging scapes, of a yellowish green, only requiring a dash of brighter hue to render the sycamore one of the loveliest objects in the spring woodland. The flowers are followed by fruits which stamp the tree unmistakably as a maple. The seed-vessels are composed of what in botany are termed _samaræ_ or keys, each containing a large seed or two. These samaræ are attached to each other in pairs, and, as each carries a beautifully-formed membranous wing, the result is a pair of wings to each pair of seed-vessels, securing wide distribution of the seeds by autumnal winds. On the other hand, the flowers of the true plane (_Platanus_) are very minute, and the fruit consists of a mass of thin seeds set among closely-pressed hairs and bristles, forming a hard, perfectly round ball nearly an inch in diameter. These balls, from two to six on each fruiting stalk, hang conspicuously on the branches all winter, until the dry March winds burst them and allow the seeds to float away.

Neither sycamore nor plane are natives of the United Kingdom. The plane, though it excels all other trees for planting in smoky towns like London, does not take kindly to the cooler atmosphere of Scotland and northern England. Not so the sycamore, which, although naturally a product of the mountain ranges of Central and Southern Europe, nowhere flourishes more freely and sows itself more abundantly than in North Britain. Indeed, it is a conspicuous instance of the careless prodigality of Nature how thickly every bare spot in a wood becomes covered with seedling sycamores, not one in a million of which have the faintest chance of surviving two or three seasons.