Part 9

Hitherto British foresters have treated the wild cherry with unmerited neglect. Nobody thinks of planting geans, except here and there for ornament; nor is there any regular market for the timber. Yet that is of high quality and very ornamental for indoor work, having a fine silky grain and a charming pinkish colour. Mr. Elwes, who has used it for panelling, says that when soaked in lime water it assumes a richer tint, resembling unstained mahogany. It has the merit of seasoning readily, and never warping.

The pews in Gibside Church, Northumberland, were made of cherry wood in 1812, and are reported by Mr. A. C. Forbes to be perfectly sound and well-fitting still. Wild cherry trees are seldom felled till they show signs of decay, and as they are not long-lived--a century being about the outside span of their vigorous life--the quality of the timber should not be estimated from trees more than sixty or seventy years old. The growth is rapid, and the tree may be drawn up in shelter to a great height; there is a specimen in Windsor Park, near the Bishopsgate, which was 93 feet high in 1904, with a girth of 9 feet 3 inches.

In the _Trees of Great Britain and Ireland_, Messrs. Elwes and Henry have a plate representing an extraordinary cherry tree growing in Savernake Forest, with a wild spread of branches and a bole, covered with enormous burrs, measuring 12 feet 7 inches in girth at 4 feet from the ground. A Scottish counterpart to the Savernake tree may be seen at Gribton, near Dumfries, which, though only 56 feet high, has a girth of 12 feet 8 inches, with a branch spread of 70 feet. A massive gean tree at Mauldslie Castle, Lanarkshire, was 52 feet high in 1899, with a girth of 13 feet 2 inches. It is fast decaying, nor is the iron band with which its fork has been braced likely to prolong its existence beyond the natural term.

The wild cherry is the parent of all the cultivated varieties, many of which are derived from a high antiquity. Pliny enumerates eight varieties, including those with black and red fruits, and one which he describes as appearing half-ripe, which seems to indicate what we know as the bigarreau cherry. No doubt these varieties were of Asiatic origin, the Chinese and Persians having long preceded European nations in the craft of horticulture. The Rev. R. Walsh, writing in the _Transactions of the Horticultural Society_, 1826, described "an amber-coloured transparent cherry of a delicious flavour. It grows in the woods in the interior of Asia Minor, particularly on the banks of the Sakari--the ancient Sangarius. The trees attain gigantic size; they are ascended by perpendicular ladders suspended from the lowest branches. I measured the trunk of one; the circumference was 5 feet, and the height where the first branches issued 40 feet; from the summit of the highest branches was from 90 feet to 100 feet, and this immense tree was loaded with fruit."

Compare with this the produce of a single cherry tree during the year 1913 at Faourg, near Avenche, in the Swiss canton of Vaud. It took three men fifteen days to gather the fruit, which weighed in the aggregate two tons. The fruit is of a small and red variety, used for making kirsch; and it was reckoned that the crop of this tree would produce 200 litres of the spirit, which, at 5 francs a litre, amounts to £40.

The scientific name for the gean is _Prunus avium_--the birds' plum; but what we mean when we speak of "bird cherry" is a very different, though nearly kindred, species--_Prunus padus_, a pretty native tree of small stature which is spread all over northern Europe and Asia. It is very beautiful when covered with its white flowers in long racemes--pity they last such a short time--but the little black fruits are of no use to any creature bigger than a pheasant. Anglers in Norwegian rivers are familiar with the white plumes of bird cherry, waving like fine lace-work from the grim cliffs overhanging many a green _dal_.

Lovely as the gean tree is when in full blossom, some of the double-flowering Japanese cherries are even more so, and they have this advantage, that the display is not nearly so fleeting. What may be the wild parent of these cultivated forms I am unable to say; but Mr. J. H. Veitch, writing from Yokohama, indicates that some, at least, are not cherries at all:

"The cherries in this neighbourhood are magnificent. Tinted photographs give a very complete idea of their beauty; one looks up and walks under a ceiling of the softest pink. At Mukojima a row of these cherries a mile long by the river bank, in some places faced by a row on the opposite side of the road, is a sight it will be difficult to forget. Cherries are, in fact, to be seen everywhere in and around Tokio, and it would be difficult to imagine anything more beautiful for the few days they are in flower. The species is known scientifically as _Prunus Mume_; it is really an apricot."[13]

By far the finest display of these cherries that I have seen is in the Arnold Arboretum, attached to Harvard University, Boston, U.S. There Professor Sargent and Mr. E. H. Wilson have got together what are probably the finest groups of these lovely trees outside Japan. The profusion of blossom, snowy white or rich pink, must be seen to be believed. Why is not more use made of them in the gardens of great country houses in our own country? They are perfectly hardy, but, as nurserymen usually supply them grafted on crab stocks, incessant vigilance is required during the young stages to prevent the stock reasserting itself and overcoming the scion.

Probably the reason why these exquisite forms of cherry and plum are not more often seen is to be found in the perverse habit which impels most people who have fine private pleasure grounds to spend the sweet o' the year in London. Having been asked by the wife of a great landowner to take counsel with their Scottish gardener about improving the pleasure grounds round their magnificent castle, and perceiving that the climate was peculiarly mild, the site facing the sea, yet sheltered, I suggested that he should plant some of the fine Himalayan rhododendrons, as it was just the place for them. His reply was resentful in tone. "The wur-r-rst of rhododendrons is that they will not flower when the family's at home." So tactless of the rhododendrons!

The Walnut

The very name we have given it forbids us to claim the walnut as a native of the British Isles, for in Anglo-Saxon speech it was _wealh knut_, the foreign nut, just as they called the Celts of the West _wealas_, the foreigners, a name which has persisted to our times, as Wales. So, also, mediæval German writers termed France _das Welsche Land_, and, referring to the whole world, they described it as _in allen Welschen und in Deutschen Reichen_, "in all Welsh and German realms." It is not easy to fix the limits within which the walnut may be accounted indigenous, so widely has it been cultivated for its fruit; but it is certainly found as a wild tree over a great part of south-eastern Europe, through Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Persia, the Himalayas to Burmah, China, and possibly Japan.

More has been laid upon Roman shoulders in connection with their occupation of Britain than perhaps they should justly bear, but we may safely credit our conquerors with having introduced the walnut, which they held in very high esteem as providing a favourite article of food, and the nuts were easily carried and planted. The name they gave it--_Juglans_, i.e. _Jovis glans_, "Jove's nut"--betokens the value at which they rated this tree. Pliny devotes a long chapter to the walnut, expressing doubt whether it was known in Italy during Cato's life (B.C. 234-149). He says that it was brought into Greece from Pontus (Asia Minor), thence to Italy, wherefore the fruit was called Pontic or Greek nuts. He also describes how these nuts were thrown at weddings, certainly a more formidable kind of missile than rice and confetti, as we now do use.

The walnut has adapted itself to the soil and climate of the British Isles in exactly the same measure as the Spanish chestnut--that is, it will thrive in all parts of the United Kingdom and grow to very large dimensions under reasonable conditions of shelter; but it will not produce fruit worth gathering in ordinary seasons north of the English Midlands. Its merit as a timber tree entitles it to far more attention from foresters than it now receives, for, indeed, it is one of the most valuable hardwoods that can be planted. The fruit was too precious to the Romans to allow the tree to be used for that purpose, but, wrote Juvenal, _Annosam si forte nucem dejecerat Eurus--_"if the east wind happened to uproot an aged walnut"--the timber was highly prized for furniture.

Howbeit, there are walnuts and walnuts. The tree, having been cultivated for its fruit from immemorial time, has developed a great number of varieties, producing large or thin-shelled nuts, which cannot be trusted for the production of fine timber. Where that is the purpose, it is important to plant the wild type, for which the demand is not such as to encourage nurserymen to stock it. John Evelyn, nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, urged his fellow-countrymen to give more attention to the walnut, but he urged in vain.

"How would such publick plantations improve the glory and wealth of a nation! but where shall we find the spirits among our countrymen? Yes, I will adventure to instance in those plantations of Sir Richard Bidolph upon the downs near Letherhead in Surry; Sir Robert Clayton at Morden near Godstone, and so about Cassaulton [Casehorton], where many thousands of these trees do celebrate the industry of the owners, and will certainly reward it with infinite improvement, as I am assured they do in part already, and that very considerably; besides the ornament which they afford to those pleasant tracts."

It is curious to find Evelyn, who infused a fair proportion of scientific scepticism into his practical treatise, lending credence to some of the mythical virtues of the walnut. Thus he gravely writes that "the distillation of the leaves with honey and urine makes hair spring on bald heads."

In raising this tree from seed the walnuts offered for sale as food should be avoided, for these generally have been kiln-dried, and their vitality, as well as their flavour, thereby impaired or destroyed. Nuts should be selected from large trees of the best habit, laid in sand during the winter and sown in February. They are rather ticklish plants to handle in the nursery, owing to the long bare tap-root which they send down, and which should be shortened when the seedlings are transplanted, as they should be at a year old. If fine timber be the object, the young trees when planted out should be stimulated to upward growth by the presence of other trees as nurses. A very slight spring frost suffices to destroy the young growth; but the walnut generally escapes that risk by being the latest of all our woodland trees, except the ash, to put forth leaves. I do not remember to have seen the young leaves appear so early as they did in the remarkable spring of 1914, when they were put forth before the end of April; the ash continuing bare that year till the very end of May.

Of the many fine walnut trees scattered over the midland and southern English counties, I have seen none equal in size to one figured in Elwes and Henry's great work (vol. ii., plate 74), a truly noble specimen growing at Barrington Park, Oxfordshire. In 1903 it was between 80 and 85 feet high, with a girth of 17 feet. The bole and branches are covered with burrs, indicating that the timber would make beautiful panelling and veneers.

The only notable walnuts which I can remember to have seen in Scotland are one at Gordon Castle, another at Cawdor, and a third at Blairdrummond. The first of these would have been a magnificent tree had it been subjected to forest discipline in youth, and so expended its vigour in height rather than breadth. It is only 60 feet high, with a girth of 10 feet, but it covers with its huge branches a space nearly 80 feet in diameter. The tree at Cawdor is about 65 feet high, with a girth of 15 feet 7 inches; and that at Blairdrummond is the tallest of the three, with a girth of 13 feet. Such dimensions cannot compare with those which the walnut attains in Southern Europe. A writer in the _Gardeners' Chronicle_ described one in the Baidar Valley, near Balaclava, which yields from 80,000 to 100,000 nuts annually, and belongs to five Tartar families, who divide the produce between them.

Still, there are so many fine examples of what this tree may become in Great Britain that one may well ask why the production of its timber has been so utterly neglected. Mahogany and other foreign woods have usurped its place in the cabinet trade; but we still import large supplies of walnut, not only for panelling, but for the stocks of army and sporting small arms. For that purpose it has no equal, owing to its lightness, strength, the nicety with which it can be cut to fit gunlocks, and because it never warps nor swells when exposed to wet. "During the last war," says Selby in 1842, "when most of the continental ports were shut against us, walnut timber rose to an enormous price, as we may collect from the fact of a single tree having been sold for £600; and as such prices offered temptation that few proprietors were able to resist, a great number of the finest walnuts growing in England were sacrificed at that period to supply the trade.[14] Some years ago the War Office authorities sought to extend their sources of supply by substituting one of the superb kinds of timber grown in our colonies; but although twenty different woods were submitted and tested, none was found suitable except the American black walnut.

This (_Juglans nigra_) is a larger tree than the European species, growing to a height of 150 feet with a girth of 15 to 20 feet in the middle States of North America. It has now become very scarce, owing to reckless destruction of the forests; but there are some specimens in England already approaching the dimensions of those in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. For instance, there is one at the Mote, near Maidstone, over 100 feet high, with a girth of 12 feet 6 inches in 1905, and another in the public park at Twickenham, 98 feet high in the same year, with a girth of 14 feet 3 inches. Besides some lofty black walnuts of the ordinary type at Albury Park, Surrey, there is one very handsome tree on the terrace, near the house, distinguished as a variety under the title _J. nigra alburyensis_.

I do not know of any in Scotland, except a few hundreds which I raised from seed about ten years ago, and which are now planted out in mixture with the Japanese _Cercidiphyllum_. The only fault I find with them is that, while the young growth is as tender as that of the common walnut, it is earlier in starting, and therefore more liable to injury from spring frosts.

The timber of the black walnut is quite equal in quality and superior in beauty to that of the European species. The tree is sometimes confused with the kindred genus hickory (_Carya_), whereof there are many fine specimens in Great Britain; but the two genera may be readily distinguished from each other by cutting across a twig. The pith of all species of walnut is neatly chambered, that of the hickories is solid.

The Holly

"Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly."

It is rather curious that, dearly as Shakespeare loved the woodland and ready as he ever was to enrich his verse with references to trees and flowers, he never mentions the holly except in this song from _As You Like It_. This is the more remarkable because holly is more widely distributed over Britain than most other forest growths, and must have been far more abundant in the sixteenth century before the land was infested by rabbits to the extent it is now; for these accursed rodents make a clean sweep of holly seedlings and also destroy large trees by barking them.

It may be thought that the holly should be ranked as a shrub rather than as a forest tree; but when well grown it is fairly entitled to the superior rank, for there are many fine specimens in these islands upwards of 50 feet high. Dr. Henry measured one in 1909 near Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, 60 feet high and ll½ feet in girth. But this tree has no single bole, for it divides into seven large stems at about 18 inches from the ground. A far more shapely specimen is one which Lord Kesteven measured at Doddington Hall, Lincoln, and found in 1907 to be about 50 feet high, with a girth of 9½ feet at breast height. Being very patient of shade, the holly is sometimes drawn up to still greater height than this; Mr. Elwes having found some at Russells, near Watford, crowded among beech trees and rising to 70 and 75 feet.

The most remarkable holly grove known to me is in the park of Gordon Castle, covering a steep bank overlooking what used to be the Bog o' Gicht, but now a fertile holm. It is not known whether these hollies are of natural growth or planted, but they are evidently of great age; indeed, they are mentioned as remarkable in a description of Gordon Castle written in 1760--154 years ago. There are about five hundred trees in the grove, irregularly scattered along the bank, fifty-four of them being crowded into the space of about a quarter of an acre. But alas! one may look in vain for seedlings which might ensure the perpetuation of this ancient grove; all that may spring up are greedily devoured by rabbits.

Talking of seedlings, the propagation of hollies from seed requires to be set about in light of the fact that the seed requires a year of repose before germinating. The readiest way, therefore, is to lay the berries in moist sand for twelve months, after which the seeds may be sown in a nursery bed, where they will soon show signs of life.

The largest, though not the loftiest, holly I have ever seen is the remarkable tree at Fullarton House, near Ayr. It stands upon a shaven lawn, which is greatly to the detriment of its nourishment, and it has lost much of its height through decay of the upper branches. But it has a single hole of 8 feet, measuring at the narrowest part, 3 feet from the ground, 11 feet 3 inches in girth. The spread of branches is 189 feet in circumference.

Having been cultivated for centuries as a hedge and shrubbery plant, the holly has sported into a great variety of forms and colours, none of them, to my taste, the match of the wild type for beauty, and some of them mere ugly caricatures thereof. The best variegated forms are of ancient descent--namely Golden Queen and Silver Queen, which are quite as vigorous and bear fruit as freely as the type. These are both very beautiful; as to the other varieties, the world would be no loser if they were all extirpated, unless the quaint little hedgehog holly, described by Parkinson in 1640, were retained as a curiosity. To this doom, however, I certainly would not consign the yellow-berried holly, which gives a fine contrast with the common scarlet-berried kind, and is stated by Cole (writing in 1657) to have been found in a wild state near Wardour Castle. John Evelyn wrote in 1664 of a variety with white berries; Loudon also referred to this, and also to one with black berries; but I have neither seen these varieties nor met with anyone who had. It is doubtful whether both writers have not been misled by hearsay.

Evelyn employed all the resources of typography to express his enthusiasm for this fine evergreen:--

"Above all the natural _Greens_ which inrich our _home-born_ store, there is non certainly to be compared to the _Holly_, insomuch as I have often wonder'd at our _curiosity_ after foreign Plants and expensive _difficulties_, to the neglect of the _culture_ of this _vulgar_ but _incomparable tree...._ Is there under _Heaven_ a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind than an impregnable _Hedge_ of _near three hundred foot in length, nine foot high_, and _five in diameter_; which I can show in my poor _Gardens_ at any time of the year, glitt'ring with its arm'd and vernish'd _leaves_? The taller _Standards_ at orderly distances, blushing with their natural _Coral_. It mocks at the rudest assaults of the _Weather_, _Beasts_, or _Hedge-breakers_."

This hedge grew, not at Wotton, but at Sayes Court, Evelyn's other place near Deptford, which he leased to the Czar Peter the Great in 1697, and had occasion to repent having done so, for that eccentric monarch, in the intervals of his work at the dockyard, amused himself by causing his courtiers to trundle each other in wheelbarrows down a steep descent into the said hedge, which was seriously damaged thereby.

No tree is better adapted than the holly for making a hedge; but it does not always get the treatment necessary to produce the finest effect. I have never seen any to equal the holly hedges at Colinton House, in Mid-Lothian, which were planted between 1670 and 1680, and are now from 35 to 40 feet high, tapering upwards from a basal diameter of about 20 feet. The lower branches have rooted themselves freely, so that it would be difficult to create a more effective barrier of vegetation. The total length of these hedges is 1,120 feet, having been formed originally with about 4,500 plants. Colonel Trotter's gardener, Mr. John Bruce, takes a just pride in tending them, clipping them annually at the end of March, so as to ensure a close young growth maturing before the winter frosts.

The proper season for planting hollies is May, after growth has started. If the operation is delayed till autumn, they make no new roots, and suffer so much from frost and cold winds that many of them never get established. This is one of those secrets which one has to find out for oneself, at the cost of many wasted seasons. _Haud ignarus loquor._ Although in generous soil the holly will make long annual shoots, it is very slow in forming wood, which may account for our neglect of it as a timber tree. But the wood is of very fine quality, being hard and white, excellent for turnery and for making mathematical instruments.

"We presume," says Phillips in _Sylva Florifera_ (1823), "that many noble trees of holly would be seen in this country, but for the practice of cutting all the finest young plants to make coachmen's whips, thus leaving only the crooked branches or suckers to form shrubs." The demand for this purpose must have diminished with the spread of automobilism; but the ravages wrought on holly trees for Christmas decoration are deplorable, raiders finding a ready sale for their plunder in all the big towns. It is a gentle custom to "weave the holly round the Christmas hearth"; but it is desirable that the weavers should observe some distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_--pronouns which they seem to regard as synonymous when applied to holly.