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FAMILIAR TREES

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SILVER BIRCH.

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Familiar Trees

G. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S., F.R.H.S.

HON. PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY IN THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE

VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE SELBORNE SOCIETY, EDITOR OF " NATURE NOTES'1

HON. MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ENGLISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY

WITH

COLOURED PLATES BY
W. H. J. BOOT, R.B.A., AND A. FAIRFAX MUCKLEY

AND

PLAIN PLATES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND
PHOTO-MICROGRAPHS

ENTIRELY NEW EDITION
REVISED THROUGHOUT AND ENLARGED

THIRD SERIES

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED

LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

MCMVII ALL RIGHTS RESERVED f Q

PREFACE,

"Every tree is beautiful, every grove is pleasant
and every forest is grand. The planting and care
of trees is exhilarating and a pledge of faith in
the future ; but these aesthetic features, though
elevating, are incidental. The people need wood.
They have had it in abundance and have been
prodigal in its use, as we are too often careless of
blessings which seem to have no end. Our his-
toiy, poetry, and romance are intimately associated
with the woods. Our industries have developed
more rapidly because we have had plenty of cheap
timber. Millions of acres of bare hillsides that
produce nothing profitably should be growing trees."
These words of an American statesman are true
of oiher lands as well as of the United States;
and it is one of the objects of the present work to
draw attention to the individual beauty and interest
of each familiar species. In doing this the efforts
of the author have been most ably reinforced by
the work of the colour-artists, Messrs. W. H. J. Boot,

vi PREFACE

R.B.A., and A. Fairfax Muckley, by the photo-
micrographs prepared by Messrs. James A. Weale
and F. W. Saxby, and by the photographs of speci-
men trees taken by the cameras of Messrs. F. Mason
Good, H. Irving, and E. J. Wallis.

We should hear as often of the planting of young
trees as we do of the felling of old ones. Too
frequently, as we gaze upon some fallen monarch
of the glen, do we feel constrained to address it
apologetically in the words of a little-known poet : —

" Thou canst not censure more than we,
The vandal hand that laid thee low : —
But any fool can fell a tree — ,
Tho' it takes a God to make one grow 1 "

G. S. BOULGER.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Birch . 1

Spindle-tree 9

Hornbeam 17

Willows 25

Abele 33

Scots Fir 41

Hawthorn ^49

Cypress 57

Elder 65

Lombardy Poplar 7$

Wych Elm 81

Cedar of Lebanon . . .89

Alder 97

Spruce Fir 105

Holm Oak 113

Box 121

Acacia 129

Larch 137

Weeping Willow 145

Botanical Synopsis . . . .153
General Index 169

FAMILIAR TREES.

THE BIRCH.

Betiula al'ba L.

If the Oak and the Beech contend for the rank of
king, there is no doubt as to the right of the Birch,
clad as she is in cloth of silver, adorned with
emeralds, or with " patines of pure gold," to the
title of Lady of the Woods, bestowed on her by
Coleridge. Often has this tree roused the enthusi-
asm of both the artist and the writer ; but, useful
as it has been in other ages, and as it still is in
other lands, it is now mainly for its aesthetic value
as part of some of our most beautiful landscapes
that we treasure it.

The very name Birch, in its identity with " bark,"
" barque," or " barge," suggests the time when its
silver rind formed the canoes of our early British
ancestors, such as have been found buried in the
gravels of the banks of the Clyde. This etymology
does not seem, however, to have suggested itself to
Turner, since in his " Names of Herbes " (1548) he
simply says : " Betula — or, as some wryte it, betulla
— is called in greeke, Semida ; in englishe, a birch
tree, or a birke tree ; in duche, ein birck baum ; in
french, bouleau or beula. It groweth in woodes
and forestes."

The genus Betula, to which the Birch belongs,

40 1

2 FAMILIAR TREES

includes some five-and-twenty species of shrubs and
trees of medium size, confined to the northern
hemisphere, and remarkable for their extension
into Arctic latitudes. The Canoe or Paper Birch
(B. papyra'cea Ait.), of North America reaches lat.
70° N., whilst another species (B. BhoypuHtra Wall.)
grows at an altitude of 9,000 feet in the Himalayas.
Our own species, Betula alha, ascends to 2,500 feet
in the Highlands, and is widely spread over Europe,
Asia, and America, extending farther north than
any other European tree, but only constituting an
essential element of forest scenery as far south as
45°. Together with the Alders, of which there are
some fourteen species, the Birches form the Natural
Order Betulacece, catkin-bearing trees with not more
than five stamens to each flower, and with neither
<( perianth " nor " cupule " (like those of Oaks or
Hazels) to enclose their small compressed fruits.
The Birches differ from the Alders in the scales of
the seed-bearing catkin being chaff-like, and falling
together with its winged fruits, whilst those of the
Alders remain as a woody cone.

The White or Silver Birch is a short-lived tree,
as a rule from forty to fifty feet high, though, ex-
ceptionally, growing to eighty feet, with a trunk
seldom exceeding a foot in diameter, conspicuous
from its flaking, silvery-white bark. This flaking
is produced by the formation of alternate layers of
larger and smaller cells in the "periderm" or outer
bark, of which the larger are the more readily
ruptured under the influence of variations in the
degree of atmospheric moisture. Every careful

THE BIRCH 3

observer will have noticed that this polished silver
rind is interrupted at frequent intervals by transverse
ridges of a darker colour extending partly round
the stem. These are the " lenticels," or breathing-
pores of the bark, replacing the " storaata " of the
young epidermis, and corresponding to the holes
rilled with powdery dried cells that extend through
the cork of the Oak at right angles to its surface.
As the stem or branch increases in diameter, these
lenticels become stretched from mere spots into
long lines.

It is when its slightly crooked stem stands alone
on the slope of some river glen, brown with fallen
leaves of autumn, and lit up by the varying hue
of the dead fronds of bracken, with its round
slender branches, of polished purple bronze, weeping
in festoons eight or ten feet long, as Ave see it in
MacAVhirter's pictures, that the Birch is seen in all
its beauty of outline. It is, however, when these
bare boughs, or those of the smaller trees that dot
the heathery wastes of Epping Forest or Bagshot
Heath, begin to clothe themselves in April with
their transparent foliage of fluttering brilliant leaflets,
that the tree is, perhaps, at its perfection of grace
and loveliness. When grouped together in numbers,
a grove of young Birches in winter presents an
almost smoke-like hazy effect of copper boughs and
purple twigs springing round the slender silver
stems ; but in spring they lose all signs of sombre
melancholy, and seem to laugh as their leaves dance
in the sunbeams which fall between them on to the
Dog-violets that strew the woodside.

4 FAMILIAR TREES

Linn&us's species, Betula alba, includes several
fairly distinct forms. Of these, B. verruco'sa Ehrh.
is distinguished by its longer pendulous branches
having- white resinous tubercles on their bark, as
also occasionally on the leaves, by its conical buds,
by the reflexed sickle-shaped side lobes of the
scales of the fruiting catkins, and by the leaf. This
is rhornboidally triangular, its long stalk passing
abruptly into the blade, its veins projecting from
the upper surface of the blade, and its point abruptly
" acuminate," or tapering. B. glidino'sa Fries, on
the other hand, is often a mere shrub ; its buds are
egg-shaped, the side lobes of the scales of its fruiting
catkins are erect ; and its leaf is rounded, or even
heart-shaped, at the base, and has its veins projecting
from the under surface, and its point acute, but not
drawn out. The northern form of this last, known
as B. pubes'cens Ehrh., differs mainly in the absence
of tubercles and in the downiness of the leaves,
peduncles, and twigs. In all the forms the branches
succeed one another in Avhat is termed a " cymose "
manner, each axis being comparatively short ; and
the somewhat thick leaves on slender stalks, with
broad " stipules " at the base and doubly toothed
margins, appear before the maturity of the catkins.
This takes place in April and May, but even in
February the pollen-bearing catkins may be seen
forming on the twigs.

These " male " catkins are borne at the ends
of the shoots of the previous year, and are not
protected by any winter bud-scales, whilst the
"female" or fruiting catkins terminate lateral dwarf

LEAVES AND MALE AND FEMALE CATKINS OF SILVER BIRCH.

THE BIRCH 5

shoots, which bear a few leaves, and are enclosed
by bud-scales. The pollen-bearing catkins are often
nearly two inches long, each of their scales, or
" bracts," having two lateral appendages, or " brac-
teoles," which protect three flowers, each with two
forked stamens. The female catkins are shorter, and
are at first erect. In them the two bracteoles cohere
with the bract to form a three-lobed scale, which, as
we have seen, falls off with the three fruits that are
produced from its base, and the form of the side lobes
of which distinguishes the sub-species. The little
fruits are furnished with a broad membranous wing,
which, together with their flattened form, aids in
their dispersal by the wind. Their general outline
is thus nearly circular, surmounted by two small
stvles, an indication of the original two chambers
of the ovary, each with its one pendulous ovule,
reduced in the fruit stage, by an abortion frequent
among trees, to one chamber and one seed.

The wood of the Birch is diffuse-porous, with
minute vessels in groups of as many as eight, with
pith-rays so fine as to be indistinguishable by the
naked e}^e, and with pith-flecks towards the centre
of the stem. Whilst the sapwood is a light
yellowish-brown, the heart is slightly tinged with
red. Though moderately hard, it is exceptionally
porous, and of so even a grain as to be readily turned.
. In early times not only did the Birch provide
primitive man with his canoe, but it probably roofed
his rude shanty, and furnished fibre for his cable,
fishing-lines, or other cordage, in districts beyond
the northern limit of the Linden. Probably, too, it

6 FAMILIAR TREES

was at no late period in the history of civilisation that
man took to tapping the white trunks in the spring
for the sake of the copious flow of sugary sap, and to
fermenting this sap into a wine or spirit, as is still
done both in Sweden and in Leicestershire. Besides
a beer, prepared formerly from its young shoots, and
the wine just mentioned, the Birch yields a tea
prepared from the leaves, chiefly by the Finlanders.
The bark, moreover, contains enough starch to fur-
nish, when bruised, a bread-stuff to the Samoiedes
and Kamtschadales. It is also still used in the north
for roofing, being very durable and imperme-
able, and in Russia for the manufacture of jars,
boxes, and shoes, and for tanning. On distillation,
it yields a fragrant oil, which gives its pleasant
odour to Russian leather. The wood, though not
durable, is valued in Russia, where the Birch
forms the chief tree in vast forest areas, not only as
firewood and as a source of charcoal, but also, on
account of its toughness and tenacity, for carriage-
building, furniture, and turnery. A very extensive
domestic industry in that country is the manufacture
of wooden spoons, thirty millions, mostly of Birch-
wood, being made annually. The flexible branches
are largely utilised in the making of brooms, and it
is stated that the fasces carried by the lictors
before the magistrates of ancient Rome were made
up of Birch-rods.

We may doubt the exact truth ot the statement
made by M. Alphonse Karr, in his charming
" Tour autour de mon Jardin," that " in London
they make champagne " from the Birch ; but no

SILVER BIRCH.

Photo: E. J. Wallis. Keui.

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF WOOD OF SILVER BIRCH (X 10 DIAMETERS).

78

THE BIRCH 7

schoolboy will probably dispute the truth of his further
statement, that " the most virtuous uses to which it
is applied are brooms and wooden shoes." Neverthe-
less, Dr. Turner, the pugnacious Dean of Wells, is of
a different opinion; for in his " Herball " (1568) he
writes of it : "I have not red of any vertue it hath in
physick ; howbeit, it serveth for many good uses, and
for none better than for betynge of stubborn boys,
that either lye or will not learn." This, too, is the
only connection in which Shakespeare refers to this
beautiful tree. In Measure for Measure, he tells
how fond fathers,

" Having bound up the threatening twigs of Birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mocked than feared."

Owing to the beautiful arrangement of the cells in
the outer bark, to which reference has already been
made, the Birch is constantly shedding its rind in
strips that go right round the stems, and is thus,
together with the similarly constituted Plane, one of
the species best fitted to withstand the smoke of
London.

This tree is, however, peculiarly liable to the
disease known as " Witch Knots " or " Witches'
Brooms," a confused mass of short twigs, like an
old rook's nest, produced by a fungus known as
E.roas'cus tur'gidus Sadeb., or by a very minute
gall-mite, Pltytop'tus rudis, which attack the
young buds. It is desirable to burn all parts so
affected, as the mites will otherwise be carried
from tree to tree by wind or birds.

8 FAMILIAR TREES

The Birch is remarkable for its power of holding
its own, and spreading, amongst Heather, where other
species are commonly stifled unless protected. Thus,
formerly it was not a common tree in Epping Forest,
but, from this power and its enormous production of
seeds, which are scattered far and wide by the wind,
owing to the little wing attached to each, it is now
spreading rapidly, springing up spontaneously where-
ever the soil is dry, if a clearing has been made by
fire or felling.

The Birch is a tree that frequently keeps its green-
ness rather late into the autumn, not changing colour
until that after-glow that so often follows the ravages
of the early October gales. Then perchance against
a background of dark Scots Pines, or the rich browns
of the fading Oak or Beech, the little leaflets of the
Birch stand out in a relief of pale straw or of pure
gold, rendering still more marked the contrast of
the white trunks that in an autumn twilight have
a most ghostly appearance.

The Birch will grow in moist situations, but
requires good drainage, and so seems to flourish ber
on light soils. In planting it, probably it will be be
in any case to secure some dark evergreen backgrouiK
or contrast, effective both in spring and autumn, such
as Scots Firs.

'■■%

b*

■

SPINDLE-TREE.

THE SPINDLE-TREE.

Emm' 1/ urns eurojxe'us L.

It is probably only owing to its comparative rarity
that the Spindle-tree {Euonymus europevus L.) is
not more appreciated for its beauties than it is. It
is generally but little more than a shrub, seldom
exceeding ten or twelve feet in height when in
a wild state ; though in Forfarshire, and under cul-
tivation elsewhere, it reaches thirty or five-and-thirty
feet, with a trunk from a foot to eighteen inches in
diameter. The gay colouring of its autumn fruit,
however, draws attention to it even where it is only
represented by a lew small bushes.

Our species is one of about forty belonging to the
genus Euonymus, which with thirty-nine other
small genera constitute the Order Gelastri'nece. This
Order of woody plants with simple leaves and small
flowers, the sepals and petals of which are four or five
in number and are arranged in an "imbricate"
manner, is further characterised by having a fleshy
and often coloured outgrowth from the coat of the
seed, known as an " aril." The affinities of the Order
seem to be most close to that of the Vines and
Virginian Creepers (Ampeli'dece) on the one hand,
and to that of the Maples, Sycamores, Horse-
chestnuts, and Soap-berries {Sapindd cecv) on the
other.

The genus Euonymus derives its flattering name,

41 o

10 FAMILIAR TREES

which dates from the time of Theophrastus, and
signifies "well-named," from its bad rather than its
good qualities. As the Irish peasant to-day
euphemistically speaks of the fairies as " the good
people" because he is afraid of them, so the ancient
Greeks called their avenging deities, or Furies, the
Eumenides, or " kind folk," and their mother
Euonyme, "her whose name is good." From the
fetid smell emitted by the whole plant wdien bruised,
and from its poisonous though lovely fruits, the
Spindle-tree has apparently been given the name
of this once dreaded being. The chief distinctive
structural characters are the leaves in opposite pairs
and evergreen, or nearly so, though the stipules fall
off early ; the relatively large fleshy disc within the
calyx in which petals, stamens, and ovary are alike
inserted ; and the angular or winged capsule, which,
though dehiscent, is somewhat fleshy in texture.

Our one British species (E. europams L.) is also a
native of Western Siberia, North Africa, and the
whole of Europe from Sweden and Scotland to the
Caucasus. Its popular names in English, French, and
German, " Spindle-tree," " Fusain," and " Spindel-
baum," all alike refer to the use of its wood for
spindles, which still prevails where hand-spinning
survives as an industry. The Old English names
" Prick-wood " or " Prick-timber," which latter is used
by Gerard, and the French " Bois-a-lardoire," allude to
its employment for skewers or larding-pins, formerly
called " pricks," whilst another French name, " Bonnet
de Pretre," alludes to the resemblance of its four-
plaited capsule to a priest's biretta ; and the Flemish

THE SPINDLE-TREE 11

" Kardin.aalsmuts," referring to the colour also, is even
more appropriate.

A good deal of confusion seems to have
arisen in popular parlance between this species
and the Cornel (Cor'nus sanguin'ea), both trees being
of about- the same size, having opposite leaves, hard,
tough wood furnishing good charcoal and easily bored
longitudinally, and acridly astringent properties in
the leaves and bark. Both trees are consequently
known as Prick- wood, as Gatteridge, Gaten, or Gaitre-
tree, and as Dogwood. The word " gatr," our modern
"gaiter," means apparently a cover, and has been
supposed to refer to the capsule hanging when burst
like a cover over the seed. In this case the name
must belong to Euonymus, and has only been
extended to Gomus by mistake. It may, however,
signify a pipe, and allude to the use of shoots of
either tree, three or four feet long, as stems for
earthenware pipes, for which purpose they are readily
bored, and are employed in both Russia and Germany.
The name Dogwood has been derived from the
use of the leaves, either dried and powdered or in
a decoction, in the treatment of mange or to expel
vermin ; but is almost certainly only a corruption of
Dagwood.

Though formerly attaining its largest dimensions,
as already stated, in Forfarshire, where the large trees
were in considerable demand for turnery and
cooperage, the Spindle-tree is, on the whole, of but
rare occurrence in Scotland, and local in Ireland. In
England, however, its smooth bright green shoots
and leaves in summer, and its rose-red capsules in

12 FAMILIAR TREES

autumn, are not uncommon objects in hedgerows
or copses. The whole plant is remarkable for its
smoothness, for even when the young green wood
becomes grey from the development of cork beneath
the epidermis, the bark retains an even surface. A
point of some physiological interest occurs in connec-
tion with this formation of cork. A few woody plants,
such as Mistletoe and the Pennsylvanian Maple (Acer
Pennsylva'nicwm L.), never form any cork at all, but
retain their epidermis and their green colour. Others,
such as the Willows and the Poma'cece~ (i.e. Apples,
Pears, etc.), form cork from the epidermis itself, and,
like most trees, do so towards the end of the first
summer in the life of the shoot. The majority of
trees form their cork a little below the epidermis, so
as to bury the green layers of the bark beneath its
opaque tissues, whilst both epidermis and cork are
subsequently split into longitudinal cracks, which
may widen into the deep furrows so familiar in the
bark on the trunks of Oaks, Elms, or Poplars.
Anyone cutting a switch of Hazel, Holly, Privet, or.
in fact, almost any wood, may notice the bright green
layer beneath the dull-coloured external cork. In
some few plants, such as the Clematis, the Vine, and
the Honeysuckle, cork originates yet deeper, viz. in
the "bast," or inner layer of the bark, which, as a
consequence, conies away in long strips ; but in
Evxtnymus, whilst it arises, as in the majority of
trees, just below the epidermis, its formation takes
place not on yearling shoots, but on those several
years old ; and until it is formed the branch remains
green externally.

FLOWERS, FRUIT. AND LEAVES OF SPINDLE-TREE.

THE SPINDLE-TEEE 13

The shoots are matt-green, give off a fetid odour
when bruised, and are bitter to the taste. They'
contain an irritant poison known ascuonymin. Four
distinct wings give the twigs a four-sided character,
and their sub-opposite, short, egg-shaped, pointed
green buds, which are pressed against the branch, are
also slightly four-angled. In April they put forth
their pairs of delicately glossy, oblong-lanceolate
leaves, of a rather deep shade of green, each leaf
being shortly stalked, two or three inches long, with
a finely toothed margin and a tapering point. The
midribs give off about eight pairs of pinnately arranged
secondary veins which curve forward and loop on to
one another, the network of finer veins not being
conspicuous.

About a month later, in the axils ot these leaves
appear the bifurcating few-flowered clusters of incon-
spicuous blossoms. These are not individually half
an inch across, and are of a pale green colour ; but
they are noticeable from the regularly " tetramerous,"
t or fourfold, arrangement of their parts — four sepals,
their margins overlapping, or " imbricate," four petals
alternating with them, each of an oblong-acute outline,
four stamens, and an ovary made up of four carpels.

It is not, however, till the year begins to wane that
the Spindle-tree displays its real charm. The leaves
often turn crimson in autumn ; but the fleshy four-
lobed fruit is the most distinctive beauty of the tree.
Of a rosy red, or more rarely creamy white, it
resembles a cross of coral or ivory; and, on bursting,
discloses one of the most beautiful or most daring: of
Nature's colour contrasts. This is produced by the

14 FAMILIAR TREES

" aril," or fleshy covering to each of the seeds, which,
alike in the red-fruited and the white varieties, is of
a brilliant deep orange. This outgrowth from the
" testa " or integument of the seed resembles in struc-
ture, colour, and function the more partial and divided
covering to the seed of the Nutmeg, which is known
as mace ; but in the case of the Spindle-tree the de-
velopment of this outgrowth after the fertilisation of
the seed begins, not at the structural base of the seed,
its " funicle " or stalk, but at the other end, at the
" micropyle," or orifice at which the pollen-tube enters
and the primary root leaves the seed ; and therefore it
is known technically as an " arillode," whilst the mace
is an " arillus." The function of either structure is
apparently to render the seeds more attractive to birds,
and thus to ensure their dissemination. Sir Joseph
Hooker alludes to this in the case of the Nutmegs and
pigeons of the Molucca islands. Much interest attaches
to the obscure question as to the identity or similarity
of the aesthetic perceptions, taste, colour, smell, or hear-
ing, in the lower animals, such as the insects that seek
honey in the flowers of our gardens, or the birds that
eat the gaily coloured fruits of our orchards, with
those of man. In this case, however, undoubtedly, as
in the parallel instance of the pale blue blossoms of
Love-in-a-mist (Nigel' la sati'va L.) amid its vivid
green foliage, the deft brush of the Master-Artist has
secured by a bold contrast an effect most pleasing to
the human eye.

A variety with broader and more glossy leaves and
larger fruit, sometimes ranked as a distinct species
under the name of E. latifo'lius Scop., is well worthy

SPINDLE-TREE.

Photo . H. Irving, Horley.

7G

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF WOOD OF SPINDLE-TREE (X 10 DIAMETERS)-

80

THE SPIXDLE-TREE 15

of cultivation, not only in shrubberies, where it may-
be well associated with the white-fruited kind for
autumn effects, but also as a standard on lawns ; but
unquestionably the most generally known species at
the present day is the evergreen Japanese Spindle- tree
(E. japon'icus), introduced in 1804, which, with its
more decidedly egg-shaped leaves with scalloped
margins, luxuriates in the sea-breezes ot our southern
watering-places ; and, with foliage often ornamentally
variegated with white or yellow, sustains but little
damage even in severe winters, and ably withstands
the fatal smoke of London. On the south coast we
have sometimes seen the inconspicuous blossoms of
this shrub crowded with Red Admiral butterflies and
other species of the beautiful genus Vanes'sa.

The wood of the Spindle-tree seems to have been
employed for knitting-needles and spindles by the
ancients ; and in England was once used for musical
instruments. In Scotland, before the large trees of
Forfarshire were used up, their wood, with that of the
Alpine Laburnum (Cy'tisus alpi'nus Mill), was used
for the staves, alternately white and yellowish and
dark brown or black, in the little pails or noggins
known as " bickers " or " luggies," used for porridge
or as drinking- vessels. Now, however, Holly- wood is
generally substituted for that of the Spindle-tree.
Butchers' skewers have long ceased to be made of this
wood, or indeed of any particular species, deal and
other woods by no means free from the tendency
to splinter being commonly employed ; but owing
to its toughness, which permits of its being pared
down to the fineness of a needle, it is still somewhat

16 FAMILIAR TREES

in request among watchmakers for pegs used in their
work.

Its charcoal is used for the liner kinds of gun-
powder, and in France, where this and many other
small woods are put to a great variety of uses
unknown in this country, it is esteemed for artists'
crayons.

In spite of its comparative rarity, it is singular that
the beautifully modelled and coloured fruits of this
tree should not have attracted more attention from
our poets ; but showing brightly, as they do, late
into the year, they suggested to Tennyson the serene
wisdom and experience of age. In a short poem
called " A Dedication," he expressly refers to the
fruit of the Spindle-tree in the following lines : —

"Take "this, and pray that he
Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith in him,
May trust himself ; and, spite of praise and scorn,
As one who feels the immeasurable world,
Attain the wise indifference of the wise ;
And after Autumn past — if left to pass
His Autumn into seeming-leafless days —
Draw towards the long frost and longest night,
Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit
Which in our winter woodland looks a flower."

HORNBEAM.

THE HORNBEAM.

Carpi' nus Bet'ulus L.

Few of our common native trees are so little
known to the general public as the Hornbeam
(Carpinws Betulus L.). It is, however, not only
common, but has also many features of beauty and
interest.

Its general distribution is not wide, being con-
fined to the temperate parts of Western Asia and
of Europe, its northern limit being stated at 55°
or 56°, though it occurs somewhat north of this in
the island of Gothland. It is almost certain that
this tree is not truly native in Scotland, even if so
in Yorkshire ; but in Lancashire, Cheshire, Wales,
Norfolk, and the south-eastern counties it is more
particularly abundant, and it probably formed a
considerable portion of the underwood of the great
primeval forests of these areas. Rejoicing, as it
does, in a stiff, moist clay, but not refusing to
grow on gravel, or even on limestone, it may well
once have been far more abundant than it is now,
ranging from Wychwood, Shotover, and the New
Forest to Anderidaesweald, the great wood of
Sussex, Surrey, and Kent, and to Enfield Chase
and the Essex forest, of which the existing remnant,
now named from the town of Epping, in its northern
purlieus, still contains many ancient examples of
this species.

42 17

18 FAMILIAR TREES

These veterans, however, have a delusive air of
hoar antiquity from their gnarled and knotted
appearance, the result, for the most part, not of
age, but of the cruel toppings and loppings to
which they have been subject in the past. Like
those other thoroughly indigenous British trees, the
Holly and the Yew, the Hornbeam can be traced
over the whole area where it once abounded, though
represented now by isolated trees or small woods,
in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex ; but the remnants of
Enfield Chase, near Ware, and of Epping and
Theydon Garnon Forests, in Essex, tell us, in
their dense undergrowth of Holly and Hornbeam,
much of the nature of our British woodlands when
there were no plantations of Larch or — at least in
southern England — of Pine, and when perhaps the
Oak held sway undisputed even by the Beech.

The Hornbeam, according to Sir J. E. Smith,
is generally "a rigid tree, of humble growth, but
when standing by itself, allowed to take its
natural form, will make a much handsomer tree
than most people are aware of." It does not
often exceed forty or fifty feet in height, or from
three to four feet in the girth of the trunk. A
carefully grown seedling, however, which has never
been lopped, may grow into a fine, straight-
stemmed, round-headed tree, seventy feet in height
and nine feet in circumference, resembling a
Beech, but having its more slender boughs com-
pacted into a closer outline.

As, however, the Hornbeam is peculiarly toler-
ant of the pruning knife, and its branches yield

THE HORNBEAM 19

excellent firewood, it is seldom allowed to become
a timber tree, and almost all the old trees of the
species in this country are pollards. In these the
trunk is generally flattened and twisted, as though
composed of several stems grown together, or
" fasciated." This, in fact, does occur, as also
does "inosculation," or the union above of branches
which are separate below, a mode of growth
more characteristic, however, of the Beech, a
tree which the Hornbeam resembles in not a few
particulars.

But the flattened or irregular outline of the
stem is due, in part at least, to an irregu-
larity in its internal structure, the medullary rays
being exceptionally large and wide apart, so as to
break up the annual rings of wood, and these
rings themselves have generally a very wavy and
irregular form.

Specimens of Hornbeam were recorded by Loudon,
in 1838, at Melbury Park. Dorsetshire, and Fin-
borough Hall, Suffolk, which, sixty years of age,
were seventy-two feet and eighty feet respectively
in height, with a girth of over seven feet; whilst
a tree near Nantes, about a hundred years old,
was ninety feet high and eight feet round. It is,
however, never a very fast-growing tree, lengthening
from twelve to eighteen inches per annum for the
first ten years of its life, but increasing far more
slowly as it gets old, and not being apparently
very long-lived.

The bark, which has tonic properties, is smooth,
and of a silvery light grey colour, much resem-

20 FAMILIAR TREES

bling that of the Beech, and affording a pleasing
contrast to the green or russet of the leaves in
summer or autumn. These last are of a hazel-
green colour, oval — or, more precisely, " elliptic-
ovate " — in outline, from one inch to two inches
long, with a margin notched with serrated teeth,
a distinct and permanent point, and numerous
parallel transverse hairy ribs projecting on their
under-surfaces. They thus somewhat resemble
those of the Elm, as was pointed out by Gerard,
for which reason the Hornbeam is also known as
" Yoke Elm." They are, however, smoother, and
of a lighter and more olive green, and, being
folded in the bud into numerous charming plaits
along their lateral veins, still further excuse the
common mistake of the tyro, or casual observer,
who generally confuses the white stems of the
Hornbeam with those of the Beech.

From Beech leaves, however, those of the Horn-
beam are distinguishable by lighter and browner
colour, by want of gloss, by the greater prominence
of the veins on their lower surface, by the per-
manence of the pointed and toothed outline,
which is lost in the older leaves of the Beech, and,
as a rule, by remaining longer on the tree.
The buds of the Hornbeam, moreover, are shorter
than those of the Beech, and rest against the twig,
instead of diverging from it at an angle of 60°
or 70°. The leaves unfold generally in April, fur-
nished with large, deciduous stipules, of a lighter
colour and unplaited surface, and in autumn they
wither to a warm copper brown, remaining on the

FLOWERS AND LEAVES OF HORNBEAM.

THE HORNBEAM 21

tree, especially if pollarded, until the following
spring.

About a month after the unfolding of the leaf-
buds the catkins make their appearance. The
staminate or male catkins are produced in the
axils of the leaves of the previous year — i.e. in
the angles between these leaves and the stem —
the female or fruit-bearing ones terminating the
young shoot. Both kinds of catkin are pendulous,
and vary in length from one inch to two inches
each ; but after fertilisation the fruit-bearing axes
elongate considerably.

The Hornbeam agrees with the Hazel in having
no perianth round its male flowers, this being one
of the characters by which they are separated,
under the name Coryla'cece, from the Oaks,
Beeches, and Chestnuts, or Querci'new. The male
catkin consists of numerous overlapping, pale-
coloured scales, or bracts, beneath each of which
the minute observer will find a group of twelve
or more stamens, each of them forked, and bear-
ing two anthers ending in a tuft of hair. These
male spikelets, as is usually the case with similar
organs, fall off entire as soon as they have dis-
charged their function — i.e. as soon as they have
liberated the pollen.

The female catkin well illustrates the structure,
at once simple and elaborate, of the flower-buds
of most of our trees. In the axil of each bract of
some trees there is one central flower, on either
side of which are two smaller bracts, or " brac-
teoles," and in tho axils of each of these there is

22 FAMILIAR TREES

a lateral flower, which also is flanked by two
secondary bracteoles. In the Hornbeam the female
catkin bears a number of bracts, narrower and
more pointed than those of the male flowers, and
in the axils of each of them are the two lateral
florets of the typical catkin above described, with
the two bracteoles, and four secondary bracteoles,
but no central floret. It is these bracteoles which
form the conspicuous three-lobed " cupules " when
the fruit is ripe.

The catkins naturally remain on the tree until
the fruit is ripe — that is, until October. They are
then sometimes as much as four inches in length,
the pale, buff-green, three-lobed, leaf-like cupules
beings each an inch or more in length from its

~ o

point to its base. The fruits occur in pairs at the
base of these scales, and are small, olive-green,
roughly three-sided nuts, resembling small Spanish
chestnuts, or Beech-masts, about a quarter of an
inch long, crowned by the remains of the perianth,
and each containing a single seed. The effect of
the pale green fruit-clusters among the somewhat
sombre foliage that in summer hides much of the
silvery bark, is distinctly pleasing.

Gerard, in 1597, gives, in his " Herball," a very
accurate figure of the Hornbeam in fruit, and a
description of 'the tree and its name, at once so
correct and so characteristic that it may well be
quoted at some length : —

" Setulus, or the Hornebeara tree, grows great, and very
like vnto the Elrue, or Wich Hasel tree, hauing a great body,
the wood or timber whereof is better for arrowes and shaftes,

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TRANSVERSE SECTION OF HORNBEAM WOOD (X 10 DIAMETERS).

THE HORNBEAM 23

pulleies for mills, and such like deuises, than El me or Wich
Hazell ; for in time it waxeth so hard, that the tonghnesse and
hardnesse of it may be rather, compared vnto horn than vnto
wood, and therefore it was called Hornebeame, or Hardbeame ;
the leaues hereof are like the Elme, sauing that they be
tenderer; among those hang certain triangled things, vpon which
be found knaps, or little heads of the bignesse of Ciches. in
which is contained the fruit or seed ; the root is strong and
thicke. . . . The Hornebeam tree is called in Greek (vyla,
which is as if you should say Coniualis, or belonging to the yoke, be-
cause it serneth well to make £vyia. of, in Latine, Juga, yokes where-
with oxen are yoked together, which are also euen at this time made
thereof . . . and therefore it may be Englished Yoke Elme." . . .

From this passage, Yoke-elm. Avould seem to be
one of Gerard's many coinages ; but the scientific
name Carpinus has also been derived from the
Celtic " car," wood, and " pen " or " pin," a head,
though another suggestion is the Latin " carpen-
tum," a chariot, the Swedish " karm," which
closely approaches " charme," the French name for
the tree. The wood, which is normally white,
hard, tough, rather cross-grained, strong, light, and
flexible, is also used for other agricultural im-
plements, for the screws of presses, cog-
wheels, and tool-handles, and furnishes an excel-
lent gunpowder charcoal. The modern German
name for the tree, " Hainbuche," refers to another
use to which Hornbeam has long been put. As
it will stand a great amount of pruning, so long
as this is not done in spring, when the tree is
likely to suffer from the bleeding that results from
the rising sap, it is a favourite tree for hedgerows,
known in French as " charmilles " ; and since the
dead leaves remain late on the branches, rustling
crisply in the autumn gales, but resisting all the

24 FAMILIAR TREES

bufferings of the wind, it is largely used for
this purpose in nurseries of seedling forest trees,
and elsewhere where shelter is required, and
was formerly employed in mazes and other
geometrical devices. Evelyn ranks it foremost
among deciduous trees for this purpose, reserving
the claims of his favourite evergreen, the Holly.
Flourishing, too, on soil too stiff for many kinds of
trees, the Hornbeam is useful as a nurse to other
species, and as cover for game. Deer will not touch
it, but hares, rabbits, and especially field-mice, are
very fond of its young leaf-shoots and foliage.

The decrepit specimens in Epping Forest, that
have been ruthlessly and repeatedly polled, are
merely grotesque, for such masses of disease cannot
justly be regarded as beautiful. When felled, their
wood is stained of a black colour, and is of inferior
quality ; and when, as during the last few years,
no longer lopped, they send up long ungainly
branches, which, from the crowding, take a vertical
direction, bearing only a few leaves at the top.
When, on the other hand, they have been judiciously
thinned, their boughs sweep down gracefully to the
ground, well covered with leaves, with nearly
as much beauty as those of Lime or Beech.
Such trees, once pollarded, can never entirely
regain the charm of the naturally round, compact
head ; but their feathery sprays, reaching to the
very turf, form a decidedly desirable feature in the
woodland glade or wild shrubbery. A row of fine
trees of this species may be seen in Richmond
Park between Pembroke Lodge and Ham Cross.

**.

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POLLARD WHITE WILLOW.

j

THE WILLOWS.

Sal'ix al'ba, etc.

The Druids are stated to have burnt their human
sacrifices in wicker cages; and, though we cannot
with equal confidence vouch for the antiquity of that
other more harmless use of the Willow, the making
of bats to be wielded at Lord's, or on any other
English greensward, even if we forget altogether its
many uses in manufactures, we can find many
points of interest in the Willow group. It may as
well, however, be mentioned here that the wood,
especially that of the White Willow (Salix alba L.),
is made into paper pulp, besides affording the best
charcoal for artists' crayons ; whilst, not to mention
the undoubted value of the bark for tanning pur-
poses, it is now well known in the medical world as
the source of salicine.

The Willows differ essentially from the Poplars
in having their catkin-scales unnotched, though
hairy, and in the absence of the rudimentary perianth
which characterises the latter group. They have
generally also narrower leaves, more erect catkins, and
fewer stamens in each male flower. Though their
flowers generally appear before the leaves, so that the
abundant pollen may without obstruction be carried by
wind, they also secrete honey and are much frequented
by bees. The male and female trees are often some-
what dissimilar, and hybrids (i.e. seedlings produced

43 25

26 FAMILIAR TREES

by the fertilisation of the stigma of one species by
the pollen of another) occur frequently, not only in
withy-eyots, but also in a truly wild state. This
and some other variation has caused some seventeen
well-marked British species to give rise to nearly a
hundred puzzling forms.

It will be remembered that Willows are
" dioecious " ; and this is the explanation of the
children's distinction between " golden palms " and
" silver pussy palms " — the former, though bearing at
first a tuft of silvery down within the brown bud-
scales, soon becoming studded with the yellow
anthers, while the latter bear only the down-clad
ovaries, which resemble the grey fur of a cat.

Though belonging mainly to the Arctic and North
Temperate zones, there are a few Willows in temper-
ate South America and South Africa ; and the species
are very diverse in the situations, or " habitats,"
which they frequent. Thus, while Osiers are almost
confined to spots where their roots are liable to be
soaked with flood-waters, and many other species
are fond of moisture, the Sallows, such as S. Cap'rea,
flourish in dry woods and hedgerows, and several
species inhabit the barren tops of Alpine moun-
tains, or the equally barren plains of Arctic latitudes.
So, too, do they vary in size, from the White Willow
(S. alba L.), a tree sometimes eighty feet in height,
the Crack Willow (S. fragilis L.), which attains an
equal, if not greater, height, with a girth of as much
as twenty feet, down to the prostrate S. reticulata L.,
under two feet in height, and the still smaller S. her-
ba'cea L., the most diminutive of British shrubs.

THE WILLOWS 27

The most convenient arrangement of the ninety or
more forms of Willow which occur in our islands
seems to be that of Du Mortier, as modified in Pro-
fessor Babington's " Manual of British Botany."
According to this system the genus is divided into
three sections, Vitisalix, Caprisa'lix, and Chame'lyx,
which, with their sub-sections, series, and sub-series>
run as follow, a few synonyms having been added for
the use of students accustomed to other books : —

Section I. — Vitisalix.
Sub-section i. — Ly'cus ( = Pentan'drse). (Bay-
leaved Willows.)

Sub-section ii. — Ameri'na.
Series i. — Dian'dras.

Sub-series * — Fra'giles. (Crack Willows.)
Sub-series * * — Albas. (White Willows.)
Series ii. — Trian'drse. (Almond-leaved Willows.)

Section II. — Caprisalix.

Sub-section i. — Heli'ce ( = Purpu'rese, or Syn-
an'dra?).

Sub-section ii. — Vi'men.
Sub-section -iii. — Ve'trix.

Series i. — Ca'prese ( = Cine'r9e). (Sallows.)
Series ii. — Phylicifo'lke. (Tea-leaved Willows.)
Series hi. — Incuba'ceae ( = Fus'cse),
Series iv. — Daphnoi'dese ( = Arbus'culse).
Series v. — Chrysan'thse.

Section III. — Chamelyx.
Series i. — Myrsini'tes.
Series ii. — Reticula'tse.
Series iii.— Herba'ceae.

28 FAMILIAR TREES

Amonsf the more obvious distinctions of the three
main sections are the following : The species belong-
ing to Vitisalix, which include the large trees of the
group, produce their leaves and flowers simultaneously t
the flower-stalks bearing fully developed leaves, and
the catkin-scales being of a uniform, generally pale
colour. The filaments of the stamens are perfectly
free from one another, and are hairy on the lower
part, while the capsules are free from hairs ; and the
leaves are " convolute " — i.e. rolled together in the
bud, like a scroll of paper, with one free edge. Those
belonging to Gaprisalix — shrubs and small trees,
among which are most kinds of Osier — have no stalk
to the catkin in the flowering stage, and have only
small leaf-like bracts, or none at all, at the base of the
catkin. The catkin-scales are generally discoloured
at their tips, and the male flowers have but two
stamens each. In the fruiting stage the catkin some-
times becomes stalked, the stalk falling off with the
catkin, as is also generally the case in the previous
section. It is, perhaps, necessary to caution the
tyro against confusing the catkin, which is made
up of many flowers, with a single flower. Finally,
the diminutive species belonging to the Chamelyx —
the " Ground " Willows, as the name signifies — also
have only two stamens ; but their catkins are on
long, leafy, terminal or sub-terminal shoots, which do
not fall with the catkins.

The first sub-section of Vitisalix — viz. Lycus —
having from four to twelve, but generally five, stamens,
includes the Bay-leaved Willow (S. pentandra L.)
and the possible hybrid, the Shrewsbury S. cuspida'ta

FLOWERS AND LEAVES OF WHITE WILLOW.

THE WILLOWS 29

Schultz. The Bay-leaved Willow is a beautiful
many-stemmed shrub, six or eight feet high, or a
tree of twenty feet. The young bark is brown, har-
monising with the broad, polished leaves, whose
fragrance gives the plant its name ; and the species
is noticeable on the banks of our northern rivers as
the latest of the Willows in flowering.

Of the Diandrce, the sub-series Fragiles and
A Ibce correspond to Linnseus's species S. fragilis, the
Crack Willow, and S. alba, the White Willow. The
first of these two groups has " semi-cordate " stipules,
stalked capsules, and forked stigmas, and includes
S. fragilis and its possible hybrids, 8. decip'iens Sm.
and S. Russelliana Sm., which differ mainly in the
character of the young bark and of the leaves. S.
fragilis L. has very smooth, yellow-brown twigs,
that are brittle in spring, and "elliptic-lanceolate"
leaves, sometimes six inches long. S. decipiens
seems only a slight variation which has smooth
orange or crimson twigs, turning to a reddish brown,
and leaves sometimes not over three inches in length.

These two forms, though they are commonly
pollarded as Osiers, will grow into trees as large
as the beautiful Bedford Willow (S. Russelliana),
which has smooth, green, flexible twigs and long
tapering leaves, very glaucous on their lower surfaces,
and is always associated with Dr. Johnson, since his
favourite tree, near Lichfield, finally blown down in
1829, was a magnificent specimen of this variety,
twenty-one feet in girth. Specialists are, however, in
doubt as to its identity, considering it either identical
with S. fragilis or — and this is the more general view

30 FAMILIAR TREES

— a hybrid between that species and S. alba. This
Willow yields a light but firm timber, remarkably
uninflammable, suited both for joists and for floor-
ing, and grows with great rapidity, reaching fifty
feet or more in ten years.

The sub-series Albce, characterised by its minute,
ovate-lanceolate stipules, its nearly sessile capsules,
and its recurved stigmas, includes the White, or
Huntingdon, Willow (S. alba L.), the Blue Willow
(S. cairu'lea Sm.), and the Golden Willow (S. vitelli'na
L.). These grow into large and useful timber trees,
distinguished from the last-mentioned group by
having their branches not smooth, but silky, and
Avithout the tendency to break off at the base which
gives their name to the Crack Willows. The silky
hairs on the olive-green twigs of the Huntingdon
Willow, with the leaves silky also on both surfaces,
give the tree a weird appearance, which has earned
it the name of the " White tree." It is often
pollarded, but will grow into a fine tree if allowed,
reaching a height of fifty feet, with a girth of six, in
eighteen years. The Blue Willow has the leaves
smooth on the upper surface when old, and glaucous,
but not very silky, beneath ; and the Golden Willow
has bright yellow or reddish twigs, but slightly silky,
and leaves which also become smooth, and are often
not more than two inches long.

The Triandra', having three stamens, include the
French Willow (S. triandra L.) and its related forms,
the Almond-leaved Willow (S. amygdali'na L.), S.
Hoff'mania'na, Sm., and S. undula'ta Ehrh., all of
which are used as Osiers, though they will grow to

eg

m

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF WILLOW WOOD (X 30 DIAMETERS).

THE WILLOWS 31

twenty feet or more. The latter is probably a
hybrid.

The sub-section Helice is distinguished by
"equitant" folding of the leaves — each leaf being
doubled longitudinally over the next, as if astride it
— by purple anthers, which become black, and by
united stamens, to which it owes the name Synandrse.
It includes the Purple Osier (S. purpu'rea L.) the
Red Osier (8. ru'bra Huds.), and the Rose Willow
(S. Helix L.). The dark-coloured bark of the tough,
but slender and drooping boughs of the first of these
is well known ; whilst the last-named has long been
recognised by botanists from its crowded tufts of
leaves, like green roses, caused by the punctures of
a gall-fiv.

The sub-section Vi'men, with two distinct fila-
ments, yellow anthers, a longish style, and a silky
under-surface to the leaves, includes the Common
Osier (S. viminalis L.) and other closely related
forms. The leaves on the long, slender, wand-like
branches of the Osier are sometimes as much as ten
inches long, and have their margins rolled back and
slightly wavy. The catkins, appearing long before the
foliage, generally in April, form much of the golden
" palm "-boughs of Easter.

The only remaining forms of any considerable size
or importance, however, are the Sallow (S. cinerea L.)
and the Goat Willow (S. Caprea L.), belonging to the
series Caprttv. These agree in having elliptical,
wrinkled, dark green leaves, more or less covered
with short, curling hairs, and having two kidney-shaped
stipules, whilst the style is very short or absent, and

32 FAMILIAR TREES

the capsule has a slender stalk. The Sallow is a large
shrub or a small tree, fifteen to thirty feet high, fre-
quenting damp situations, the first to flower of our
British Willows, and, therefore, contributing the
"palm" for a March Easter. It is typically distin-
guished from the Goat Willow, into which some of its
varieties graduate, by its downy buds and twigs and
glaucous " obovate-lanceolate " leaves, with reddish
brown hairs on their under-surfaces, and with large
stipules. The Goat Willow, frequenting drier situ-
ations, is a small tree, with smooth buds, and large
broad, "ovate" leaves, having wavy margins with
rounded serrations.

The detail necessary for their discrimination
proves the ornamental value of many of the forms of
Willow to be almost equal. The Almond-leaved, the
Bay-leaved, and the Crack Willows, producing their
bright o-olden flowers and graceful foliage simultane-
ously, are well worth planting by the water-side, as is
also the Common Osier, on account of the elegant out-
line of its long leaves. In the bare-boughed, moist
month of February, the glossy, brightly coloured young
twigs of many kinds have a peculiar charm ; but we have
too often to be content to see the larger sorts in the
grotesquely maltreated form of pollards : —

"The shock-head Willows, two and two."

It is, however, when growing to its full natural
stature, and reflected in the clear water of a river, by
whose margin the Meadowsweet foams in creamy
luxuriance, that the White or Bedford Willows are
seen to the best advantage.

ABELE.

THE ABELE.

Po'pulus al'ba L.

The two genera Populus, the Poplars, and Sal'ix, the
Willows, constitute the Natural Order Salic'acece,
a group of catkin-bearing trees and shrubs not
very obviously allied to any others. Though vary-
ing greatly in dimensions, all of them are perennial
woody plants, generally of rapid growth, and pro-
ducing a soft white wood. Their leaves are deciduous
and undivided, spring singly from the nodes, and are
furnished with stipules ; and their flowers are in con-
spicuous catkins, the two sexes being on different
plants (" dioecious "). This introduces a double diffi-
culty into the study of the group, for not only do
the staminate and carpellate trees of one species
sometimes differ to some extent from one another, but
hybrids or cross-bred trees frequently occur in a
natural state, and still more frequently where, as in
withy-eyots, several kinds are cultivated side by side.
The flowers are of a very much simplified type, the
"perianth" — the calyx and corolla, that is, of an
ordinary flower — being replaced by simple minute
scales. These scales being single — i.e. there being
but one to each flower in the catkin — they are
probably really rather of the nature of bracts ; whilst
the perianth may be looked upon as altogether absent
in Willows, though perhaps represented by a little
one-sided, cup-shaped body, called a " disk," in the
44 33

34 FAMILIAR TREES

Poplars. This little cup occurs in botli staminate and
carpellate flowers, springing from the axil of the bract
or scale and surrounding either the stamens or the
ovary, as the case may be. In both genera the
female flower consists of a one-chambered ovary
surmounted by a more or less two-lobed stigma,
and forming a small capsular fruit, which splits open
by the rolling backward and downward from its
apex of two valves. This suggests that there are
actually two united carpels.

The fruit contains a number of minute seeds, each
enclosed in a tuft of long white hairs springing from
its base, from which characteristic these trees have
acquired their American name of Cottonwoods.

The Poplars form, as a rule, larger trees than the
Willows, with broad leaves ; their catkins droop,
whilst those of Willows are more or less erect ;
and their catkin-scales are slashed into several lobes,
whilst those of the other genus, though hairy, are not
notched. Another and more physiologically interesting
difference between the two genera is that, whilst the
Willows have two, three, four, five, or even twelve
stamens to each flower, and produce honey, so that
their flowers are visited by insects, the Poplar
blossoms have no honey, depending entirely upon the
wind for the dispersal of their pollen, and being
obliged to have, in consequence, more stamens, gener-
ally from six to twelve, or even thirty, to a flower.

The name Populus has been supposed to be con-
nected with the Greek palpalus, from polio, to quiver,
but there is no evidence of any Greek name resem-
bling Populus Possibly the mere difference in

THE ABELE 35

quantity of the first syllables of the two Latin words,
populus, the people, and populus, a Poplar tree, may
hide a real identity of etymology. Whatever the
origin of the name, this group of trees gained by
it what, in spite of the pun, we must term popularity,
at the time of the French Revolution.

The genus is almost confined to the north tem-
perate zone, a few species extending a little farther
north, whilst within their area of distribution they
occur very generally, especially in moist ground and
along the banks of rivers.

Opinions differ as to the limits of the species in
this genus ; but, besides various American forms now
common in cultivation, we have in England, and in
fact, throughout Europe, five readily distinguishable
types — viz. the Abele or White Poplar, the Grey
Poplar, the Aspen, the Black Poplar, and the Lom-
bardy Poplar. Of these, the two first should,
perhaps, be classed as sub-species of one species, and
the two last-named, neither of which is truly in-
digenous, should almost certainly be so treated.
Perhaps the best point of difference is the stigma;
but the lover of trees, who may be but a tyro in
botany, will be glad of other means of recognising
the objects of his attention. The three first forms
agree in having downy shoots, dense female catkins,
bracteal scales fringed with hairs, and stamens
varying in number from four to twelve in each male
floret. They have, therefore, been grouped together
in a section known by the name of Leu'ce, the Greek
appellation of the White Poplar. The two last, on
the other hand, have their young shoots smooth,

36 FAMILIAR TREES

their female catkins lax, their scales almost smooth,
and their stamens more than twelve in number ; and
they have been accordingly united in the section
named Aigei'ros — a name formerly applied to the
Black Poplar. It will, perhaps, be clearer to give
their characters in succinct form.

Populus. — Section I. : Leuce. — Shoots downy ;
female catkins dense ; scales ciliate ; stamens four —
twelve.

1. P. alba L., White Poplar, or Abele : Leaves on
the suckers lobed, those on the branches roundly
heart-shaped, slightly lobed ; white and cottony on
the under surface; stigmas two, bifid, linear, cross-
like, yellow.

2. P. canes'cens Sm., Grey Poplar : Leaves on the
suckers angled and toothed, those on the branches
roundly heart-shaped, hoary or smooth on the under
surface ; stigmas two-, three-, or four-lobed, wedge-
shaped, purple ; buds downy.

3. P. trem'ula Lv Aspen: Leaves on very long stalks,
those on the suckers heart-shaped, pointed, not
toothed, those on the branches rounded, with incurved
teeth, silky or smooth on the under surface ; stigmas
two, bifid, erect ; buds slightly viscid.

Section II : Aigeiros. — Shoots smooth ; female
catkins lax ; scales nearly smooth ; stamens twelve —
twenty.

4. P. nigra L.. Black Poplar: Leaves on long stalks,
when young rhombic in form, silky on the under
surface, and ciliate; when old more rounded finely
toothed, smooth ; stigmas two, roundish, two-lobed ;
buds viscid ; no suckers.

FLOWERS, LEAVES, AND FRUIT OF ABELE.

THE ABELE 37

5. P. pyramida'lis Roz , Lombardy Poplar : Differs
from the last mainly in its erect, or " fastigiate," mode
of branching, and in having suckers.

The Poplars form one of the exceptions to the
rule that roots do not produce leaves or leafy shoots.
This characteristic is most obvious when one of these
trees has been felled, for then a small forest of suckers
springs up, often at a distance of many yards from
the parent tree. These are true root-suckers, and
not merely ascending subterranean branches, like
those of the Rose ; and, as has been seen in the
list just given, the leaves on these suckers are
often different in form from those on the branches
of the tree.

The rapidity of their growth renders Poplars very
useful for forming screens ; and, though all the
species like a moist soil, or the neighbourhood of
running water, they will thrive under the very
different conditions of a crowded city. The wood of
all species is soft and light and white, or pale yellow
with broad annual rings, but with neither the pith-
rays nor the vessels at all conspicuous. Poplar wood
is not splintery, and ignites with difficulty ; for which
reasons, and for the readiness with which it can be
scoured white, it has been used, like Willow, for
flooring. It is employed to a considerable extent on
the Continent and in the United States for packing-
cases, blindwood and small turnery, such as the heels
of ladies' shoes, ribbon reels, pack-saddles, sabots,
clogs, milk-pails, herring-casks, and butchers' trays.
The polishing-wheels used by glass-grinders are made
of horizontal sections cut across an entire tree of the

38 FAMILIAR TREES

commonly cultivated American species, P. moni-

lif'era, wrongly known as the Black Italian Poplar.

This, and to a considerable extent the other species

also, are now largely used for paper-pulp. From its

rapid growth and softness, Poplar wood has come to

be thought perishable ; but this is said to be only

true when it is alternately wet and dry, according to

the old saying —

" Though heart of Oak be e'er so stout,
Keep me dry, and I'll see him out."

When impregnated with a saccharine solution by the
new method known as Powellising, Poplar becomes
darker and harder and takes a good polish, so that it
might be employed as a cabinet wood.

The long, slender leaf-stalks, which are laterally
compressed, causing the leaf-blades to hang obliquely
downwards and thus to quiver in the slightest
breeze, are characteristic of the whole group. Occur-
ring thus in a group of trees remarkable for rapid
growth, the power of draining marshy ground by a
wide-spreading system of roots, a spongy stem and
copious transpiration, it is not unnatural that Herbert
Spencer should have suggested a connection between
this constant leaf-movement and transpiration. To
draw the watery sap up into the leaf, transpiration is
constantly going on from its surface, and Spencer's
suggestion was that the swaying of bough and leaf in the
wind gives an upward thrust to the circulating liquids.
That evaporation may be unimpeded, the leaves are
spread out to the air on separate stalks, and in diverg-
ing directions. It has, however, been suggested that
this quivering serves only to shed water from the

Photo : H. Irving, Horley,

ABELE.

85

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF ABELE WOOD (X 10 DIAMETERS).

THE ABELE 39

surface of the leaves ; whilst Professor Marshall Ward
seems to favour the view that it enables " otherwise
partially shaded leaves to swing often into the light,
and to catch the breezes."

The Abele or White Poplar (Populus alba L.)
grows rapidly to a height of fifty or even 100
feet, and reaches four feet in diameter. It has a
smooth grey bark interrupted at many points by the
enlarged lenticels, but neither so lustrous nor so split
up as that of the Birch. The branches spread
horizontally, and the young twigs are covered
with a white cottony down which rubs off readily.
The buds are similarly covered, but have none of
the viscid resinous secretion which occurs in some
other Poplars. The foliage is very variable. The
leaves at the bases of shoots, on weak shoots or on old
trees, may be ovate, or have bluntly angular lobes, an
inch to an inch and a half long, but generally broader,
covered with a dense white down beneath, and,
when young, also pubescent on their upper surfaces.
Those on the numerous suckers, and at the ends of
the strong shoots, are larger, reaching even six inches
in length and nearly as much in width, and having
from three to five palmately arranged triangular lobes.
Appearing first in March, they become thicker as
they get older and lose the down on their upper
surfaces, which become a deep green.

The name Abele and its variants are of Dutch
origin, and the tree itself may have been introduced
from Flanders ; but we may well hesitate to accept the
suggestion that this name has anything to do with
the city of Arbela in the plains of Nineveh. It may

40 FAMILIAR TREES

be, however, that the French word Obel gave his family
name to that eminent botanist Matthias de l'Obel, who
was born at Lille and died in 1616 at Highgate, and
who is now commemorated by the Lobelia. On one
of his title pages he uses this tree as a device with
the motto " Candore et spe," referring to the white
under surfaces of its leaves, symbolical of candour,
and the green of the upper, typifying hope.

In March and April while some trees bear droop-
ing catkins, often four inches long, made up of lobed
and fringed scales with clusters of vinous-purple
anthers, others have shorter and more erect assem-
blages of the less conspicuous female flowers ; and
after the pollen is discharged the ground is strewn
with the now effete male catkins, whilst the fruit-
ing capsules remain to burst and discharge their
woolly seeds in autumn.

The white leaves of this tree as it grows in some
marshy wood, when turned upwards by rain-foreboding
gusts against a dull sky, give it a cold and melancholy
appearance ; but when they glance in the sunshine
the airy lightness of its mode of growth gives the
tree a most cheering character. Though its suckers
render the Abele undesirable in too close proximity
to a lawn, it may well find a place in some moist
spot, by the water's edge, or at the margin of a park.

SCOTS FIR

THE SCOTS FIR.

Pi'mis sylvesftris L.

Few contrasts in the plant-world are more striking
than that between the ever-changing charms of our
southern woodlands — the winter tracery of bare
branches, the verdure of spring, and the golden
glories of autumn — on the one hand, and the sombre
and monotonous grandeur of the dark bluish foliage
and tawny stems of the Pines of the north.

We need not hesitate to say that it is only in
Scotland we now have the Pine in a wild state; and
Ave accordingly speak of it as the Scots Pine or Fir.
Some writers attempt to restrict the name Fir to the
Spruces and Silver Firs, and to translate the name
Finns only by the word Pine.; but popular usage
clings to the name of English origin for our only
truly indigenous member of the group. This noble
tree, known to botanists as P. sylvestris L., occurs
in the mountains of southern Europe, reaching the
altitude of 7,000 feet on Mount Etna, and in the
lower ground of higher latitudes, being found in the
Scottish Highlands at an altitude of 2,200 feet above
the- sea. It also forms a vast belt of forest land from
Kamschafeka across Siberia and Russia into Prussia
Sweden, and Norway ; whilst in former ages it spread
equally over the lowlands of Denmark, England, and
Ireland, as is proved by its occurrence beneath the peat-
bogs and in the submerged forests of these countries.

45 41

42 FAMILIAR TREES

The Scots Fir is much planted on sandy soil in
hilly situations throughout England, since it will
flourish in many instances where the more rapid-
growing Larch will not. This is the case, for example,
with the Bagshot Sand area of North and West Surrey,
and with the Lower Greensand wastes of the middle
of that county, and of Bedfordshire. An anecdote
of the seventeenth century may possibly point to the
indigenous character of this species as far south as
Staffordshire. At Warton, in that county, there were
then thirty-six very large Firs, several reaching 120
feet in height, and one even exceeding 140 feet, and
having a girth of nearly 15 feet. The tenants who
for many generations held the farm on which these
trees stood, bore the name of Firchild, an ancestor
having been found under one of the trees.

Accustomed as we are to the short, much
branched stems of our deciduous or hardwood trees,
the Pine is to us the very type of lofty uprightness.
Its straight stem, seldom exceeding twelve feet in
girth, attains a height of from 'fifty to 100 feet,
and is of such a bulk as to render its branches com-
paratively insignificant ; but most of us who remember
such from our earliest years will echo Hood's reminis-
cence of their impressive grandeur :

" I remember, I remember

The Fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky.
It was a childish ignorance ;

But now 'tis little joy-
To know I'm further off from heaven

Than when I was a boy."

THE SCOTS FIR 43

One of the great beauties of the tree is its rough
reddish bark, made up of flaky scales, and deeply
ridged down the stem, giving it a curiously mottled
effect, The branches are given off numerously in
whorls, so that, when the trees are grown close
together, the lower boughs die off, and, as Shakespeare
says —

" Knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound Pine, and divert his grain,
Tortive and errant, from his course of growth."

The needles of the Scots Fir do not exceed two or
three inches in length, they are grooved along their
upper surface, curved and often twisted, and finely
toothed throughout their length ; and they remain on
the tree for two or three years. As in other species
of Pine, their " stomata " or transpiration-pores are
considerably sunk below the general surface of the
leaf, a markedly " xerophytic," or drought, adapta-
tion. It is the remarkable dark indigo-tinted colour
of the needles that lends to the tree the air of gloom
with which it is generally associated, an effect which
is heightened by the brown needle-carpeted ground
beneath, silent and bare, since, owing to the absence
of light, scarcely anything will grow. At a slight
distance the young leaves produce quite the impres-
sion of a bluish haze, which no doubt led Tennyson
to associate the " thick mysterious boughs " of the
Pine with " many a cloudy hollow."

The tree generally flowers in May, both male, or
pollen-bearing flowers, and female, or seed-bearing
one s, being borne on the same tree. The former are
small yellow spikes of scales, each scale bearing a

44 FAMILIAR TREES

single two-chambered anther ; and when the pollen
is discharged the whole catkin falls. The female
cones on the other hand remain, of course, until the
seeds they contain have been ripened and dis-
charged. They occur generally in twos or threes,
each, when young, of a purplish colour and an ovoid
outline, tapering conically to a point and at first erect
and stalk! ess, but after fertilisation hanging by short
stalks in a drooping position. The scales that make
up the cone are not many in number : their points
wither, and they become woody so as to present at
the surface of the cone a series of hard rhombic or
roughly -hexagonal plates, known as " apophyses,"
each rising in a re-curved central point, forming col-
lectively well-defined spirals closely packed together.
It is not, as a rule, until the second or third j^ear
that the seeds ripen : in fact, the pollen, when it has
fallen upon the ovule, or immature seed, sends out
a tube which takes more than a year in penetrating
to the embryo-sac. The scales of the cone then bend
outwards, so as to let the winged seeds escape from
between them. Thus it is that the close packing of
the scales serves, until the seeds are ripe, every pur-
pose of the closed ovary which distinguishes Angio-
sperms from " gymnospermous " plants.

The seeds, which in some allied species are large
enough to be of not a little value as human food,
occur in pairs at the base of each scale, and are
furnished with a brown membranous wing three
times their length. This closely resembles, and per-
forms the same purpose as, the " samaras," or winged
fruits, of Elms and other trees, the disposal of the

CONES AND LEAVES OF SCOTS FIR.

THE SCOTS FIR 45

seed away from the parent tree by the agency of the
wind being the object in either case. The nutty
flavour of these seeds, their slowness in ripening, and
the difficulty of extracting them, did not escajDe the
notice of the emblem-writers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. With them the seed was a
type of the results of persevering labour. Camerarius,
for instance, gives a plate of a man holding a Pine-
cone, or " Fir-apple," with a motto to the effect that
" thus it is not possible to arrive at virtue, worth, or
praiseworthy deeds, save through many toils and
difficulties, but the after-fruits thereof are most
sweet." The internal structure of the ripe seed and
its germination are of interest, as the " cotyledons," or
first leaves, develop their green colouring-matter while
still within the seed and thus excluded from lisfht ;
and they are so deeply divided as to appear like a
whorl of many leaves rather than a single pair, from
which fact the name " Polycotyledons " was formerly
applied to the group.

Few plants yield a greater variety of useful sub-
stances than the Scots Fir. Tar, pitch, turpentine,
resin, and deal are the chief, its timber being imported
under various names, such as Dantzic and Riga Pine,
according to the port of shipment. Though the
timber varies considerably, that of the best varieties
is of a deep brownish red colour. The quality varies
considerably according to the situation, that grown
on well-drained slopes being better than that
produced in wet land, where in fact the tree never
flourishes.

Pines are commonly raised from seed in nurseries,

46 FAMILIAR TREES

but in suitable situations the species multiplies freely by-
self-sown seeds. Darwin, in the " Origin of Species,"
gives a striking case of this, illustrating the struggle
lor existence. Near Farnham, in Surrey, " there are
extensive heaths, with a few clumps of old Scotch Firs
on the distant hill-tops ; within the last ten years
large spaces have been enclosed and self-sown Firs are
now springing up in multitudes, so close together that
all cannot live. On looking closely between the stems
of the heath, I found a multitude of seedlings and little
trees which had been perpetually browsed down by the
cattle. In one square yard I counted thirty-two little
trees ; and one of them, with twenty-six rings of
growth, had during many years tried to raise its head
above the stems of the heath, and had failed."

At first conical in general outline, its branches
rising slightly from the trunk, the Scots Fir with us
reaches full maturity in from seventy to a hundred
years, and is generally felled at a less age ; but in
Norway it is stated to grow much more slowly, and
to have reached an age of 400 years. When old,
the tree assumes a spreading flat-topped Cedar- or
mushroom-shaped outline ; and its boughs are often
twisted into gnarled forms. Though the tree is
generally associated in the minds of poets and
painters with mountain scenery, the finest Pines are
probably grown in more sheltered, lowland, but not
damp situations.

Few probably realise how recent in date are
the extensive Pine plantations of our southern
counties ; while the taste for the regular but grace-
ful outlines of the Conifers as ornamental trees only

Photo : F. Mason Good, Winchfield.

SCOTS FiR

87

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF SCOTS FIR WOOD. OR
(X 30 DIAMETERS).

PINE'

THE SCOTS FIR 47

became general after the establishment of the beauti-
ful Pinetum at Dropmore, at the beginning of the
last century.

Though not so remunerative a crop as the Larch, it
will grow where that tree will not ; and, though the
primary use of the tree, from which, in fact, the name
of " Fir," i.e. fire-tree, is derived, viz. the making of
torches from its resinous wood, is with us a thing of
the past, the valuable shelter it affords from the wind
sweeping from the sea or over wide stretches of heath ;
its utility as a " nurse " to draw up young Oak trees ;
its timber; and its health-giving fragrance (to which
the town of Bournemouth owes its popularity as a
sanatorium), not to mention its beauty, are sufficient
reasons for the more extensive planting of the Pine.
It is liable to the attacks of various insects, of
which the chief are perhaps the Pinechafer
(Hylur'gus piniper da), the Fir-weevil (Hylo'biws
abie'tis), the Pine-sawfly (Ld phyrus pi'ni), and the
Si'rex.

Whilst, in his sonorous verse, Milton brings before
us

"the tallest Pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast
Of some great aminiral " ;

Mr. Ruskin, in his graphic prose, has described one of
the most wonderful effects of Pines in a landscape,
though, as he points out, it has only been noticed by
two of our poets. " When," says he, " the sun rises
behind a ridge of Pines, and those Pines are seen from
a distance of a mile or two against his light, the whole
form of the tree, trunk, branches and all, becomes one

48 FAMILIAR TREES

frost-work of intensely brilliant silver, which is
relieved against the clear sky like a burning fringe,
for some distance on either side of the sun." This
phenomenon it is to which Shakespeare alludes
when he makes the heroic but ill-fated Richard II.
speak of the sun :

" When from under this terrestrial ball
He fires the proud top of the eastern Pines ; "

and this, too, Wordsworth refers to more precisely
in his " Stanzas composed in the Simplon Pass " :

"My thoughts become bright like yon edging of Pines
On the steep's. lofty verge: how it blacken'd the air!
But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shines,
With threads that seem part of his own silver hair."

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF NEEDLE LEAF OF SCOTS t-IR.

HAWTHORN.

THE HAWTHOKN.

Crata'f/us Oxyacan'tha L.

Above a fifth of our forest trees belong to the Rose
tribe; and nearly half of them have white flowers.
Among these, none, perhaps, exceeds in beauty that
characteristically English tree, the Hawthorn, Cra-
taegus Oxyacantha L. True, its geographical range
includes all Europe, the North of Africa, and the
West and North of Asia, whilst it has been
introduced into North America ; but in England,
from the earliest days of private property in land, it
has been our chief hedge-forming bush, and perhaps
many of the large, many-boled trees on our bare hill-
sides or commons date from even an earlier period.

" Haw " is the same as " hedge " ; and in
the North the fruits of the Thorn are still termed
" haigs," so that it is somewhat doubtful whether
the word " hedge " is derived from the name of the
tree that bears the " haws," or whether, as is more
probable, the fruit took its name from being borne
on a hedgerow tree.

This fruit resembles a miniature rosy-cheeked
apple. Though it may consist of but one " carpel,"
while in the allied genus Py'rus there are never
less than two, it often has, as we shall see, five of
these divisions. In either case the round or oval
fruit is surmounted, as in the apple, by the withered
remains of the calyx. The mealy flesh of the fruit,

46 49

50 FAMILIAR TREES

which is perfectly wholesome — though so tasteless
as generally to be left, even by the omnivorous
schoolboy, to the birds — conceals the upper end of
the bony core. This boniness of the core is one of
the leading distinctions of the genus Cratcegus.

There are some fifty species of Hawthorn, all con-
fined to the North Temperate zone ; but our English
forms yield to none in their varied beauty and interest.
They are seldom more than twenty feet in height ; but
aged specimens sometimes have boles two or three
feet in diameter, or still more frequently divide into
several stout ascending limbs, while the multitudin-
ous boughs and twigs spread outwards, forming a
close, round-headed bush, the favourite nesting resort
of many of our feathered friends.

The bark is of a dull grey, and the boughs are
usually beset with thorns. The leaves are small, and
have a short but distinct stalk, whilst their out-
line is extremely variable ; and the snowy flowers are
grouped in flat clusters, each containing many blos-
soms, in the centre of each of which is the bunch
of stamens, whose delicate pink anthers soon become
brown as they burst and discharge their pollen.

There are several wild varieties of the Hawthorn,
besides the many cultivated sorts in our gardens and
shrubberies. One, known as Cratcegus oxyaca n thoi'des
by botanists, has larger flowers and fruits, with a
smooth flower-stalk and calyx-tube, and with tAvo or
three "carpels," or divisions, to the core ; whilst another
C. mono'gyna, has deeply cut leaves, downy flower-
stalks, and smaller flowers and fruits, the flowers
appearing later, usually in June, and the fruit having,

THE HAWTHORN 51

as indicated by the scientific name, only one carpel.
The fruits of these two forms can be distinguished at
a glance, by having either several styles, or only a
single one, projecting, like a little thread, from the
opening surrounded by the withered calyx. Occasion-
ally, however, some fruits of one type may be found,
on a tree bearing mainly those of the other. Other
forms have yellow, black, greenish orange, or dull
white fruits, whilst everyone knows the varieties with
double pink or scarlet flowers. Most people, too,
must have heard of the celebrated Glastonbury Thorn,
reputed to have sprung from the staff of St. Joseph of
Arimathaea, planted on Wearyall Hill at Glastonbury,
which blossoms early in the year, and sometimes as
early as Old Christmas Day, January 6th, besides
flowering later in the spring. Botanists term this
variety prwcox ; and the same occurrence is not
unknown in other plants.

The Thorn may be propagated either by seed or
by cuttings, from which last-mentioned fact it gets
its name of " Quickset."

Under its various names ol Albespeine, Whitethorn,
Hawthorn, May, and Quickset, this tree must always
have been a favourite with all lovers of the country.
It was formerly regarded as the emblem of hope, and
was carried by the ancient Greeks in their wedding-
processions, and used to deck the altar of Hymen. Its
symbolism has, however, undergone a change, prob-
ably owing to the mediaeval belief which is so
quaintly told by Sir John Maundeville : —

" Then," he writes, " was our Lord yled into a gardyn, and there
the Jews scorned hym, and maden hym a crown of the branches of

52 FAMILIAR TREES

the Albiespyne, that is Whitethorn, that grew in the same gardyn,
and setten yt upon hys heved. And therefore hath the Whitethorn
many virtues. For he that beareth a branch on hym thereof, on
thundre, ne no maner of tempest, may dere hym, ne in the howse
that yt is ynne may non evil ghost enter."

The Hawthorn is still known in Germany as Christ-
dorn ; and the tradition is current among the French
peasantry that it utters groans and cries on Good
Friday ; whilst in England, an old superstition that
it is unlucky to uproot a Thorn tree still lingers,
often in a belief that it is ill-omened to bring
boughs of it into the house.

The quiet pastoral charm of this tree has endeared
it to poets, who have sung its praises in conjunction
with those of almost every season of the year. In
winter, when

"Through the sharp Hawthorn blows the cold wind,"

its boughs can hardly be said to present a cheerful
aspect. They appear dull grey, or, at a little distance,
almost as a black blot upon the landscape, save when
the mildness of the season may have allowed the fasti-
dious birds to leave its heavv crop of crimson fruit,
preferring daintier fare.

Even then, when, as Sackville says —

"Hawthorne has lost his motley lyverye,
The naked twigges are shivering all for colde,
And dropping-down the teares abundantly."

the sunbeams, glistening on dew or hoar-frost or the
delicate threads of the gossamer, lend it a borrowed
grace.

FLOWERS, FRUIT, AND LEAVES OF HAWTHORN.

THE HAWTHORN 53

It is m April, however, " when Hawthorn buds
appear " as the first tufted harbingers of summer,
throwing off their russet scales, and unfolding in the
most perfect purity of green, that the tree exhibits its
real charm. Before the change of style its flowers
may generally have been gathered on May-day in
most parts of England, and have decorated many a
maypole ; but now this seldom happens except in
Cornwall and Devon, it not being generally out until
at least the middle of the month, while in Scotland
it may be a month later. In Brande's "Popular
Antiquities" we are told that "it was an old custom
in Suffolk, in most of the farmhouses, that any
servant who could bring in a branch of Hawthorn
in full blossom on the first of May was entitled
to a dish of cream for breakfast. This custom is
now disused, not so much from the reluctance of the
masters to give the reward, as from the inability
of the servants to find the Whitethorn in flower."

Again, in a manuscript account of " The State of
Eton School, a.d. 1560," in the British Museum, it is
stated that, on the day of St. Philip and St. James —
i.e. the first of May — " if it be fair weather, and the
master grants leave, those boys who choose it may
rise at four o'clock, to gather May branches, if they
can do it without wetting their feet ; and that on that
day they adorn the windows of the bed-chamber
with green leaves, and the houses are perfumed with
fragrant herbs."

The long leafy sprays, whose foliage is, however,
almost hidden by the lavish masses of blossom that
have earned for the plant the name of Whitethorn, as

54 FAMILIAR TREES

opposed to the black, leafless boughs visible between

the snowy flowers of the Blackthorn, seem to have

attracted most of those who write its praises, its

fragrance being a great additional source of

pleasure. Thus, in the " Forest Minstrel," William

Howitt sings of

" The beautiful Hawthorn, that has now put on
Its summer luxury of snowy wreaths,

Bending its branches in exuberant bloom,

"While to the light enamour'd gale it breathes,

Rife as its loveliness, its rare perfume.

Glory of England's landscape ! Favourite tree
Of bard or lover ! It flings far and free

Its grateful incense."

That is, indeed, a joyous season of the year, when
the air is fresh with the breath of flowers, and free
from the dust of later summer ; when the meadows are
gay with Cowslips, Buttercups, or Ladies' Smocks, and
the woods still rejoice in Primrose, Orchis, Hyacinth,
and Anemone ; when the trees have not lost the first
freshness of their greenery, and the hedgerows on the
distant hill-side look like billowy snowdrifts unmelted
by the summer sun. As Spenser says —

" Youngthes folke now flocke in everywhere
To gather May buskets and smelling Brere ;
And home they hasten the postes to dight,
And all the kirk pillours eare day-light,
With Hawthorne buds and sweet Eglantine."

The thickly set boughs, whether in flower or in
leaf, make the Thorn afford a pleasant shade on the
open down or by the village green. There, at noon-
tide—

" Every shepherd tells his tale
Under the Hawthorn in the dale " ;

o

&

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF HAWTHORN WOOD (X 30 DIAMETERS).

THE HAWTHORN 55

and, later in the day, young lovers

" In other's arms breathe out the tender tale,
Beneath the milk-white Thorn that scents the evening gale " ;

whilst Goldsmith tells us that the shade may be
pleasing to others besides Milton's shepherds and
Eurns's lovers : —

': The Hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age or whispering lovers made."

The scarlet variety of the May, when in flower, has,
by itself, perhaps too glaring an effect, making one
feel oppressed with heat through the eyes, as, by its
powerful perfume, through the nostrils ; but it is
admirable when in a clump with several of the white-
blossomed forms, especially if in a shrubbery with a
neighbouring Laburnum. Thorns are pleasing Avhen
thus placed on the edge of the lawn or park, on the
outside of the belt of trees, or in their most frequent
situation, the hedgerow. Undoubtedly, however, the
most effective use of Thorns is, either singly or in
clumps, in the park, for they are rather too untidy for
the lawn , or in the wild garden, especially on any
elevated knoll. The landscape-gardener of the future
will think himself fortunate if he find one or two
venerable Thorns, with much divided boles, and with
blossom-laden boughs yearly sweeping to the ground,
ready to his hand in such situations.

The gay colours of decay, the sign of autumn's
reign and of winter's approach, the tattered ensigns
of beauty waved aloft in forlorn hope of the fight
against the blackness of winter, the end of which is
foredoomed, have formed the theme of the poet less

56 FAMILIAR TREES

often than the joyous glories of spring and summer ;
but when the summer beauty of the Thorn, " with its
locks o' siller grey," has given place to the green fruit
ripening to a pure, though opaque, crimson, the leaves
put on what is, indeed, as Sackville described it, a
" motley lyverye." Some become a clearer green,
losing the yellow and brown shades that have dulled
in July their April verdancy ; others blush pink on
one half of the leaf, or at their edges, whilst others
outvie the crimson of the fruit or the reddish purple
of a rain-stained hunting coat. Some become yellow
as the Maple, others orange or russet, until the later
mists of autumn reduce all this varied splendour
to the uniform dull brown of decay, which on the
ground soon becomes a mere black leaf-mould —

" And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot."

The wood of the Hawthorn, to the density of
which it owes the name Cratwgus (from the Greek
kratos, strength), can seldom be obtained of a large
enough size for much practical use, and is liable to
warp ; but its toughness recommends its use for
walking-sticks, for the cogs of wooden mill-wheels,
and as a substitute for boxwood in engraving. The
bark has been used in tanning, and the leaves as a
substitute for tea ; but, except as making a dense,
quick-growing, and ornamental hedge, the Hawthorn
is certainly rather beautiful than merely useful.

CYPRESS.

THE CYPRESS.

Cupres'sus sempervi'reiis L.

The associations of some trees are ineffaceable.
Though in neither form nor colour has the Cypress
any suggestion of grief or gloom to the dweller in
Northern Europe who may be ignorant of its name
and history, the customs and language of ages have,
in its own Southern climes, indelibly impressed upon
it the symbolism of bodily death and spiritual im-
mortality.

The Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens L.) is
generally a flame-shaped, tapering, cone-like tree, with
but a short stem below its branches, which rise
erectly and close to the trunk, much as in the Lom-
bard}' Poplar. Even in its native country it seldom
exceeds fifty or sixty feet in height ; and in our
climate its average rate of growth is from a foot to
eighteen inches per annum for the first eight or ten
years, and after that it lengthens more slowly, so that
trees forty years of age are seldom as many feet in
height. After reaching a height of between thirty and
forty feet its growth is often almost imperceptible.
Nevertheless, the largest specimens in England have
reached considerably larger dimensions. In the climate
of Devonshire, which is peculiarly favourable to this
class of tree, a specimen is recorded by Loudon, at
Kenton, which had reached a diameter of two feet and
a height of sixty feet in thirty-eight years. Probably
17 57

58 FAMILIAR TREES

the oldest Cypresses in England are those at Syon
House, Isleworth, believed to have been planted by
Turner before 1548. One of these is over fifty-two feet
high, and one foot three inches in the diameter of its
trunk and eight feet in that of its head. Turner
dates the dedication to Somerset of his " Names of
Herbes " " From your graces house at S}7on, Anno
Dom. MCCCCCxlviij, Martii xv," and in that work he
writes : " Cupressus is named in greeke Cyparissos,
in englishe a cypresse tree. Cypresses growe in great
plentie in my Lordes graces gardine at Syon."

About fifty years later Gerard speaks of the
Cypress as well known to most people, but specifies
Syon, Greenwich, and Hampstead as places where
it then grew ; so that this is not inconsistent with
its having been brought from Italy by Turner.

The dimensions of the species in Southern Europe
vastly surpass our largest examples. Thus one at
Monza, in Italy, known to be 150 years old, is
recorded as ninety feet high, two and a half feet in
diameter of the stem, and twenty feet in that of the
tree. Two Cypresses planted by Michael Angelo are
still living in the garden of the Chartreuse at Rome.
By far the largest and oldest Cypress in Europe, per-
haps the oldest living tree of any kind, is the historical
and gigantic tree at Soma, in Lombardy. It is popu-
larly supposed to have been planted in the year of the
birth of Christ, and is looked upon with great rever-
ence in consequence ; but there is said to be docu-
mentary evidence that it was a tree more than forty
vears earlier. It is over 120 feet in heiorht, and
its stem is twenty-three feet round. In addition to

THE CYPRESS 59

the interest arising from this great age and size, the
tree has the distinction of having been wounded by-
Francis I, who is said to have stuck his sword into
it in despair after his defeat at Pavia ; and of having
been so respected by Napoleon that in planning his
road over the Simplon he deflected it from the
straight line to avoid injuring the tree.

The branches of the Cypress divide repeatedly, and
approximately in a single plane, so as to form flat
frond-like sprays, the smaller twigs of which are
quadrangular in section and are closely covered
with small overlapping leaves in four rows. These
are of a yellowish shade of green, with a smooth
and shining curved surface, and remain on the tree
for five or six years, spreading outwards and becom-
ing more sharply pointed as they get older. On the
main stem the leaves are longer and needle-like.

As in most members of that main division of the
Coniferce that is known as the Pinacece, the male
and female flowers of the Cypress are produced on
the same tree. The staminate flowers are very
numerous, and are only about a quarter of an inch
long. Each of them consists of an elongated cone or
axis, bearing the male " sporophylls " or staminate
leaves, minute scales of a yellowish colour, each bear-
ing three pollen-sacs. The female flowers are fewer
in number, each being a globose, or rather polyhedral,
cone made up of about a dozen polygonal scales in
decussate pairs, with a conical projection in the centre
of each and a number of erect ovules at the base of its
inner surface. When mature, this cone or " galbulus "
is from an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, and

60 FAMILIAR TREES

its scales become corky externally and woody within,
and separate to allow the seeds to drop out.

The wood of the Cypress is hard, remarkably fine
and close in grain, very durable, of a beautiful
reddish brown colour, and resinously fragrant. The
evergreen character of the tree, and perhaps its flame-
like, monumental outline, the durability of its timber,
and its wholesomely balsamic odour, have no doubt
jointly contributed to that symbolism which Spenser
summed up by speaking of it as " the Cypresse
funerall." As Horace says, whatever was thought
worthy to be handed down to the most remote
posterity was by the ancients enclosed either in
Cypress or in Cedar wood. The Gopher wood of
which the Ark was constructed is supposed by some
to have been Cypress ; Herodotus tells us that the
Egyptians used Cypress-wood for their mummy-cases ;
Thucydides mentions that it was specially reserved to
contain the ashes of those Greeks who died for their
country ; and Plato directed that his code of laws
should be engraved on Cypress-wood, as being more
durable than brass. Theophrastus states that the
tree grew wild in the island of Crete, on snow-covered
mountains, and in Cyprus ; and that it would not
grow in too warm a situation. He recommends those
who wish to grow it successfully to obtain some of its
native soil from Cyprus ; and saj^s further that it
was dedicated to Pluto because, when cut down, it,
like most other Conifers, never throws up suckers.
This may perhaps be connected with the custom of
burying branches of Cypress with the dead, though
more probably this, like the modern practice of the

CONES AND LEAVES OF CYPRESS.

THE CYPRESS 61

Turks of planting the tree at either end of their
graves., arose from the belief that the aroma of its
resin would neutralise the effluvia of the cemetery.
So wholesome was this aroma considered, that
Oriental physicians were in the habit of sending
patients with weak lungs to the isle of Crete.

Pliny narrates several remarkable, but yet not
incredible, instances of the durability of Cypress
wood. He says that there were in his time Cypresses
still standing at Rome which were more ancient than
the city itself ; but that the tree was not a native of
Italy, having been originally introduced from Greece
to the Greek colony of Tarentum. The doors of the
temple of Diana, at Ephesus, were, Pliny relates,
of Cypress wood, and appeared quite new when four
centuries old ; as did also the statue of Jupiter in the
Capitol, which was of the same material and half as
old again. The tree in his time was employed for
rafters, joists, and especially for vine-props, so that a
Cypress grove was thought a valuable dowry for a
daughter. The Cypress was also one of the trees
tortured into various shapes with the shears in that
" topiary " work which was as fashionable in the
Roman villa of the first century as in the English,
French, or Dutch garden of the seventeenth. The
wood of the Cypress may have been one of several
kinds of timber marked with ornamental knots and
wavy figures in the grain which, under the name of
Citron wood, were most highly prized by the Romans
for the manufacture of tables known as " mensse
tigrinee et pantherinffi." From mediaeval times the
coffins of the Popes have been made of Cypress wood,

62 FAMILIAR TREES

at least in part ; and it is related that the doors of
St. Peter's, made of this wood, lasted without decay
from the time of Constantine to that of Pope
Eugenius IV. in the fifteenth century. Evelyn
mentions many uses to which the wood was put : —

'• What," he says, " the uses of this timber are for chests and
other utensils, harps, and divers other musical instruments (it being
a sonorous wood, and therefore employed for organ-pipes, as hereto-
fore for supporters of vines, poles, and planks, resisting the worm,
moth, and all putrefaction, to eternity), the Venetians sufficiently
understood, who did every twentieth year, and oftener (the Romans
every thirteenth), make a considerable revenue of it out of Candy.
. . There was in Candy a vast wood of these trees, belonging to
the republic, by malice or accident, or, perhaps, by solar heat (as
were many woods, seventy-four years after, here in England), set on
fire ; which, beginning 1400, continued burning seven years before
it could be extinguished ; being fed by the unctuous nature of the
timber, of which there were to be seen at Venice planks above four
feet broad."

There can be little doubt that the Cypress was
originally a native of Asia Minor, and probably also
of the island of Cyprus, from which it almost cer-
tainly derives its name. It may perhaps be doubted
how far the legends versified by Ovid in his " Meta-
morphoses " are due to original mj'thologising by the
poet on his own account, and how far they represent
popular belief; but the story of the origin of the
Cypress, according to Ovid, is somewhat as follows :
A beautiful deer, a pet of Apollo's, used to come
every day to be fed either by the god or by his faith-
ful attendant, a youth named Cyparissus ; but one
day, as it came bounding from the forest towards
Cyparissus, he, by mischance, killed it with a javelin
which he was hurling in sport. So great was the

Photo : H. truing, Horley.

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF CYPRESS WOOD (X 30 DIAMETERS)

THE CYPRESS 63

boy's grief at the accident that Apollo could not con-
sole him. He flung himself on the ground in despair
as the conclusion of the story has been translated,

" Praying in expiation of his crime
Thenceforth to mourn to all succeeding time.
And now, of blood exhausted, he appears
Drain 'd by a torrent of continual tears.
The fleshy colour in his body fades,
A greenish tincture all his limbs invades.
From his fair head, where curling ringlets hung,
A tapering bush, with spiry branches, sprung,
Which, stiffening by degrees, its stem extends,
Till to the starry skies the spire ascends.
Apollo saw, and sadly sighing, cried,
' Be, then, for ever what thy prayer implied :
Bemoan'd by me, in others grief excite,
And still preside at every funeral rite.' "

The last line refers to a Cypress-tree being placed
at the door of a Roman house where a dead body
was lying.

Though every cemetery in the East is thickly
planted with Cypresses, the tree is, in fact, a very
pleasant and ornamental evergreen, with a somewhat
formal but unusual outline that renders it suitable for
planting singly or in rows, especially where space is
limited. It cannot withstand the severe winters of
Northern France or Germany; but with us it ripens'
its seed freely, and, as has been seen, grows almost as
rapidly, if not to so large a size, as in its native land.
It cannot, however, endure the smoke of towns so well
as the Lombardy Poplar or as the Arbor- Vi toe. It is
not particular as to soil, but flourishes best in one
which is deep and sandy, and therefore somewhat dry
and warm, and in sheltered situations, not, in our

64 FAMILIAK TREES

latitudes, very much above sea - level. To see
Cypresses flourishing most luxuriantly in England
one should visit the sheltered sandy combes facing
the sea in South Devon, as at Ivybridge or Salcombe,
where they seem as much at home as in Candia
itself. Until it reaches a considerable age the
Common Cypress is, however, somewhat too stiff in
outline for our modern taste in gardening, so that
it is now being replaced by the more free-growing
species from North America and Asia, especially the
now much and deservedly admired Cupressus
Lawsonia'na Murray.

ELDER.

THE ELDEK.

Samlu'cvs ni'gra L.

Suggesting much traditionary lore and several ques-
tions of interest to the philosophical botanist, the
Elder (Sambucus nigra) and its allies merit atten-
tion, even if they cannot lay claim to great beauty.

The Elder itself is a tree of such mingled good and
evil report, that its commonness in the neighbourhood
of farms and cottages is probably an example of the
victory of utilitarianism over superstition. According
to mediaeval notions, as Shakespeare tells us in Love's
Labours Lost, " Judas was hang'd on an Elder." Sir
John Maundeville, a traveller but slightly more vera-
cious than Baron Munchausen, was shown at Jerusalem
the identical tree, and the repulsive black fungus, the
Judas'-ear (Hirne'ola auric' ula-Ju' doe), may still be
found growing on the stem of this ill-omened species.
True, this fungus also occurs on the Elm, and there is
a very different tree known as Judas-tree, from a rival
tradition, viz. a blood-red flowered leguminous plant,
Cer'cis Siliquas'trum ; but one legend is as likely
to be true as the other, and Cercis was not a native
of Britain — nor the Elder either, for that matter, of
Syria. To confirm its evil reputation, it has been
pointed out that the wood of the Elder, though hard,
is heartless, that its flowers have that narcotic perfume
that is suggestive of death, and that its foliage has so
strong, and. to many, so unpleasant an odour, that in

48 65

66 FAMILIAR TREES

Cymbeline, Shakespeare, using it as symbolical of
woe, speaks of " the stinking Elder, grief." So, too,
Spenser, in the " Shepheard's Calender," speaking
" of the death of some mayden of greate bloud " : —

" The water nymphe, that wont with her to sing and daunce,
And for her girlond Olive braunches heare,
Nowe balef nil boughes of Cypres doen advaunce !
The Muses, that wero wont greene Bayes to weare,
Now bringen bitter Eldre braunches seare."

On the other hand, the ancients as well as the
moderns were alive to many of the merits of the
Elder. Its hard wood, so very easily hollowed,
adapted it for a variety of musical instruments, one
of which, named from it the " sambuca," is supposed
to have been the sackbut of the Bible, the ancestral
type of the modern trombone ; and Professor Henslow
used, with characteristic practicality, to illustrate his
lectures, when dealing with this tree, by a dissertation
on the aerostatic principles of an Elder pop-gun.
From this character the tree still bears the names of
Bore-tree or Bottery in the North and in Ireland.

Though the German name of the tree, Holdre, is
said to signify hollow, it is also said to be mythol-
ogically connected with Hulda, the goddess of love ;
and, like love, the Elder drives away evil spirits and
defeats the arts of the sorcerer, beino- an antidote to
all his machinations. Good housewives, too, have
long prided themselves on their Elderfiower water
and Elderberry wine ; and its wood is useful for
skewers and shoe-pegs. From the berries a purgative
extract is prepared ; and the flowers, besides being
used to give a muscat flavour to some wines, are said

THE ELDER 67

to form, when dried, an excellent sudorific antidote
to snake-bites. So many, indeed, were its supposed
medicinal virtues, that the great Boerhaave is said to
have taken off his hat to every Elder-tree he passed.
Well may our ancestors, therefore, have planted this
tree at their doors, to shield them alike from bodily
and from spiritual harm. The late Dr. Prior suggested
an etymology for the name Elder itself which may
explain some of the veneration with which the tree
has undoubtedly been regarded, apart from its many
medical applications. He connected the old form
" Eller," under which the name of the tree appears in
" Piers Plowman," with an early English word signify-
ing " kindler," " a name which," he says, " we may
suppose that it acquired from its hollow branches
being used, like the Bamboo in the Tropics, to blow up
a fire." If this be so, we can believe the Elder to
share that primitive sanctity which attaches to every-
thing connected with the production of fire. The
ancient Cornish name for the Elder was scauan,
which occurs in many place-names in Cornwall and in
the family names Scawen and Boscawen. The name
still survives in Cornwall as skew-tree.

The Elder seldom attains a great height, twenty
to thirty feet, which it may reach in as many years,
being its limit; but its stems are sometimes nearly
two feet in diameter, a size indicating an age of
several scores of years. The bark of the old wood is
rough and corky, and of a light brownish grey colour ,
but the young shoots have a very pleasingly bright
grass-green surface, on which the darker cork-warts
are conspicuous, whilst the young foliage also has a

68 FAMILIAR TREES

clearness and cheerfulness of tone that it loses later
in the year. The leaves, which are in opposite pairs,
consist of two, three, or four pairs of broadly egg-
shaped, serrated leaflets, and a terminal one, each of
which seldom exceeds three inches in length. The
small creamy-Avhite flowers form an erect and
singularly flat " cymose " inflorescence, sometimes
nearly a foot across, which is especially characterised
by having five principal radiating branches.

Even in a wild state this tree exhibits a consider-
able tendency to vary, a disposition which naturalists
have been but too apt to ignore in the subjects of their
study. Thus the number of the leaflets is sometimes
reduced to three, and they are almost round in out-
line ; at other times their edges are much notched ;
or, again, they are more or less completely variegated
with yellow or white, whilst the usually black fruit
is occasionally green or white when ripe. Though,
perhaps, an escape from cultivation, as it certainly is
generally in this country, we have noticed the cut-
leaved variety to be very frequent in the hedgerows
of Belgium.

Such plants, with divided leaves, densely clustered
small white flowers, and juicy fruitlets, suggest many
ideas as to the probable causal or purposive signifi-
cance of their structure. One sees at once a connec-
tion between the arrangement of the branches (two of
which spring from the stem in the " axils " of a pair
of " opposite " leaves, while the next pair are given
off at right angles to them, or " decussately ") and
that of the paired leaflets in the " pinnate " leaf. The
relations between the veins, or rather the skeleton, of

FLOWERS, FRUIT. AND LEAVES OF ELDER.

THE ELDER 69

the leaf and its outline, is equally apparent ; and it
needs no great acuteness to perceive that it will
require less cellular tissue, and, therefore, less food, to
cover this skeleton with a segmented covering than to
enclose it between the surfaces of one huge undivided
leaf. Here, then, Ave have economv of nutrition,

*j

whilst at the same time the arrangement of the
leaves secures their free exposure to the necessary
light and air, and the greater length of saw-tooth
margin secured renders them less inviting to the
tender-mouthed cattle. In rendering themselves
conspicuous, the small flowers have, by the process
of natural selection, shown their practical apprecia-
tion of the Belgian motto, "L'union fait la force," and
whilst in twilight the eye forms some idea of their
success when it notices their spectral distinctness in
the hedgerow, in a room our noses tell us that they
aim mostly at attracting the insects of the dusk.
Nearly all white flowers are more strongly scented in
the evening. Colour and perfume here go hand in
hand. Perhaps, too, the small size and great number
of their fruits may stand in distinct relation to the
smallness and number of the fruit-eating birds of
those northern temperate latitudes in which flat
clusters of white flowers, whether " umbels " or
" cymes," are most abundant.

The flowers of the Elder make their appearance at
the end of May or the beginning of June, the fifth of
the latter month being said to be the average date by
which the trees are fully in bloom in the South of
England. Its blossoming may thus be said to mark
the beginning of summer, and at this season the

70 FAMILIAR TREES

Londoner must often notice it brightening the littered
back-yards of suburban cottages. It forms, for instance,
a characteristic feature about Chiswick and Gunners-
bury. Sir J. E. Smith remarks that " our uncertain
summer is established by the time the Elder is in full
flower, and entirely gone when its berries are ripe." It
is, indeed, a peculiarly hardy tree. Careless as to soil,
apparently luxuriating in loam, but well at home in
gravel, its office seems often to be the over-shadowing
of the rubbish-heap of the cottage garden, whilst it
absolutely rejoices when the carpenter chooses it as a
prop to support his stock of planks. Dyer, the author
of " The Fleece," refers to the flowering of the Eider
as marking the time for sheep -shearing: —

" If verdant Elder spreads
Her silver flowers ; if humble Daisies yield
To yellow Crowfoot and luxurious grass,
Gay shearing-time approaches."

Elder flower water, though useful as an eye- lotion,
is not to be despised as a perfume. It is, in fact, with
lavender-water, our native representative of the otto
and eau-de-Cologne of more favoured climes. At the
same time the wine obtained from the bright black
berries is not only a richly flavoured British wine, but
is said to do duty on occasion for the more highly re-
puted liquor of Portugal. Certainly Elderberries would
furnish as wholesome and palatable a beverage as
logwood, with which port wine is said to be fre-
quently adulterated.

These same flowers and fruits, which form some
of its chief attractions to the cottager, are the chief
drawbacks to the use of the Elder for ornamental

ELDER.

Photo : H. Irving, Horley,

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF ELDER WOOD (X 10 DIAMETERS).

THE ELDER 71

purposes. On a lawn they make an intolerable litter.
The irregularity of its growth and the bareness of its
sterns unfit it for the shady alley or the hedgerow,
though in old gardens it is not unfrequently seen in
such situations. Its proper uses in ornamental plant-
ing, in which it should not be altogether passed over,
are to be found in the wild shrubbery, in a clump of
shrubs in the park, or the edge of a wood, or in any
other situation in which its masses of white blossoms
and clusters of black berries can appear in effective
contrast to the surrounding leafage. To relieve the
undeniable heaviness of its mature foliage, it may be
either mixed with, or replaced by, some of the varie-
gated forms that are in cultivation. "

An undoubtedly more attractive plant for such
purposes is the Dwarf Elder, or Dane wort (Sambucus
E'bulus L.). Though a perennial, its herbaceous stem
hardly entitles it even to rank as a shrub ; but its
noble foliage renders it worthy of more notice at the
hands of our landscape gardeners, and though un-
common either in a wild or in a cultivated state, it is
too fine a plant to be here passed over unpraised.

It seldom exceeds four feet in the height of its
main stem, which terminates in a cluster of flowers ;
but the leaves are made up of from five to eight pairs
of lance-shaped, smooth, but serrated leaflets, each of
which is nearly six inches long, so that they measure
as a whole some twelve inches in width, and, with the
terminal leaflets, nearly eighteen inches in length.
These grand leaves are surmounted, in July or
August, by a flat cluster of flowers, whose corollas
are pink on their under- surfaces. To this cluster

72 FAMILIAR TREES

there are three main branches. The five stamens in
each little flower have purple anthers and crumpled
filaments; and in autumn the clustered blossoms give
place to numerous small round berries, ripening from
red, through a dark shining purple, to an almost pure
though lustrous black, and forming an attractive
feast for our feathered friends and for the human
eye searching into the beauties of the landscape in
the fall of the year. Besides the herbaceous stem, the
Danewort is further distinguished from its congener,
the Elder, by the possession of distinct ovate, leafy,
and saw-edged stipules at the base of its leaves.
Though the traditions to which the plant owes its
more familiar name allege that this Dwarf Elder
grows only in spots once watered by the blood of our
ancient invaders, the Danes, it will not, as a matter of
fact, be found at all unaccommodating in the question
of soil. If they will only "give ample room and
verge enough," the happy possessors of a shrubbery
cannot do better than find a place in it for the
Danewort.

LOMBARDY POPLAR.

THE LOMBARDY POPLAR.

Po'puhis pyramida'lis Roz.

Most of our broad-leaved deciduous trees have rounded
contours, whilst some Conifers, at least when young,
present a conical, or rather pyramidal, outline. The
Lombardy Poplar stands almost alone in the remark-
ably erect, or " fastigiate," habit of growth of its
branches. True, the boughs of the Mount Atlas Cedar
have an upward slope, whilst those of the Florence-
Court or Irish variety of the Yew have a still fuller
right to the description of "fastigiate"; but neither
of these needle-leaved trees rises above its fellows
in such a narrow, pointed column as does the Lom-
bard}7 Poplar.

The " tall Poplars," however, alluded to in the
lyrics of Horace as the supports round which the
vines were twined, were not of the variety now known
as the Lombardy Poplar. This last form, which is
known in France as " Peuplier dTtalie," though
there are several other Italian species, does not seem
to have been known in Italy even in the time of
Pliny, eighty years after the death of Horace.

As we have before seen, there is but little to dis-
tinguish the Lombardy Poplar from the old Black
Poplar (Populus ni'gra L.) save its general outline
and the erect tendency of its branches which produces
that outline. Poplars, however, are none of them
very long-lived trees ; and if a quick-growing American

49 73

74 FAMILIAR TREES

species attracts attention as suitable for town plant-
ing, as more tolerant of the priming-knife than our
native species, or as forming a screen more rapidly, it
may in a few years all but replace the less popular
indigenous kind. Thus it has come about that,
whilst the American P. monili'f era Ait, miscalled the
Black Italian Poplar, can be seen in many a London
square, and has been largely planted in some moist
situations as material for paper-pulp, it is difficult to
come across a genuine wild specimen of the true
P. nigra L.

The Black Poplar is not indigenous in Ireland or
Scotland, and doubtfully so in England or the North
of Europe ; but its area of distribution extends from
Central Europe into Northern Asia. It may grow
fifty, or even eighty feet in height, reaching forty feet
within ten years, but beginning to decay when sixty
or seventy years of age. Its branches spread in an
ascending, but not typically fastigiate manner, and it
will bear pollarding, or even coppicing, throwing out
an abundance of shoots ; but, unlike the Lombardy
Poplar, it does not produce suckers. The dark ash-
grey bark has been supposed to be the origin of the
name " Black " ; but perhaps this is only used in con-
tradistinction to "White," to signify the absence of
the white cottony down from the under surfaces of its
leaves. The buds are conical, or slightly angular,
and secrete gum, the bud-scales being stipular. The
outer pairs are hard and dead, the later pairs having
rudimentary leaves between them represented by
minute awl-shaped bodies. The terminal buds are
considerably larger, and the lateral ones are seated

THE LOMBARDY POPLAR 75

above prominent leaf- bases. The twigs are a shining
yellow or light bronze, and smooth, round below but
slightly angular above, with scattered cork-warts and
five-angled pith. The leaves are involute in the bud,
triangular or rhombic in outline, and two to four
inches long, in addition to the slender stalk, which
itself is about two inches in length. The blade is
either straight, slightly cordate, or slightly wedge-
shaped at its base, with an acuminate " drip-tip " and
regular crenate-serrate margin.

When young the leaves are of a beautiful trans-
lucent bronze, fringed with silky hairs, and with
similar deciduous hairs on both surfaces ; but they
become rigid, smooth, and grass-green, only slightly
paler beneath. Hanging loosely, as they do, on
their slender petioles, their surfaces are perhaps more
often in a vertical than in a horizontal plane. The
petioles are laterally compressed, as in the other
species ; and the veins are arranged much as in the
Aspen, the midrib being sinuous and prominent, and
the secondaries few in number, given off pinnately,
and slightly arcuate, looping into an inframarginal
series, and connected by a copiously branched mesh-
work of tertiary veins, but with the basal pair
opposite and strong, so as to produce the " pseudo-
palmate" appearance. The leaves are developed in
May, after the catkins and later than those of the
other species or of the Lombardy Poplar. Whilst
in spring they have shone and blushed with hues of
mingling red and yellow, to which the word " bronze "
that we have used does but faint justice, as they
seem sometimes to have warm blood coursing in

76 FAMILIAR TREES

their veins, in summer their green, if monotonous,
is generally cheerful and, even when it becomes
duller and more grey, is never heavy, owing to
their constant motion ; and in autumn, though soon
scattered by the winds of the equinox, they present
us with new, if brief, glories. Their green becomes
clearer and is then invaded by lemon yellow ; damp
turns this yellow first to gold or orange and then to
the umber of decay ; and all these tints are fre-
quently to be seen on a single leaf.

The catkins produced in March or April are
characteristically loose in the arrangement of the
flowers upon them. Those of staminate trees are two
to four inches long, cylindrical, pendulous, and dark
red from the colour of the anthers, of which there are
generally eight in each flower. The fruiting catkins
are shorter and take a more upward direction. The
stigmas are four-lobed and the capsules are round.
They ripen in May, when the cottony seeds are often
conspicuous among the young leaves.

Growing by the water-side, or in moist earth, with
thick sapwood through which their watery food-
supply rises rapidly, the Poplars have at the tips or
on the margins of their leaves, at least when they are
young, special glandular structures whence water may
exude in drops, so that the tree may be said to weep.
According to Ovid, when Phaeton borrowed the
chariot and horses of his father the Sun and by his
furious driving set half the world on lire, Jupiter
hurled him from the chariot into the river Po, where
he was drowned. His unhappy sisters, the Heliades,
lamenting his fate upon the river bank, were changed

LEAVES OF LOMBARDY POPLAR.

THE LOMBARDY POPLAR 77

into trees, either Poplars or Alders, the poets not being
agreed as to the species. In their despair they clasped
their hands above their heads until there they became
fixed, while their long hair, which hung like a veil
around them, changed into leaves from which their
tears flowed without ceasing. Black Poplars, at any
rate, are plentiful to-day upon the banks of the Po,
and their water-pores exude tears as the sun shines
upon them with paternal affection. Black Poplars
may therefore well have been, as Spenser says,

"Those trees, in whose transformed hue
The Sun's sad daughters wailed the rash decay
Of Phaeton, whose limbs with lightnings rent,
They gathering up, with sweet tears did lament."

Though a merely " fastigiate " habit is not gener-
ally considered a character of specific importance, the
presence of suckers in the Lombardy Poplar is an im-
portant distinction between it and the Black Poplar,
with which botanists generally unite it. The absence
of the grey hairiness common on the leaves of other
species, which has earned for its allied form the in-
appropriate name of " Black," is equally characteristic
of the Lombardy Poplar.

This fastigiate variety is probably a native of the
mountains of Western or Northern Asia, perhaps of
Persia. It has been common in that country, and in
Kashmir and the Punjaub, from very early times, and
is often planted along the roadsides in those distant
lands, as it is in France, its somewhat scanty shade-
producing powers being there of more importance
than they are with us. Introduced from these
countries into Southern Europe, the tree derives its

78 FAMILIAR TREES

popular names, both in France and in England, from
its abundance along the banks of the Po and the
other rivers of Lombardy, where at the present day it
grows readily from self-sown seed, which it will not do
in England. Considering that it was only introduced
into France in 1749, and into England in 1758, it is
interesting to note that William Turner, writing 200
years before, in his " Names of Herbes " (1548), says
of the genus : —

" Populus is of two kynrles, the fyrste kynde is called in greeke
Leuce, in latin Populus alba, in englishe whyte poplar, or whyte
Esptree, in duch wisz sarbach. Thys kynde is commune about the
bankes of the floude Padus [the Po]. The seconde kynde is called
in greeke Argeiros, in englishe alone a popler, or an Asp tree, or a
blacke popler.'"

Not many years before his '" Names of Herbes "
was published, Turner travelled in Italy, and may
then have seen the true Lombardy Poplar ; but his
account does not show any more discrimination
between the species than was suggested to him by
the existence of two names in both the Greek and
the English languages.

Like many quick-growing, spongy-timbered trees,
the Lombardy Poplar seems not to be by any means
a long-lived tree ; so that, though the artistic value of

" The Poplars in long order due "

may have been instinctively recognised at once, it is
very doubtful whether any specimens are still in
existence that date from the first few years of the
introduction of the species into England. A hundred
years, in fact, would seem to be a fair limit to state

LOMBARDY POPLAR.

Photo; E. J. Wallis, Keui.

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF LOMBARDY POPLAR WOOD
(X 10 DIAMETERS),

oo

THE LOMBARDY POPLAR 79

as that of the duration of life of this species, at least
in our climate.

Growing sixty feet or more in twenty years,
and ultimately attaining sometimes to the height of
150 feet, the Lombardy Poplar has not the smooth
stem common in the other species. Its bark is deeply
furrowed, and stands out in buttresses at the base of
the trunk, recalling the appearance of some of the
giant Figs of the Tropics. Sometimes, too, the stem
acquires a twist in its growth, though not with the
symmetrical regularity of the Spanish Chestnut.

This form seems to have been introduced into Eng-
land from Turin, in 1758, by the Earl of Rochford,
then our ambassador at the Piedmontese Court, the
earliest specimens being planted near the interesting
priory of St. Osyth in Essex.

The beauty of the Lombardy Poplar is mainly one
of landscape effect, its tall, erect growth acting as
a relief or foil to the rounded outlines of other trees,
and contrasting admirably with the horizontal lines
of the water by the side of which it is so often seen.
AVhilst in Lombardy and France it is commonly
planted as a hedge in lines, which from their length
are decidedly monotonous, with us it occurs commonly
in shorter lines, acting as a screen, or merely as an
ornamental break in the landscape. Properly it should
never stand alone, and should always be so placed
that the row of vertical green plumes may serve, as
has been suggested, to break, or to contrast with, some
horizontal line — a river bank, a road, an unsightly
railway embankment, or the arches of a viaduct or
aqueduct. Their suckers form an objection to their

80 FAMILIAR TREES

being planted near the lawn ; but purely artistic
considerations make it desirable that Poplars should
be planted in a row at some distance from the house
or other point from which they are to be viewed.

This variety is not, however, deficient in those
minuter beauties that repay the student of trees.
At the end of April or the beginning of May, when
most other trees are in full spring- tide verdure, the
little triangular leaflets come forth, on their character-
istically long leaf-stalks, in the charming variety of
golden tints, now yellow, now brown, now russet-red,
glinting cheerfully in the young sunbeams before they
decide on being a somewhat dull shade of green, to
which we have alluded when writing of the Black
Poplar ; and again in autumn, after most other trees
are bare, these same leaves, which have survived the
equinoctial gales of October, are often, in the fitful
sunshine of St. Luke's summer, or of that autumnal
after-glow that sometimes marks the latter half of
the month, seen bright with an almost spotlessly
clear lemon-yellow, or variegated perchance with a
green clearer than any hue they have hitherto worn.

WYCH ELM

THE WYCH ELM.

Ul'mus monta'na Stokes.

Whether a particular tree is or is not indigenous is
often a difficult question to decide. One of the most
difficult cases is that of our Common Elm (Ulmus
surculo'sa). The Wych Elm, however (U. montana
Stokes), has far more irrefragable claims to be con-
sidered one of our native trees. Though more abun-
dant to the north of the Trent, it is, wherever it
occurs, less distinctly a hedgerow tree than its con-
gener, though its name, montana, the Mountain Elm,
which seems to have been applied to it in very
ancient times, is not very appropriate. It produces
seed freely even in Scotland, being, in fact, often
known as the Scotch Elm ; and, unlike the Common
Elm, seldom producing suckers, it depends entirely
upon its seed for the perpetuation of the species.
Lastly, in addition to the forty places mentioned in
" Doomsday " with names derived from that of the
Elm, it must be remembered that the Wych Elm
was formerly known, even more commonly, as the
Wych Hazel, and may accordingly have given rise to
some of the names apparently due to the true Hazel.

The name Wych is of uncertain origin. Turner
uses it alone. In his " Names of Herbes" (1548) he
says : —

" Vlmus is called in greeke Ptelea, in englishe an Elme tree, or
a Wich tree, in duch ein Vlme baume, or Ylmen or Rust baume, in
frenche Orme."

50 81

82 FAMILIAR TREES

Dr. Prior was of opinion that " Wych " was the
early English " Hwsecce," the French " Huche," a
chest, our modern " Hutch," the wood of this tree
being used in making such chests.

From the resemblance of the name — which is
indeed not infrequently written " Witch " — the tree
has been considered a preservative against witchcraft,
and in the midland counties a small piece of its wood
used accordingly to be let into the churns, under the
belief that without it the butter would not come.

The name, like that of the Common Elm, is
applied to a number of tolerably distinct forms rather
than to a well-marked typical species. These forms
all agree in producing no suckers ; their branches are
usually pendulous; the "samara," or winged seed-
vessel, is more or less elliptical, with the seed-cavity
below the middle, and the seed is fertile. Though
characters like that of the position of the seed-cavity
in the fruit appear trivial to the unbotanical, they are
often, as in this case, the most readily detected ; and
when we become familiar Avith the general appearance
of growing plants such distinctions are often borne
out by differences which it is more difficult to de-
scribe in words. The Wych Elms do not grow to
quite so great a height as the Common Elms, though
they equal them in girth. In some forms the bark
is corky, but not in others ; but in all the twigs are
usually downy, and the leaves for the most part
large, coarsely and irregularly toothed, and unequally
or " obliquely " rounded at the base. The leaves thus
closely resemble those of the Hazel, from which fact
the tree obtained its old name of Wych Hazel.

THE WYCH ELM 83

The typical form of the Wych Elm has a smooth
thin bark, and does not throw out heavy horizontal
limbs like the Common Elm. It flowers, too, rather
earlier than the latter, and its samaras form conspicu-
ous pale green hop-like clusters on the otherwise bare
boughs in April, before the appearance of its leaves.
The stem is often of no great height, though attaining
a large girth ; and from the main ascending limbs
numerous twiggy branches wave pendulously with a
pleasing effect when partly clothed with the unripe
fruits or with the young leaf-buds in their tender
greenery, whether the tree overhangs some steep-
banked lane or stands isolated in a park. Gilpin says
of it that it " is, perhaps, generally more picturesque
than the common sort, as it hangs more negligently,
though, at the same time, with this negligence it loses
in a good degree that happy surface for catching
masses of light which we admire in the Common
Elm. We observe, also, when we see this tree in
company with the Common Elm, that its bark is
somewhat of a lighter hue."

Commenting on this passage, Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder remarks : —

" We are disposed to think that Mr. Gilpin hardly does justice
to this Elm. For our parts, we consider the Wych or Scottish Elm
as one of the most beautiful trees in our British sylva. The trunk is
so bold and picturesque in form, covered, as it frequently is, with
huge excrescences ; the limbs and branches are so free and graceful
in their growth, and the foliage is so rich, without being leafy or
clumpy as a whole ; and the head is generally so finely massed, and
yet so well broken, as to render it one of the noblest of park
trees ; and when it grows wildly amid the rocky scenery of its
native Scotland there is no tree which assumes so great or so
pleasing a variety of character."

84 FAMILIAR TREES

It must perhaps be admitted that at midsummer
all Elms are dull in colour, and not seldom heavy in
outline. It is in spring and autumn that they are of
most picturesque value in the landscape; and it is
important that the beauties presented by them and
by other trees at these seasons should be recognised
alike by the artist and by the landscape gardener.
The tree planter has the immense advantage over
the painter that his materials are already blended
by Nature ; and imagination can suggest few colour
effects more harmonious than those she presents in
the vinous tufts of staminate flowers on the boughs
of the Elm in March, its pale green fruit clusters a
little later, or the October change to a clear lemon
yellow spreading from bough to bough, each leaf
paling to a pellucid grass-green as the autumnal tint
encroaches upon its margin.

The Wych Elm grows more rapidly than the
Common Elm, and its wood is consequently far
inferior in hardness and compactness, besides being
more liable to split. Statements to the contrary
have arisen from the confusion in Scotland and
the North ot England of the spongy-timbered
Cork Elm (U. subero'sa Mcench) with the true
Common Elm {U. suberosa Stokes), which occurs
but rarely north of the Trent. The wood of
the Wych Elm is, however, tough, straight-grained,
and, when steamed, flexible, so that it is employed by
boat-builders and cartwrights, and in making pumps.
As it does not splinter, but becomes smooth from
constant wear, it is also sometimes used for rollers,
for the handles of spades, etc., and for wheel- barrows ,

FRUIT, FLOWERS, AND FOLIAGE OF WYCH ELM.

THE WYCH ELM 85

whilst the excrescences on the stems are valuable for
veneering. Gerard tells us that formerly long-bows
were made from the wood of this species, and its
tough bark was made into ropes.

In appearance the timbers of the two species of
Elm are very difficult to distinguish, as may be
gathered from our two photomicrographs, although
one is taken from a large and the other from a small
stem. The latter — the Wych Elm — shows the rela-
tively large polygonal pith, the former best exhibits the
rows of large pores forming the broad band of spring
wood and the characteristic wavy peripheral lines of
numerous small ones crowded together. These and
the less prominent pith-rays distinguish Elm wood
from Oak, which it resembles in colour. Some of our
old English linen-chests are of Elm.

Among the chief varieties belonging to this group
of the Elms — most of which are remarkably distinct
in appearance — are the Downton, Exeter, Chichester,
Canterbury, and Dutch Elms, and a form which may
perhaps be fitly known as the Essex Elm.

The Downton Elm (U. montana pen'dula) is the
variety commonly grown in our London squares and
gardens, grafted on the ordinary Wych Elm. It was
raised from seed from a Nottinghamshire tree at
Worcester in 1810, and grown at Downton Castle, in
Herefordshire, from which it takes its name. Its
leaves are dark in colour, large, and somewhat closely
set — so that, when large, the tree has sometimes a
rather sombre effect ; but its drooping boughs form
many a pleasant arbour, and a row of specimens
of this variety overhanging the River Ouse in the

86 FAMILIAR TREES

churchyard of Newport Pagnell, in Buckinghamshire,
is exceedingly beautiful.

The Exeter Elm (U. m. e.ronien'sis), occasionally
seen in nursery gardens, is simply a " fastigiate "
variety, having the leaves set closely round the erect
branches. It has all the effect of an abnormal or
monstrous form, without any redeeming beauty.

The Chichester Elm (U. m. vege'ta), though it
may have originated more than once, was raised in
1746 by Wood, a nurseryman at Huntingdon, from
seed collected in the neighbourhood. It is variously
known as the Huntingdon, Scampston, or unfortu-
nately as the American Elm, though it is, of course,
quite distinct from the species (U. america'na) with
its fruits fringed Avith hairs, to which that name
properly belongs. It is valuable as a timber tree,
and is of remarkably rapid growth, often sending up
shoots six or ten feet long in a single season, and
making a total growth of as much as thirty feet from
the graft within ten years. According to Selby, there
are many fine old specimens referable to this form in
the counties of Huntingdon and Nottingham.

The Canterbury Elm (U. montana super'ba) was
raised by the late William Masters in his nursery at
Canterbury, and distributed under the name of U.
m. ma'jor — a name likely to lead to confusion
with the Dutch Elm, the U. major of Sir J. E.
Smith. The Canterbury seedling had very large
leaves, and was of rapid growth, but of no proved
value as a timber tree.

The Dutch Elm (U. hollan'dica) has perhaps more
claim than any of those just mentioned to rank as a

/VYCH ELMS.

Photo : H. Irving, Horley,

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF WOOD OF WYCH ELM
(X 30 DIAMETERS)

THE WYCH ELM 87

distinct species ; but it seldom matures its seed. It
was introduced by William III. for clipped hedges, on
account of its rapid growth. It has branches which
spread almost as widely as those of the Common Elm,
and the bark of which, at first smooth, becomes after-
wards more corky than that of any other Elm, not
excepting the form known as the Cork Elm (U.
suberosa). The leaves are large and coarse ; and
the calyx-lobes and stamens each four in number,
instead of the more frequent five. Many of the Elms
near Kensington Palace belong to this variety ; but
except for its handsomely furrowed bark and rapid
growth, it has not much specially to recommend it,
as its rapidity of development renders it liable
to the defect known as " star-shake," which makes
it less fit for boat-building or other uses.

The variety which, it is suggested, from its abun-
dance in that county, may be known as the Essex
Elm (U. ni'tida of Syme, or U. el'egans of Edward
Forster's MSS.), forms fine straight-stemmed trees
with gracefully curving but only slightly pendulous
boughs, and with leaves which are not very large, but
smooth and shining, of a dark shade of green, and
with a tapering point and regularly serrate margin
somewhat resembling in their delicate outline the
foliage of the Hornbeam.

All these forms are classed as Wych Elms, from
the seed-cavity in their samaras being below the
centre, and several of them are worth consideration
by the tree planter. Like various foreign species,
they are commonly grafted upon the hardy typical
Scotch Elm, which is itself mainly reproduced from

88 FAMILIAR TREES

seed. As a park tree, no variety excels this typical
form, which is seen to the greatest advantage when
standing alone, as the drooping boughs are then able
to display all their natural grace of curvature.

There are many fine specimens of this tree in the
Lowlands of Scotland, and in various parts of England;
but, from confusion of nomenclature, the Wych Elm
is hardly distinguished from the Common Elm by the
majority of Continental observers. At Ashtead Park,
Surrey, there is a magnificent tree, said to date from
the time of William Rufus. Its massive, though much
decayed trunk and lofty wide-spreading limbs produce
in the mind of the lover of trees an echo of the
apostrophe of Allan Quatermain, who says : —

" I do love a good tree. There it stands so strong and sturdy,
and yet so beautiful — a very type of the best sort of man. How
proudly it lifts its bare head to the winter storms, and with what a
full heart it rejoices when the spring has come again 1 How grand
its voice is, too, when it talks with the wind : a thousand iEolian
harps cannot equal the beauty of the sighing of a great tree in leaf.
All day it points to the sunshine and all night to the stars, and thus
passionless, and yet full of life, it endures through the centuries —
come storm, come shine — drawing its sustenance from the cool
bosom of its mother earth, and, as the slow years roll by, learning the
great mysteries of growth and of decay. And so on and on through
generations, outliving individuals, customs, dynasties — all save the
landscape it adorns and human nature — till the appointed day when
the wind wins the long battle and rejoices over a reclaimed space,
or decay puts the last stroke to his fungus-fingered work. Ah ! one
should always think twice before one cuts down a tree I "

CEDAR OF LEBANON.

THE CEDAR OF LEBANON.

Ce'drus Li'bani Barrel.

The origin of the name Cedar is somewhat doubtful ;
but it is probably a Semitic word allied to the Arabic
" kedre," meaning "power." But, though so fre-
quently mentioned in the Bible, in classical writers,
and by early travellers, the tree itself was certainly
not brought to England before the latter part of the
seventeenth century.

The genus Ce'drus is mainly distinguished from
the closely allied genus La'rix, the Larches, by its
leaves being evergreen, they being, as in that genus,
grouped in tufts, or " fascicled." The other leading
characteristics of the genus are the erect position of
its cones and the deciduous character of their scales.

The Cedars are a very small group, only three
species being recognised, and these entirely confined
to the Old World ; but many other trees with some-
what similar wood are popularly known as Cedars in
many quarters of the globe. The three true Cedars
— the Deodar (G Deoda'ra Loudon) of the Hima-
layas and Hindoo Koosh, the Lebanon Cedar (G Li-
bani Loudon), with its small-leaved variety in Cyprus,
and the Mount Atlas Cedar (G atlantica Manetti)
— are so closely allied as to be by some regarded
as merely geographical races of one species. As all
three are now common in cultivation it will readily
be noticed that at different ages each kind nearly

51 83

90 FAMILIAR TREES

resembles the others ; and when grown from seed the
Lebanon Cedar varies considerably, its branches either
drooping or rising in a fastigiate manner. The main
distinctions between the three are, however, that the
Deodar has drooping branches and silvery foliage, the
Lebanon Cedar has its branches horizontal and its
mature foliage of a dark and somewhat bluish
green, whilst the Mount Atlas Cedar has ascending
branches and needles of a yellower shade of green.
The most striking characters of the Lebanon Cedar
are the numerous large and wide-spreading horizontal
branches and the broad and flattened summit of the
full-grown tree. When young, one or two leading
branches rise above the rest ; but the mature form is
known to nurserymen as " clump - headed." These
points, together with the fact that the Cedar grows
best in a deep soil, where its roots have access to water,
are most graphically presented to us in the grand
passage in the Book of Ezekiel, the most striking of
the many Biblical allusions to this tree : —

" Behold the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches,
and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature ; and his top
was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep
set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants,
and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field. Therefore
his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his
boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of
the multitude of waters, . . . Thus was he fair in his greatness, in
the length of his branches ; for his root was by great waters . . . nor
any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty."

The rich brown bark of the gradually tapering
stem becomes deeply scored with age, and contrasts
well with the level layers of dark foliage. Though

THE CEDAR OF LEBANON 91

the tree seldom exceeds eighty feet in height, its
massive branches often spread from thirty to fifty feet
on all sides, the lower ones resting upon the ground,
though not rooting in it, thus forming a broad-based
pyramid densely clothed with leaves. The horizontal
lines of its upper boughs give it, in common with the
Stone Pine, an architectural character harmonising with
the columns and straight copings of classical buildings.
This was noticed by Martin, who is fond of introduc-
ing the Cedar into his pictures, particularly into those
of the terrace gardens of Babylon and Nineveh.

Its stately outline and somewhat sombre hue
equally entitle the Cedar, alone perhaps among our
larger trees, to a position on the trim lawn, or near
the balustraded terrace of a mansion in the style of
the eighteenth centurv.

The dwarf shoots that bear the tufted leaves con-
tinue to do so each spring for several years with
hardly any lengthening, and ultimately terminate
in either a pollen-bearing catkin or a cone. The
leaves are straight, nearly cylindrical, but tapering
towards their points, and about an inch long, and
they remain two years on the tree. On falling,
they do not decay for several years, so that a layer
of leaf-mould has been observed half an inch in
depth under a plantation fifteen years old, whilst that
under the Cedars on Mount Lebanon is a foot thick.

The Cedar in England grows rapidly, making
annual rings from an eighth to half an inch across ;
but its wood is spongy, very apt to shrink and warp,
and by no means durable. It is of a reddish colour
and less resinous than that of the Larch. In its

92 FAMILIAR TREES

mountain home, however, the Cedar grows more
slowly and forms a better wood, so that there seems no
sufficient reason for doubting that the wood used for
Solomon's Temple and palace was that of this tree.
It is more doubtful, however, whether Virgil and other
classical writers are alluding to the wood of what Ave
now call the Cedar when they speak of it as being in-
corruptible and therefore used for statues of the gods.
The Romans certainly believed in the preservative
character of the resin which exudes from wounds in
the Cedar, and which they called " Cedria." This was
used to protect papyri from the attacks of worms, and
is stated to have preserved the books of Numa
uninjured in his tomb for five centuries after his
death.

The tree seldom flowers until it is five-and- twenty
or thirty years old ; and ii is characteristic that both
inflorescences turn upwards. The reddish catkins
are about two inches long, but the cones, after fertilis-
ation, become four or live inches in length. When
young and green these latter have a pinkish or plum-
coloured bloom, which, however, they soon lose, be-
coming a rich brown. The scales of the cone are very
broad and tough, though thin, and each of them bears
two broadly-winged seeds. Resin exudes from the
cones, and after some years the scales fall away from
the axis. Squirrels are fond of the seeds, but the
Cedar is singularly free from the attacks either of
insects or of fungal diseases.

The Cedars on Mount Lebanon have been fre-
quently visited by travellers since the middle of the
sixteenth century. Lamartine writes of them : —

CONES AND NEEDLES OF CEDAR OF LEBANON.

THE CEDAR OF LEBANON 93

•' These trees are the most renowned natural monuments in the
world : religion, poetry, and history have all equally celebrated
them. The Arabs of all sects entertain a traditional veneration for
them. They attribute to them not only a vegetative power which
enables them to live eternally, but also an intelligence which causes
them to manifest signs of wisdom and foresight similar to those of
instinct and reason in man. They are said to understand the
changes of the seasons ; they stir their vast branches as if they
were limbs ; they spread out or contract their boughs, inclining them
towards heaven or towards earth, according as the snow prepares
to fall or to melt."

The mountain is covered with snow during a great
part of the }^ear ; but on August 5th, the eve of the
Feast of the Transfiguration, the Maronites from the
surrounding villages have long been in the habit of
visiting the mountain, and there celebrating the
" Feast of Cedars " with singing and dancing, mass
being celebrated on the following day at one of
the stone altars which stand beneath several of the
larger trees. Most of the Cedars show signs of
having been frequently struck by lightning.

There are naturally many legends connected with
so interesting a tree. One of the most remarkable
relates that Seth, sent by Adam to Paradise for the
oil of mercy, saw, from the gate of the garden which
he was not permitted to enter, a leafless Cedar with
branches borne high towards heaven, on which was
seated a child in glittering raiment. The angel-
guardian of the garden gave him three seeds from the
tree, which, on his return, he placed in the mouth of
his parent, who was then dead. From these seeds
there sprang, on the grave of Adam in Hebron, a
Cedar, a Pine, and a Cypress, which united into one
gigantic tree. After being carefully protected by

94 FAMILIAR TREES

Abraham, Moses, and David, this tree was felled by
Solomon to form a beam in the temple ; but his car-
penters, finding it impossible to shape it as they
wished, laid it aside, and, after forming a bridge over
the brook Kedron, and beinsr thrown into the Pool of
Bethesda, to which it imparted its healing virtues, it
ultimately furnished the wood of the Cross.

The actual date of the first introduction of the
Cedar into England is uncertain. A most improbable
tradition assigns the planting of the celebrated trees
at Enfield and Hendon to Queen Elizabeth, and the
tree at Oatlands Park, Weybridge, is said to have been
planted by Prince Henry about 1640, but Evelyn in his
"Sylva" (1664) speaks of the tree as not grown in
Eno'land, thousrh he had received cones and seeds of it
from Lebanon, so that it is most likely that men so
interested in trees as were he and Henry Compton, the
Bishop of London, would soon have grown it from
seed. The Cedar on the rectory lawn at Childrey
in Berkshire is said to have been grown by Dr.
Pocock, the first Laudian Professor of Arabic, from
a cone brought by him from Lebanon in 1646; and
another of the oldest existing Cedars in England is
the Enfield tree, planted by Dr. Uvedale, head master
of the Grammar School, apparently between 1665 and
1670, from seed said to have been brought to him from
Lebanon by a pupil, but possibly given him by Evelyn.
The Cedar at Bretby Park, Derbyshire, is said to be
proved by the gardener's accounts to have been
planted in 1676. Its girth is now nearly sixteen feet,
and its branches, though many have been lost, still
spread about 100 feet. William Ashby, a Turkey

mm

silH

mn

m

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF CEDAR OF LEBANON WOOD
(X 30 DIAMETERS)

THE CEDAR OF LEBANON 95

merchant, is stated to have brought seed from the
Levant, between 1680 and 1690, from which sprang
the Cedar at Quenby Hall, Leicestershire ; but the
trees standing till recently close to the river, in the
garden of the Apothecaries' Company at Chelsea, were
certainly planted before 1685, under the direction
of Sir Hans Sloane, and perhaps of Evelyn.

Sir Stephen Fox, the ancestor of Lord Holland,
is also stated to have imported the Cedar from the
Levant to Farley, near Salisbury, and to Chiswick ;
and another of the earliest specimens in the country
must have been that planted by Samuel Reynardson
at the Cedar House, Hillingdon, Middlesex, cut down
in 1789, which was over fifty feet high and spread
nearly 100 feet in 1779. It is also worthy of note
that the finest Cedar in Essex, known locally, like
so many others, as the oldest in England, is that
at Faulkbourn Hall, which from 1677 to 1679 was the
residence of John Ray. This tree is eighty feet high,
over twenty feet in girth, and 100 in the spread
of its branches.

From the early part of the eighteenth century the
planting of the Cedar as an ornamental tree has been
general. The magnificent grove at Whitton Park,
Twickenham, was raised from seed in 1722 by Archi-
bald Duke of Argyll, who introduced the species into
Scotland in 1740. In 1734 Bernard de Jussieu took
two plants from England to France in his hat, and
in 1761 we find the Duke of Richmond buying a
thousand plants of the Cedar for Goodwood Park,
for seventy-nine pounds, from John Clarke, a butcher
at Barnes, who was very successful in raising seed

96

FAMILIAR TREES

from the srreat tree at Hendon, which was blown
down in 1779.

Of existing specimens, that at Strathfieldsaye,
108 feet high, is the loftiest ; but unquestionably
the largest and handsomest is that at Syon House,
Isleworth, seventy-two feet high, over twenty-five
feet in girth, and sweeping the ground with its
branches, which spread nearly 120 feet.

The Cedar is not difficult to raise from seed, nor is
it at all exacting in the matter of soil ; but unfortun-
ately it suffers great damage from the accumulation
of snow on the fan-like expansions of its evergreen
branches.

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF NEEDLE LEAF OF CEDAR OF LEBANON

ALDER.

THE ALDEE.

Al'nus (jlutino'sa Medic.

The small Order of catkin-bearing trees, the Betula'cecc,
includes only the two genera Bet'ula, the Birches, and
Alnus, the Alders. These are, as we have seen,
mainly distinguished by the character that, whilst
in the Birch the scales constituting the fruit-bearing
catkins are thin, and fall off simultaneously with the
fruit itself, in the Alders these scales become thick
and woody, and remain on the tree as a minute cone
after the fruits have been discharged.

The few species constituting the genus Alnus are-
shrubs or trees, seldom reaching a large size, and
range from Japan through Asia to the north of the
Himalayas, throughout Europe, North Africa and
North America, and along the Andes into Chili ;
but our one British representative of the group is
confined to the Old World. Its distinctive feature is
its leaves, which are roundish, with a wedge-shaped
base, a wavy and slightly toothed margin, and a
short stalk, whilst they are hairy and glutinous when
young — whence the specific name, A. glutinosa — and
glossily dark olive-green on both surfaces later on.

Though it may grow to a tree of considerable size,
even reaching a height of seventy feet, and more than
nine feet in girth, it does not usually exceed thirty
or forty feet in height, or six feet in circumference,
and is so commonly treated as coppice that it is most
52 97

98 FAMILIAR TREES

familiar to us in rounded clumps of a bushy habit,
with several stems, none of which exceeds half that
size. Then it is that what beauty it possesses is re-
vealed, as it grows, either with Willows or isolated, on
the banks of streams in our midland or northerly
counties. Gilpin indeed speaks of it as growing in
perfection on the banks of the Mole ; but there are
far finer specimens by many more northern streams.
" He who would see the Alder in perfection," he writes,
" must follow the banks of the Mole in Surrey, through
the sweet vales of Dorking and Mickleham, into the
groves of Esher. The Mole, indeed, is far from being
a beautiful river : it is a quiet and sluggish stream ;
but what beauty it has it owes greatly to the Alder,
which everywhere fringes its meadows, and in many
places forms very pleasing scenes, especially in the
vale between Box Hill and the high grounds of
Norbury Park."

In such situations our attention has often been
claimed by the beauty of its rich masses of foliage
as they overhang the golden beds of Marsh-
marigolds, or, later in the year, the foamy banks of
Meadow-sweet and the gorgeous magenta spikes of
the Loose-strife. Like all water-side plants, it retains
its leaves longer than the deciduous trees of dry situ-
ations, keeping them sometimes until January ; and,
as they do not change colour in autumn, its verdure
is pleasing, even though the rigidity of its branches
detracts from its gracefulness. Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder justly supplements Gilpin's remarks with
the observation that the Alder is as often associated
with the more rugged scenery of the glens and ravines

THE ALDER 99

of Scotland, where it grows at an altitude of 1,600
feet, as with that of the tranquil alluvial vales of
England. Some of the most striking individual trees,
indeed, known to the present writer are a few gnarled,
crooked, and round-headed standard specimens, of no
very exceptional size, in a mountain glen among the
ancient Scots Firs of the forest of Ballochbuie, near
Balmoral.

Though it certainly flourishes best where its
main roots are some little height above the water,
the Alder is more tolerant of stagnant water around
it than any other European tree ; and from the dense
mass of rootlets which it puts out in such situa-
tions, no tree is so well adapted for holding together
the banks of rivers.

The bark of the larger stems is nearly black,
and is full of clefts, as was noticed by Virgil in the
passage which Dryden renders —

" As Alders in the spring the boles extend,
And heave so fiercely that their bark they rend."

Nor is there anything noticeable in the appearance
of the ascending branches, so that, when leafless, the
tree is not attractive. When, however, we see how
our exotic evergreens suffer from the cold, and how
the Yew-trees on the North Downs are bent towards
the east by the westerly gales of autumn and winter,
we can appreciate the provision of Nature by which
the trees of the colder temperature regions are, as
a rule, deciduous.

The buds are stalked, bluntly oval, and brown
with a violet tinge; and the leaves broadly and
bluntly obovate, and pinnately veined, with from

100 FAMILIAR TREES

five to seven pairs of secondary veins. Their margin
is toothed, and they have conspicuous stipules ; but
it is, perhaps, their dark glossy green which is their
most immediately distinctive character.

When in autumn the Alder-swamps are strewn
with the newly felled stems it will be seen that the
live wood of the tree is white, but that it becomes
red, as if with blood, where it is cut, and afterwards
fades to a permanent pale pink. It is soft, with short
fibres, giving it a homogeneous texture, and of mod-
erate density, and is of exceptional durability if kept
either perfectly dry or under water. It was used by
the ancients for boats, possibly " dug-out " canoes ;
and Virgil stating that this tree formed the first
material so employed, Professor Martyn suggests that
a hollow Alder, falling into the stream on the banks
of which it grew, may have given to man the first
idea of a boat. Both Pliny and Vitruvius mention
its employment for piles, the former also stating that
it was used for water-pipes and for protecting river-
banks, and the latter that the city of Ravenna was
founded upon piles of its wood. According to Evelyn
the celebrated bridge of the Rialto at Venice was
similarly founded ; and even down to the present
day Alder -wood is used for piles in Holland.

The Alder loses about a third of its weight and
a twelfth of its bulk in drying, but does not warp, so
that it is suitable for turnery, carving, cabinet-making,
clogs, sabots, and wooden platters. " Alder for shoes
do wise men choose," writes Mr. Kipling. It has also
been largely used for the staves of herring-barrels
and from its softness, which prevents it from splitting,

FOLIAGE AND MALE AND FEMALE CATKINS OF ALDER.

THE ALDER 101

it is recommended for wheelbarrows and stone-carts.
Old trees with wood full of knots, when cut into
planks, have all the beauty of the curled Maple,
with the colour, though not the grain, density, nor
lustre, of Mahogany. The wood is, however, liable
to the attacks of the larva of a small beetle, for
which reason sabots made of this wood in France
are hardened by smoking. It is also recommended
to immerse Alder logs for some months in peat to
which lime has been added, and to varnish any
furniture made from them. Being rich in tannin,
the wood, if left long in peat, becomes as black
as ebony, and when newly felled it takes a stain
readily, so as sometimes to be used as a substitute
for that wood ; but it is far too soft to admit of the
lustrous polish of so exceptionally dense a timber.
As fuel the Alder is far inferior in heating

o

power to the Beech, but for this reason is useful
for purposes where a slow heat is wanted. By far
the chief use of the tree at the present day is for
gunpowder-charcoal, for which purpose it is grown
to a considerable extent, being only inferior to
the Alder Buckthorn — the so-called "Dogwood" —
(Rham'nus Fran'gula) and to the White Willow
(Sal'ix al'ba). It is treated as coppice, and cut down
every five or six years. The branches, which should
be about four inches in diameter, are, like the buds,
somewhat triangular in section, which gives a char-
acteristic form to their small pith. The charcoal of
the Alder is used for powder for heavy ordnance,
or for the commoner commercial kinds.

The Alder is one of the woods which have of late

102 FAMILIAR TREES

been to some extent employed for paper-making.
A ton of green wood yields three hundredweight
of fibre, which bleaches fairly well, so as to be
suitable for paper of various qualities.

From the time of Theophrastus the bark of the
young shoots has been used for dyeing and tanning
leather. When these shoots are less than a third of
an inch in diameter, their bark yields no less than
sixteen per cent, of tannin. They produce red,
brown, or yellow dyes if used alone, and black on
the addition of copperas. The natives of Lapland
are stated to use the Alder as a dye for their
leathern garments, chewing its bark, and then
employing their saliva, which becomes red in the
process.

As final recommendations of the planting of this
somewhat neglected tree in our swampy meadows,
it may be mentioned that its boughs, from their
durability in water, are especially suitable for filling
in drains in wet land, and that it is exceptional in
not in any degree injuring the grass that grows
beneath it, either by its shade or by its fallen leaves.
This last characteristic is alluded to by Browne in
" Britannia's Pastorals," where he writes —

" The Alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth ;
Each plant set neere to him long flourisheth. :'

As in the allied Birch, the male and female
catkins are in the Alder on the same tree. They
appear before the leaves, the male ones being visible
in autumn and the female ones being often con-
spicuous among the dark branches in March, whilst

n

Ffioto : H. truing, h'orlcy.

ALDER.

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF ALDER WOOD (X 10 DIAMETERS).

THE ALDER 103

the leaves do not appear till the end of April or the
first half of May. The male catkins are from two to
four inches long, and of a dark red colour, from the
shield-like scales which protect the anthers and
their pollen from rain and premature winds ; whilst
those bearing the female flowers are seldom an
inch in length, and resemble miniature Fir - cones
of a reddish brown hue. When the small winged
fruits have been ripened and set free, the woody
bracts hanging in catkins on the bare boughs still
more forcibly suggest this resemblance.

The Alder can be reproduced either by layers,
or by large cuttings, or " truncheons," two or three
feet long. These it is recommended to leave during
a winter and spring with their ends in water before
planting. The tree is, however, preferably multi-
plied by seed. The cones should be gathered in
dry weather, when their scales are beginning to
open ; and the seeds are best sown in November
or December, in soil not exceptionally moist, and
kept covered with Pine-needles, or other light dry
litter, until April, when the seedlings will be fairly
up. These may be transplanted in the nursery
when a year old, and planted out at two years
old.

The glossiness of its foliage gives the chief value
to the Alder in a landscape. Folded in the bud
like a fan, and enclosed by two pale-coloured
" stipules," the leaves are at first hairy, as well as
glutinous. They can thus shoot oft' moisture that
might induce decay in the buds, or subject them
to the action of frost. They somewhat resemble

104 FAMILIAR TKEES

those of the Beech, but are duller and darker in
hue. In fact, the dark green of the tree and
its compact growth in rounded masses render it
sombre and heavy when the sun is not on it. The
cut-leaved variety gains considerably in lightness ;
but, though there are many trees more valuable and
more beautiful, there is yet an undeniable charm
belonging to the glossy clumps of the ordinary
forms. When Ave see it overhanging some stream
or pool, contrasting with the blue-grey of the Iris
or the Reed-mace, or with the gay flowers of the
Water-crowfoot or Arrowhead, while the dab-chick
or the water-vole finds a home among its roots, or
a temporary shelter beneath its boughs, the Alder
forms by no means an unpleasing foil to its gay
surroundings.

' *

SPRUCE.

THE SPRUCE FIR.

Pi'cea excel' sa, Link.

There has been considerable confusion as to the name,
"whether classical, popular, or scientific, of this tree.
The word " fir," the torch or fire tree, was originally
applied to the Scots Pine (Pi'nus sylves'tris L.), and
Picea and A'bies were used almost indiscriminately
by classical writers for the Norway Spruce or for the
Silver Fir of Central Europe, whilst modern botanists
have been hardly more decided. Thus this tree is the
Pinus Abies of Linne, Pinus Picea of Duroi, Pinus
excelsus of Lamarck, Abies Picea of Miller, Abies
excelsa of De Candolle, and — the name now in use —
Picea excelsa of Link. In his " Names of Herbes "
(1548), William Turner says : —

" Picea is called in greeke as Theodore Gaza turneth, pitys, and
after Ruellius peuce, and it is called in duch rotte Dan, wherfore it
maye be called in englishe a red firre tree."

It is, however, very doubtful whether the Norway
Spruce had been then introduced into this country,
though it is probably the tree which both Pliny
and Turner knew as Picea. The controversy as to
whether the Spruce or the Silver Fir is the better
entitled to the classical name Abies turns partly
upon Virgil's lines in the ^Eneid with reference to
the wooden horse of Troy : —

"Instar montis equum, divina Palladis arte
iEdificant, sectaque intexunt abiete costas."

53 105

10G FAMILIAR TREES

This Dryden translates : —

" by Minerva's aid, a fabric rear'd,
Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared ;
The sides were planked with pine."

But Messrs. Lonsdale and Lee in their more literal
prose render it : —

" The leaders of the Greeks . . . build, with the aid of the divine
skill of Pallas, a horse as huge as a mountain, and form the sides of
interlacing planks of fir."

Now on Mount Ida, the modern Kas Dagh, there is
no Spruce, but a form of the Silver Fir is abundant.
As this tree differs from the ordinary Silver Fir
(Abies rpectindta D.C.) of Europe in having spinous-
pointed leaves and shorter cones, it has been named
as a variety A. p. E'qui Trojani. The Spruces
differ from the Pines, Larches, and Cedars in that
their leaves are arranged singly in a spiral along
elongated shoots, and not tufted or grouped on lateral
dwarf shoots. From the former group they are
further separated by the absence of any wood}' thick-
ening at the ends of the scales of their cones ; their
seeds, too, ripen in a single year. From the Firs
proper, of which the Silver Fir (A. pectinata D.C.) is
the best known, they differ in their leaves being four-
angled and prismatic in section, instead of flattened
and two-edged, and having stomata on the upper
surface; in the anthers splitting longitudinally;
and in their cones hanging downwards after fertilisa-
tion, and (after having shed their seeds) dropping off
whole instead of falling to pieces while on the tree.

The Spruce is the loftiest of European trees, reach-
ing a height of 125 to 150 feet, or even, in its native

THE SPRUCE FIR 107

country, as much as 180 feet, with a straight, tapering
stem from two to six feet in diameter, and sweeping
branches disposed very regularly round it, giving it,
with the long straight leading shoot, a very conical
outline. The secondary branches are produced
mainly at the sides of the primary ones, so as to form
broad horizontally spreading sprays. In young trees
the branches are nearly horizontal ; but in older ones,
if free scope is given for growth, a very graceful pen-
dent habit is assumed, branches sweeping down to the
ground, and even taking, root and again following a ver-
tical direction, so as to form a grove of young trees
round the original stem. Similar anomalies of growth
are not uncommonly exhibited by Spruces that have
been blown over. Such specimens may be seen among
the forests of Norway, and have been described from
the Whim, an estate at the foot of the Pentland Hills.
They serve to illustrate the fact that the Spruce may
be readily reproduced by the system of " layering," or
pegging down considerable branches. The root gener-
ally spreads a good deal horizontally, which, together
with the preference of this species for soft and some-
what moist soil, renders it more liable to be prostrated
by wind than the tap-rooted Pine. The bark of the
trunk is rather thin, warty, and of a reddish brown,
becoming scaly as the tree gets older.

The buds are dry, not resinous, and conical. The
leaves are generally less than an inch long, sharp-
pointed, slightly curved, very stiff, and of a dark
though clear green ; and, although spirally " inserted,"
they are so arranged on the shoot, the upper ones
directed forwards along the stem and the lower ones

108 FAMILIAR TREES

sideways, as to give a somewhat flattened appearance
to the individual sprays, though not so regular as
those of the Yew.

Individually the leaves are four-edged, and narrow
to a slight petiole which is inserted on a prominent
angular pulvinus. There are fine lines of stomata
along all the sides of the leaf ; the hypoderm is only
a single layer of small polygonal cells with thickened
walls; and the thick mesophyll is made up of irre-
gularly polygonal thin- walled cells. There is only a
single vascular bundle in the midrib, and generally
one resin-canal near the under surface.

The pollen-bearing catkins are produced near the
apex of the lateral shoots, generally several together,
on stalks, which elongate considerably. They are of
a yellowish colour, tipped with red, and cylindrical
in form, becoming ultimately curved, and as much
as an inch in length ; but in their earlier stages they
have been compared to half-ripe strawberries.

The cones are borne mainly at the ends of the
upper branches, and in the flower stage stand erect,
and vary in colour, according to soil or situation, from
green or yellow to pink, dark red, or purple. After
fertilisation they become pendent and green, taking the
form of a pointed cylinder, from five to seven inches
long and from an inch and a half to two inches
broad. Their scales are thin, with their edges slightly
curved inwards and notched at the top. There are
from 160 to 180 of them in each cone ; and as each
bears two seeds at the base of its inner surface, an
ordinary cone may yield from 300 to 350 seeds. In
autumn the cones ripen to a rich and glossy brown

J&i,.,

&kw. v.

CONES AND NEEDLES OF SPRUCE.

THE SPRUCE FIR 109

hue ; but it is not generally until the drying wind and
warm sun of the following spring that they discharge
their seeds. These are furnished with oval, semi-
transparent, pale brown wings.

The Spruce grows almost as rapidly from seed as
does the Scotch Pine ; for, though for three or four
years not exceeding six or eight inches per annum,
after reaching a height of three feet the plants will
grow from two to three feet a year until they are
fifty feet high, so that they may be as much as
fifteen feet at ten years old, whilst they may attain
in fifty years to a height of a hundred feet. In its
native country the tree is not thought to live much
beyond a hundred or a hundred and fifty years,
and the best Spruce timber brought into the market
is from seventy to ninety years old.

The species is widely distributed both in latitude
and longitude — more so, in fact, than many of its
allies, being indigenous alike in the Kurile Islands
and Siberia, and from the Swiss Alps to beyond
the Arctic Circle. Though in its extreme northern
area it seldom occurs at an altitude of more than
750 feet above sea-level, in the south of Norway
it reaches more than 3,000 feet, at the same time
descending the shores of some of the fjords down to
the water's edge. It is, in fact, the prevalent tree of
the basin of the Baltic, and Loudon states that the
finest Spruce forests which he had seen were between
Memel and Konigsberg, growing in peaty soil that rested
on sand, and was liable to inundation during a great
part of every winter. It is, in fact, owing to its require-
ment, for its successful cultivation as a timber tree, of

110 FAMILIAR TREES

soil that in England or Scotland, can be profitably
cultivated for agricultural crops, that the Spruce has
not been so extensively planted as the Pine and the
Larch, which flourish in drier and more barren soils.

The wood of the Spruce is generally white, more
elastic, less resinous, and consequently lighter, than
that of the Scotch Pine. When grown in the open,
where large branches may be broken off, it is apt to be
very knotty ; but in denser forests, where it is drawn
up, it is fine and even in grain. It has been largely
imported from Norway "in the round," for masts,
spars, scaffolding, and ladders. These are, however,
the smaller trees, imported with the bark on. The
larger trees are sawn up, and are known as White
Baltic, Norway, Christiania, or Danzig deal. They are
much used in building, both for joists and for floor-
ing, while of late years immense quantities have been
brought over in a manufactured state as door and
window frames or cheap furniture. This timber is un-
doubtedly inferior to that of the Scotch Pine, and one
cause which has hitherto militated against its employ-
ment for some purposes, such as paving-blocks, is the
fact that it is found very difficult to treat with creosote.
By the recently introduced system known as Powel-
lising it may, however, be easily treated with a sac-
charine solution. The waste is used in Sweden and
Belgium for matches and paper-pulp. The wood is
durable when kept dry, and its grain adapts it for
carving, polishing, or gilding.

The resin, though less abundant than that of the
Pines, is of considerable A*alue. It oozes as a fine
yellow turpentine, known as " Spruce rosin " or

fhoto : H. Irving, Ho/Icy.

SPRUCE.

1C3

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF WOOD CF SPRUCE (X SO DIAMETERS).

THE SPRUCE FIR 111

" frankincense," from cracks in the bark or from arti-
ficial incisions, for as long as twenty years ; but even-
tually the wood is rendered valueless for timber, and
even almost useless for fuel. By melting, boiling Avith
water, and nitration, the medicinal Burgundy pitch
is prepared from this resin in the Vosges Mountains,
besides small quantities of colophony, lamp black,
and spirit of turpentine.

In Norway the bark is used lor tanning, though in-
ferior to that of the Larch, and in times of scarcity the
sweetish bast is even ground down with meal as a
breadstuff. In all countries where the Spruce grows,
decoctions of the shoots in fermented liquor are used
as a beverage, or as a remedy for scurvy. Thousands
of young Spruce trees, or the tops of larger specimens,
are used annually as Christmas trees for the amuse-
ment of our children.

As a tree, the chief value of the Spruce is as a
nurse, its dense foliage and tapering form serving well
for the protection of young Oaks or Elms, whilst the
thinnings prove fairly remunerative as Hop-poles.
Its tendency to preserve its lower boughs renders it
a valuable cover for game ; and as it bears the shears
well it is used on the Continent for hedges in nursery
gardens.

Broken down by loads of snow or boisterous wind,
the Spruce, as seen in Alpine landscapes, attracted
the pencil of Salvator Rosa; but it suffers in the
estimation of most people by the extremely sym-
metrical regularity of outline that accompanies its
somewhat sombre coloration. " It is," says Sir Thomas
Lauder, " the great tree of the Alps, and is so mentally

112

FAMILIAR TREES

associated with the grandeur of Swiss scenery that
the sight of it never fails to touch chords in our bosom
which awaken the most pleasing recollections. What
can be more truly sublime than to behold, opposed to
the intensely blue ether, the glazed white summits of
Mont Blanc, or the Jungfrau, rising above the inter-
minable forests of Spruce Firs which clothe the bases
of the mountains ? "

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF NEEDLE-LEAF OF SPRUCE FIR.

HOLM OAK.

THE HOLM, OR EVERGREEN, OAK.

Qucr'cus 1'lex L.

Evergreen trees, so characteristic of the warm
and moist insular climates of Sub-tropical, or of
Warmer-Temperate latitudes, are at once recognised
as exceptional in our colder north; and the idea
of an Oak-tree is so closely associated in our
minds with boughs bare of leaves during the winter,
that we are apt to forget that a considerable num-
ber of species of this large genus retain their foliage
throughout the year. Among these are the Cork
Oak {Quercus Su'ber L.), the Kermes Oak (Q. coccif-
era L.), and the Green or Live Oak (Q. vi'rens
Ait.) ; but the only one that has been cultivated
to any extent, or that will grow freely throughout
the greater part of our island, is the Holm Oak
(Q. Ilex L).

Though the name " Holly -leaved " more pro-
perly belongs to a distinct but allied species, the
most prevalent form in Spain, Q. gramun'tia L.,
there can be little doubt that Q. Ilex derives-
its popular name of Holm Oak from the resem-
blance which its dark leathery leaves bear to those
of our native evergreen, the name of which was
often written Holm instead of Holly, and not, as
has been suogested, from its flourishins: on holms
or islands in rivers.

It is a native of Southern Asia, from Cochin-

54 113

114 FAMILIAR TREES

China westward, North Africa, and the South of
Europe, occurring wild as far north as Nantes,
and growing at an altitude of 3,200 feet on the
slopes of Etna, Even in its native countries it
seems to have but little power of ousting other
vegetation, so that it seldom forms forests ; but
both where it is indigenous, and with us, it thrives
remarkably close to the sea-shore, where no other
European Oak will flourish. Considering, therefore,
its dense foliage, its evergreen character, and its
value as timber, this tree might certainly with
advantage be more extensively planted as a screen
in such situations. A winter of exceptional severity
may cause it to lose its leaves, but is seldom fatal
to it.

As the trunk is generally furnished with
branches down to the ground, the Holm Oak has,
even when of large size, the appearance of a
gigantic bush or shrub, rather than that of a
timber tree ; but when pruned, or drawn up by
being planted with other trees, it may form a
straight trunk, and reach a height of fifty, sixty,
seventy, and even eighty feet and more, with a
circumference which, though generally not more
than from two to six feet, has reached eleven and
even twenty-two feet. Its growth is rapid at
first, reaching twenty or thirty feet in from
twelve to fifteen years ; but afterwards it in-
creases much more slowly, seldom exceeding
fifty feet of height when as many years of
age, though a tree at Crooine, in Worcestershire,
is recorded by Loudon as being seventy feet high

THE HOLM OAK 115

when eighty years old. It is, no doubt, to this
slow growth that the brown heart-wood of this
species owes its close texture, hardness, and high
specific gravity, weighing, as it does, as much as
seventy pounds per cubic foot. As our photo-
micrograph shows, the evergreen character and
slow growth of this species are represented in its
wood in its greater density and in the uniformly
distributed vessels.

Though we cannot altogether believe the stories
of its longevity told by Pliny, there can be no
doubt that this tree, which, under the name of
Ilex, is so commonly referred to by Virgil and
Horace, does live to a great age. Pliny would
have us believe that in his time — in the first
century, that is, of our era— a Holm Oak was
still in existence on the Vatican, in the trunk of
which Etruscan letters of brass were inlaid, indi-
cating that the tree was older than Rome itself;
whilst three other specimens were still growing
at Tibur which were in existence when Tiburtus
founded that city, ages even before the foundation
of Rome !

The Ilex seems, from the reference made to it
by Gerard and Clusius, to have been introduced
into this country about the middle of the six-
teenth century, the oldest specimens in England
being probably those at Wollaton Hall, Notts, one
of which has a circumference of over fifteen feet.
Other examples are those at Harefield Place,
said to have been planted at the suggestion of
Evelyn ; that at Fulham Palace, nearly two hundred

116

FAMILIAR TREES

years old, close on fifty feet high and four feet in
diameter; and those at Mamhead, Devonshire, one
of which is eighty-five feet high and eleven feet
in the circumference of its trunk; whilst another,
only fifty-five feet high, has the extreme girth of
twenty-two feet. There are also excellent specimens
of this species at Kew and at Windsor, under
one of the latter of which her Majesty Queen
Victoria was very fond of breakfasting.

The leaves vary considerably in outline in seed-
ling varieties, in one of which, known as latifolia,
they are no less than five inches long and nearly
three in breadth, though generally not half these
dimensions. They are mostly of an ovate-oblong
form, with an acute point and an unnotched
margin ; but they are sometimes serrate, irregularly
toothed, like the Holly, or crisped or wrinkled at
the edge. Of a very dark glossy green on their
upper surfaces, they are more or less hoary be-
neath ; but their stiff leathery consistency prevents
them from turning lightly in the breeze, so that
it must be admitted that the tree is sombre in
its general effect. Unfortunately, too, almost every
leaf is discoloured by the attacks of the larva of
the moth LithocoU'etis messaniel'la, which causes
them to drop off somewhat prematurely. Their
perfectly smooth surface, and often inrolled edges,
give the leaves, however, a lustrous appearance,
and it is remarkable that when any of them are
spinous, it is, as in the Holly, those nearest the
ground that are so.

The tree flowers in May, the male flowers being

FLOWERS AND LEAVES OF HOLM OAK.

THE HOLM OAK 117

in catkins, springing from the axils of the leaves
of the previous year towards the apex of the branch,
whilst the female blossoms, varying from four to
eight in number, are on a stalk arising from the
axils of leaves of the same year, and, of course,
still nearer to the apex of the branch. The cat-
kins of male flowers are about an inch and a half
long, each flower consisting of a cup-shaped calyx
and six stamens, furnished with long stalks, or
"filaments," to the pollen-bearing anthers. The
stalk, or " peduncle," of the female flowers is
between one and two inches long, and they are
scattered along it with a " sessile," or unstalked,
insertion. The acorns which succeed them do not
ripen until the autumn of the second year, only
one or two coming to maturity on each peduncle.
They are generally rather long, oval, and smooth,
being enclosed for a third, or even half, of their
length in cups made up of numerous narrow
downy scales, which closely overlap one another.
The acorns are generally bitter, and this is said
to be particularly the case with specimens of this
Oak grown in cold, damp situations. On the other
hand — though perhaps never as sweet as those of
the Spanish Holly-leaved Oak (Q. gramuntia L.),
which are compared to the best chestnuts and are
said to have fattened the tunny-fish as they passed
into the Mediterranean by the once Oak-clad shores
of Andalusia— some trees of the Holm Oak produce
both sweet and bitter acorns, and there is never
any recognisable external difference.

The Ilex is propagated entirely from seed, no

118 FAMILIAR TREES

tree, it is said, being more difficult to transplant ;
so that it is best to plant the acorns where it is
wished to have the trees ; failing which, they can
be raised in. pots. The difficulty arises from the
long tap-roots, which, in suitable soil, will descend
to a very great depth, altogether disproportionate
to the height of the trunk, sending out no more
lateral branches or fibres than a carrot. As the
tree is peculiarly intolerant of cold wet subsoil,
it will accordingly thrive best in a deep loam,
which should be sandy or calcareous, rather than
clayey. If, however, in the nursery-garden young-
plants are grown in a stiffish soil, and trans-
planted every other year, they can be compelled
to throw out lateral roots, though they will not
make the same rapid growth of stem as in
warmer and drier soil. The acorns sown in England
are generally imported, although in favourable
seasons they may be well matured and ripened
in this country.

The bark is black, thin, hard, and even, or
slightly cracked on old stems, but never corky. It
contains, like our common Oaks, a considerable
quantity of tannin, and could be, but seldom is,
used in that remarkable chemical process of the
tanyard with which man seems to have been
empirically acquainted from a remote antiquity.

The sap-wood is whitish ; but the heart is, as
has been already stated, very close-grained, hard,
and heavy, and of a brown colour. It is sus-
ceptible of a fine polish ; but like most other hard
and heavy woods, it is very liable to twist and

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF WOOD OF HOLM OAK (X 20 DIAMETERS).

THE HOLM OAK 119

split whilst drying. It is, however, very durable
and of considerable flexibility, so that it is in use
in Languedoc for the handles of hatchets and other
tools. Evelyn, who was a great admirer of this
species, and an advocate for the more extensive
planting of it in England, recommends it also for
" mallet-heads, mall-balls, chairs, axle-trees, wedges,
beetles, pins, and palisadoes in fortification," and
it has been suggested for naval architecture, its
weight rendering it suitable for use in the bottoms
of ships, whilst its great strength makes it pos-
sible to use it in smaller scantlings than Common
Oak. In Spain it is used for charcoal, which
it yields of excellent quality ; and there can be
no doubt as to its great value for planting near
the sea-coast to screen other trees, which are in
general so far less able to bear the sea-breeze.
With the trees planted close together in a row in
■such a situation, a warm and handsome heclo-e
could be grown to a height of forty or fifty feet
in even a less number of years. Few things,
perhaps, are more striking to the eye of the
thoughtful observer of plant-life than the exuber-
ance of this and other evergreens in proximity to
the sea. The Holm is also said, owing to its com-
pactly rounded outline and tough and solid wood,
to be less liable to injury by wind or lightning
than any other species of Oak. However this
may be as regards wind, it is not improbable
with reference to lightning, though, perhaps, for
a reason not generally recognised — its possession,
in fact, of a perennial covering of pointed leaves.

120 FAMILIAR TREES

It lias been observed that winter thunderstorms
are more destructive to trees than those in
summer ; that Oaks overgrown with Ivy are seldom
struck ; and that perhaps trees with rounded leaves
are more liable to injury from this cause than
those whose leaves are pointed. The leaves, it is
suggested, act as a myriad of discharging points
for the atmospheric electricity ; in which case, of
course, evergreens would have a decided advantage.
When, however, we consider the landscape effect
of an exclusively evergreen tree-flora, it must be
admitted that the uniform dark tints of its peren-
nial verdure are apt to pall upon the senses.
Evergreen leaves are almost invariably thicker than
those of deciduous plants, and besides having
occasionally an epidermis of more than the usual
single layer of colourless cells, they have com-
monly a " hypoderm," or sub-epidermal tissue, also
consisting of more than the usual number of
layers of cells, which being, as they are, in a
vertical position, and filled with " chlorophyll," or
" leaf-green," give the leaf its characteristically
dark tint, absorbing far more light than the
transparently thin and pale-hued foliage of our
northern forests. Beneath the gloom of the Hex
"it is always afternoon," and the heart of the
traveller turns to the restful green of northern
pastures, and even to the bare boughs of winter
that tell of Nature's rest.

f*5*NJT

BOX.

<
<

«

THE BOX

Bux'us scmpervi'rens L.

Reckless destruction of both the commoner and the
more valuable kinds of timber trees has been, and
is, only too frequent in all parts of the world. In
not a few cases its effects are already being experi-
enced in an insufficient supply of wood either for
general use or for some special purposes. Before the
introduction of such substitutes for wood-engraving
as zincographs and collotypes, the carelessness as to
the Caucasian forests of Box excited apprehensions
among the consumers, and stimulated inquiry as to
suitable substitutes for this material.

The Box (Buxus sempervirens L.) is a member of
the large and mostly acridly poisonous Order Euphor-
bia'cece, an Order in which the flowers are usually
small and inconspicuous, destitute of a corolla, and
sometimes of a calyx also, and having the sexes
divided. The genus Buxus, of which our British
species is the best known representative, includes
fewer than twenty species of evergreen shrubs, or
small trees. Their juice is not milky, like that of
the allied Spurges (Euphorbia); their leaves are
either opposite or alternate, leathery and glossy ;
and the two sexes are borne on the same plant
in greenish yellow flowers. They have a wide dis-
tribution through the Warmer-Temperate zones.

Our native species (B. sempervirens L.) occurs in
55 121

122 FAMILIAR TREES

Japan, in the Western Himalayas, in Northern and
Western Asia, in North Africa, and as far north
as Belgium and this country, where, as we shall see
presently, there is considerable reason to believe it
to be either indigenous, or a denizen the introduc-
tion of which dates from a very early period. In a
Avild state in this country it is seldom more than
twelve or fifteen feet high, or, when fully grown,
more than six or eight inches in diameter ; but in
Turkey and Asia Minor, and even in the Jardin
des Plantes at Paris, trees thirty feet high and ten
inches in diameter are recorded. Such specimens
must, however, be at least 100 years old, as the
Box is a very slow -growing plant, rarely making
shoots of more than six or eight inches height
within the year, and not increasing in diameter
more than an inch in ten years. The tree is not
only apparently of great longevity, but is so
hardy as to be the only evergreen that can with-
stand the continental cold of the open air of Paris,
Berlin, and Vienna without protection.

The young branches, which have generally an
upward direction, are downy and have a smooth,
yellowish bark ; but the older trunks are rough and
grey. The twigs are four-angled, and the buds very
small. The leaves vary from " ovate " to " oblong,"
i.e. they may be wider across the lower third of their
length, or may have parallel sides ; they have very
short stalks, edged with two lines of minute hairs ;
they vary in length from half an inch to an inch;
their points are rounded or slightly notched ; and
their colour depends considerably on their age and

THE BOX 123

position. When young they are of a bright grass-
green colour, to which the Box owes the epithets of
"greener" and "youthful," as compared to the Holly,
in Herrick's verses on " Ceremonies for Candlemas
Eve." This brightness also renders it acceptable,
as Herrick's rhymes tell us, for house and church
decorations between Candlemas and Easter. When
produced in the shade, however, or when grown
older, the leaves are of a very dark shade of green,
which gives groves of this tree an effect as sombre
as that of the Yew itself.

The minute pale-coloured florets appear in April
or May, forming crowded spikelets of sessile blossoms
in the axils of the leaves. In each spike the lower
flowers are staminate, the upper ones pistillate. In
addition to minute bracts, each flower is surrounded
by a calyx, which in the staminate flowers consists
of two alternating pairs of sepals, and in the pistil-
late flowers of a larger number, commonly six, nine,
or twelve, in alternating whorls of three. Similarly,
while one kind ol flower contains two pairs of stamens
and a rudimentary ovary, the other kind has three
carpels, united below into a three- chambered ovary,
but with distinct spreading styles. The filaments of
the stamens are comparatively long, so that pollen
is very* probably carried from the extruded anthers
by the wind. The ovary ripens into a dry capsule,
about half an inch long, surmounted by the horn-like
remains of the three styles ; and, when mature, this
capsule splits explosively into three valves, each
formed of two adherent half-carpels, so that each of
the stylar horns splits longitudinally. There are two

124 FAMILIAR TREES

black seeds in each chamber of the ovary, which are
hurled to some little distance.

The largest numbers of wild Box trees in Europe
occur in France, in the Forest of Lign}^ at St.
Claude in the Jura, and in the Pyrenees ; but in
these localities it is more mixed with deciduous
trees than is the case where it occurs in England.
A large proportion of the Boxwood of commerce,
shipped from Odessa and Constantinople, is the
produce of a distinct species, B. balea'rica Willd.,
a native of Minorca, Sardinia, Corsica, Turkey, and
Asia Minor, first introduced into England in 1708,
which grows in its native countries to a height
of as much as eighty feet.

A great deal has been written as to the claim of
the Box to rank as an indigenous tree in England.
Judging from such place-names as Boxley, Boxmoor,
etc., it would seem to have been at one time more
abundant than now, and at least of very early intro-
duction. These names, of which the last-mentioned,
in Hertfordshire, may be merely a corruption of Bogs-
moor, all belong to places on the chalk or limestone
hills of southern England, and there is nothing in the
continental distribution of the plant altogether fatal
to its being native here. But, as in the case of Sir-
Roger de Coverley and the Saracen's Head, much
may be said on both sides. More than a century ago
the Hon. Daines Barrington laid down a threefold
test of the truly indigenous character of any species
of tree : that such trees grow in large masses, and
spread over a considerable breadth of surface ; that
such masses never end abruptly, except where there

FLOWERS. FRUIT, AND LEAVES OF BOX.

THE BOX 125

is a sudden change in the soil or the substratum 5
that the trees ripen readily their seeds, which,
when dropped, spring up freely. Tried by these
tests he decided the Chestnut, Lime, Common Elm,
and Box to be introduced species, whilst he con-
sidered the Sycamore, White Poplar, Yew, Spindle-
tree, and Privet to be only doubtfully native. " The
Box," he says, "is not mentioned by Gerard, and . . .
is found nowhere in an apparently wild state, except
on Box Hill, where it was planted by Lord Arundel,
who designed to build a house there, but who relin-
quished his intention from the want of water."

In opposition to these arguments it may be urged
that some trees, such as the Lime, Spindle-tree, and
Yew, even in countries where they are undoubtedly
indigenous, seldom occur in large masses ; whilst the
annual ripening of fertile seed would very probably
cease near the margin of the geographical range of
a species. As to the Box, it is mentioned both by
Gerard and by Turner. The former speaks of it as
growing " upon sundry waste and barren hills in
Englande," but the latter, who, however, was not
very familiar with our south-eastern counties, says
that " it groweth on the mountains in Germany
plentifully, wild, without any setting ; but in Eng-
land it groweth not by itself in any place that I
know, though there is much of it in England."

Parkinson (1640) writes that it is found in many
woods ; but a still earlier writer, Lambarde, whose
" Perambulations of Kent " in 1570 were published in
1576, is a more important witness, and one whose
evidence cannot be held to be gainsaid by the fact

126 FAMILIAR TREES

that a correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine,
200 years later (vol. lvii., 1787), " was thoroughly
convinced, from the strictest inquiries." that the Box
was not wild at Boxley, in Kent. Ray says :

" The Box grows wild on Box Hill, hence the name ; also at
Boxwell, on the Cotswold in Gloucestershire, and at Boxley in Kent,
where there were woods of tbis tree, according to Aubrey. It grows,
plentifully on the chalk hills near Dunstable."

As to Box Hill, the most conclusive evidence has
been brought forward of late years. Not only did this
land never belong to the Earl of Arundel, who died in
1646 ; but the names of Adam de Buxeto and Henry
de Buxeto occur as witnesses to charters in connection
with this neighbourhood as early as the reigns of John
and Henry III. In 1602 the owner, Sir Matthew
Brown, leased a warren and its lodge, which were then
at that place, to Thomas Constable, the tenant cove-
nanting to preserve the Yew, Box, and all other trees
growing thereupon, and deliver a half-yearly account
of what shall be sold. Accordingly, in 1608, we get a
return, showing £50 worth of Box trees to have been
cut in that year. During a few years preceding 1712
trees were felled to the value of £3,000, and in 1815
the lord of the manor, Sir H. P. St. John Mildmay,
sold all the Box upon the hill of more than twenty
years' growth for £10,000.

De Candolle points out that the name of the tree,
which at first sight appears so indubitably of Latin
origin, has its analogues not only in Slavonic but also
in Keltic and even Tartar languages. The Greek
Pyxos, Latin Buxus, French Buis, and German Bucks,
are at least traceable in the Illyrian Bus, the Breton

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Photo : H. Irving, Horley.

BOX TREES.

107

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF BOX WOOD (X 30 DIAMETERS).

THE BOX 127

Beuz, the Calmuck Boschton, and the Georgian Bsa;
so that the Box may have been carried westward with
the earliest migrations of the Indo-European races,
or have been found indigenous by them and given
a name previously used by their common ancestors.

On the other hand, the Box does not occur in the
Channel Islands or in Ireland, whilst in Holland,
Belgium, and the North of France it grows mainly in
hedgerows and in the immediate neighbourhood of cul-
tivation. Its introduction at a date which is at least
remote would seem to be indicated by the fact that a
sprig of Box forms the badge of the clan MTntosh and
one of its variegated form that of the M'Phersons.

The Romans employed the Box both when grow-
ing for " topiary " work, and as timber. Both Pliny
and Vitruvius allude to the clipping of the shrub
into hedges ornamented with the figures of animals,
whilst Virgil and Ovid refer also to the use of
its wood for musical instruments, employing the
word Buxus as meaning a flute. It may, therefore,
well be to the Romans that we owe the introduction
of the tree into England. Sprigs of Box have,
indeed, been found among the Roman remains at
Silchester.

The wood is remarkably heavy, being the only
European timber that will sink in water ; it is yellow,
very hard, compact, and even-grained, so as to be sus-
ceptible of a tine polish, neither annual rings, pith-
rays, nor vessels being easily seen in it. It is, as
Dryden describes it, translating Virgil —

" Smooth-grained, and proper for the turner's tracle,
Which curious hands may carve, and steel with ease invade."

128 FAMILIAR TREES

It is still employed, both here and on the Conti-
nent, for a variety of purposes besides wood-engraving,
for which art, however, the finest quality of Boxwood
is mainly reserved. It is used in inlaying, for
mathematical instruments, especially foot-rules, for
weaving-shuttles, and other turned articles. Some
of these, however, are made at St. Claude, not from
the stem but from the root, the wood of which is
often beautifully veined.

The art of wood-engraving is older than that of
printing, the old block-books, such as the " Biblia
Pauperum " of the first half of the fifteenth century,
being engraved on a series of large blocks. It wras,
however, only from the time of Bewick that wood-
enoraving became general as a means of book-illus-
tration ; and the introduction of the many photo-
graphic and electro typic processes now in vogue has
afforded a partial solution of the difficulty as to the
supply of Boxwood in the future. Some Boxwood
can, undoubtedly, be procured from India and the
Cape ; and of the various substitutes suggested,
whilst our own Hawthorn seems the best, Pear,
the American Dogwood (Cor'nus flor'ida), the Texas,
Ebony {Diospy'ros texa'na), and the West Indian
Trumpet-flower or Jamaica Box (Teco'ma penta-
phyl'la), all promise to prove useful.

■

ACACIA.

THE ACACIA.

SoMn'ia Pseudaca'cia L.

Few exotic trees have been so much discussed, or
have undergone such vicissitudes of popularity and
neglect, as has the species which is now commonly
known in England as the Acacia (Robinia Pseud-
acacia L.).

Originally a native of North America, its seed is
said to have been first introduced into Europe either
in 1601, by Jean Robin, herbalist to Henri IV., whose
" Histoire des Plantes " was published in 1620, or by
his son Vespasian, who grew it in the Jardin des
Plantes in 1635. A tree planted at this latter date
was alive in 1840, and was then 75 feet in height.
Parkinson, in his " Theatrum Bo.tanicuin " (1640),
speaks of it as grown " to an exceeding height " by
the elder Tradescant at Lambeth, he having possibly
received it direct from Virginia, through his son.
This tree was still standing when Sir William Watson
examined the remains of Tradescant's garden in 1749.
Evelyn, in his " Sylva " (1604), recommends it as
" deserving a place among our avenue trees, adorning
our walks with its exotic leaves and sweet flowers ;
very hardy against the pinching winter ; but, by
reason of its brittle nature, it does not well resist . . .
our high winds ; and the roots, which insinuate and
run like liquorice under ground, are apt to emaciate
the soil, and, therefore, haply not so commendable in
56 129 <

130 FAMILIAR TREES

our gardens as they would be agreeable for variety
of walks and shade. They thrive well in His Majesty's
new plantation in St. James's Park." These particular
trees were, however, felled before the year 1712. John
Ray, the contemporary of Evelyn, mentions the species
as growing in Bishop Compton's garden at Fulham,
where a wreck of an old tree still remains ; whilst by
1731, as recorded by Philip Miller in his "Gardener's
Dictionary," it had become common, and was known
as ripening seed in this country.

It had long been valued as a timber tree in the
United States, and in Virginia and New England
was used for trenails in shipbuilding, being hard,
strong, inelastic, and durable. Much attention was
directed to it in Europe for this and other purposes
in 1762, in 1786, and at subsequent dates. It was
described as suitable for axletrees, cogs, or wedges,
as being a good fuel, and even as capable of cultiva-
tion as green forage for cattle ; and in 1791 a Mr.
Ebenezer Jessup proposed in the Gentleman's Maga-
zine that 10,000 acres in the New Forest and Forest
of Dean should be planted with this tree for the pur-
poses of the navy, stating that he knew posts made
of its wood to last from 80 to 100 }'ears. In 1819,
from 50,000 to 100,000 trenails of the wood were
imported from America.

William Cobbett, while farming on Long Island,
between 1817 and 1819, was struck with its utility,
and on his return to England brought home some
of the seed, which, from 1823, he cultivated on an
enormous scale at Kensington and Barnes. He wrote
of the tree in terms of the most extravagant eulogy ?

THE ACACIA 131

styling it the " tree of trees," and prophesying that it
was destined speedily to replace most of the hard-
wood trees in cultivation, and that " the time would
come when the Locust-tree would be more common
in England than the Oak." Ignoring the fact that the
Robinia was already well known in England under
the name " Acacia," not only to botanists but also
to nurserymen, he popularised the American name
" Locust," and obtained so large a sale for it, though
at a price more than six times its ordinary market
value, that he not only imported the seed by tons,
but even bought up plants raised from English seed
to sell again at fancy prices.

Confused in the 17th century with the Acacias
of Egypt and Arabia, which it resembles mainly in
foliage and fruit, and by the American colonists
with the Carob-bean, Locust, or St. John's-bread, of
South Europe (Cerato'nia Si'liqua L.), whence its
French name, " Carouge des Americains," this tree
was named by Linnaeus after its introducer, and in
reference to this confusion, Robinia Pseudacacia,
the Robinia, or False Acacia.

All three trees belong to the great Family Legu-
minosce, the Pea and Bean tribe ; but the Pea-shaped
blossoms of the Robinia, which are generally white,
as distinguished from the small, many-stamened,
yellow, bottle-brushlike flowers of the true Acacia,
have given to the former the popular names of
White Acacia, or "Acacia blanc," White Laburnum,
and Silver Chain. We are, however, quite unable
to explain the name Whya-tree, which is recorded
as applied to this species in East Yorkshire.

132 FAMILIAR TREES

Robinia is allied to the Restharrows (Ononis),
and to the Brooms and Laburnums (Cy'tisus), belong-
ing with them to the Section Lo'tece of the Sub-order
Papiliona'cece.

The genus Robinia is distinguished by its pods
being flat and furnished with a projecting flange ex-
ternally along that margin to which the seeds are
attached internally — the margin termed " ventral " —
and also by its leaves being made up of several pairs
of leaflets with an odd terminal one. The distinctive
characteristics of the species known as the False
Acacia are its scented flowers, generally white, and
hanging in a loose raceme or cluster, like that of
the Laburnum, the egg-shaped leaflets, and the pair
ot spines at the base of each leaf representing the
"stipules." These appendages are very variable in
different plants, being often absent altogether or
but small and fugacious, represented by large leaf-
like structures as in the Pea, or performing the
entire function of the leaves, as in some Vetches.
In some of the true Acacias they are also thorns,
but are hollowed out so as to furnish lodgings for
tribes of ants, which protect the shrub from other
species of the same group of insects who would
despoil it of its leaves ; but the function of the
solid prickles in the False Acacia is not so obvious
— not, at least, when the tree is fully grown. From
these prickles and its pod-like fruits this species
derives its German name, " Schotendorn."

This tree can be raised either from seed, from
cuttings, or by grafting. It will grow in any soil that
is not too wet ; and is a quick-growing but short-lived

L

■

-4

4

V

MJM

FLOWERS AND LEAVES OF ACACIA.

THE ACACIA 133

plant ; but the quality of its timber undoubtedly
varies according to the character of the soil in which
it is grown. It may reach a height of seventy or
eighty feet, with a diameter of two, three, or, in
Kentucky, as much as four feet ; and even in the
neighbourhood of London it has been known to
forty feet within ten years, sometimes making shoots
reach eight or ten feet long in a single season.

The wood of the best varieties, when well grown,
is hard, strong, and durable, takes a good polish, and
is prettily veined with brown. The sapwood is very
narrow, comprising generally only five annual rings,
and of a yellowish white colour. The pith-rays are
very fine and far less distinct to the naked eye or.
under a low-power lens than they appear in the
photomicrograph. The vessels in the spring-wood
are very large and form a broad pore-circle, but, as
all of them are filled up with ingrowths, or " tyloses,"
as they are called, of thin-walled cells, they appear
as clear yellow spots on the dark wood. The small
vessels in the autumn-wTood are crowded together in
groups of as many as ten between two pith-rays, and
these groups being side by side produce " peripheral
lines," or pore-zones, parallel to the margins of the
rings.

Besides its use in shipbuilding and for agricultural
purposes, the wood is emplo}7ed in America for the sills
of doors and windows, for cabinet-work, and in the
making of toys. When quite dry it weighs forty-
eight pounds per cubic foot, being, in fact, heavier,
harder, stronger, tougher, more rigid, and more elastic
than English Oak. Speaking absolutely, however, it

134 FAMILIAR TREES

is an inelastic wood, to which quality, coupled with its
hardness, it owes its value for trenails. Acacia wood
is somewhat twisted in its growth, and liable to crack,
while the branches break off in a brittle, splintery
manner. It must, moreover, be noted that the good
qualities ascribed to this timber belong only to the
variety known in America as the Red Locust,

The species has a latitudinal range from Canada
to Carolina, and is very variable, especially when
grown from seed, no less than sixteen varieties being
described by Loudon. Some of these may be geo-
graphical races. Among them are one with yellow
flowers, three destitute of prickles, and others with the
leaves curled or with nearly erect or very pendu-
lous branches ; but the most important distinctions
are those based on the colour of the wood, which may
be only the result of differences in soil and climate.
Of these there are three varieties recognised in the
United States : the Red Locust, with red heart- wood,
the most beautiful and durable timber of the three ;
the Green Locust, with a greenish yellow centre, Avhich
is the commonest ; and the White Locust, which is
the least valuable. It is stated that a post made of
Red Locust will outlast two made of the White.

The bark remains smooth for ten or fifteen years,
but then becomes brown and longitudinally furrowed
— in old trees to a considerable depth, and forming a
definite pattern. The branches rise slightly when first
springing from the nearly cylindrical main stem, but
then spread out horizontally, giving off an abundance
of secondary branches, which take a similar direction.

The olive-brown twigs are somewhat pentagonal in

Photo : H. Iruing, Horley.

CACIA.

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF ACACIA WOOD (X 30 DIAMETERS).

THE ACACIA 135

section and bear no visible buds, for these are minute
and are covered, with the exception only of a small
opening above, by the enlarged and downy margins
of the base of the leaf-stalk. Thus hidden, they are
grouped together, from two to five, one above the other
in a single leaf-axil. Only the uppermost develops as
a rule, though others occasionally burst through the
leaf-scar lower down.

The leaves consist of from four to nine pairs of
shortly-stalked egg-shaped leaflets and a terminal one,
in all eight, nine, or twelve inches long, the individual
leaflets often exceeding an inch in length. Their late
appearance and early fall is one of the chief drawbacks
to the planting of the tree for ornamental purposes ;
but they have the countervailing advantage of being
so smooth that the least shower cleans them of what
little dirt can adhere to them, so that in the metro-
polis, or other large towns, they appear fresh and
verdant in July and August, when most other foliage
has become dull and soot-begrimed. The leaflets,
like those of so many of the Leguminosce, close at
night or in wet weather in what is termed " sleep,"
being then folded in a vertical plane, as when in
the bud, and hanging below their attachments.

It is not to be supposed that much folk-lore should
be associated with a tree of such recent introduction
into Europe as the Acacia ; but it is in connection
with its fragrant clusters of pure white blossoms that
this tree enters into the symbolism of the aborigines
of its native land. The North-American Indian
presents a blossoming branch of the Acacia to the
lady of his choice as a declaration of his love. In

136 FAMILIAR TREES

San Domingo an excellent liqueur is prepared from
the blossoms.

The flowers are succeeded by pods, about three
inches long, which ripen to a dark brown, and each
contains from five to six brownish black seeds, which
ripen readily in this country.

The tree has but few enemies here, though in
America its timber sometimes suffers considerably
from the ravages of a larva (Cos'sus robin 'ice) allied to
our own goat-moth. Hares and rabbits devour the
bark when young, and cattle are fond of the leaves,
which they manage to eat, when within reach, in
spite of the prickly stipules. The Acacia will not,
however, serve as a cover for game, being intolerant
either of shade or of the drip of other trees. Its
moist, quick-growing sap-wood and succulent foliage
have caused it to be strongly recommended for the
planting of railway embankments in forest areas, so
as to intercept the sparks before they can spread to
more inflammable timber-trees, such as the Firs. On
the Continent it is largely grown as a hedgerow
tree.

We have many fine specimens in England, es-
pecially at Syon House, Claremont, and Goodwood,
whilst Loudon mentions one at Niddrie Mareschal,
near Edinburgh, four feet in diameter at the base
of its stem.

Though it becomes straggling from a habit of
dying piecemeal when by no means an old tree, the
airy lightness of its sprays of pure green foliage
certainly renders the Acacia one of the most desirable
of our town trees.

LARCH.

THE LARCH.

La'rix europcc'a DC.

Though having no claim whatever to rank as in-

*»

digenous, the Larch has been far more extensively
cultivated in Scotland and the north of England
during the last hundred years than any other tree ;
and few trees are, therefore, more familiar to us at
the present day.

Though now so largely grown, it was described by
Parkinson, in 1629, as "rare, and nursed up with a
few, and those only lovers of variety." In Evelyn's
time it was still but seldom seen in cultivation ; and
even in 1731, Philip Miller, in his " Gardeners' Diction-
ary," can only say " this tree is now pretty common in
English gardens." The introduction of the Larch as
a forest or timber tree is undoubtedly due to James
and John, Dukes of Atholl, between 1727 and 1774.
The story goes that the first Larches brought to Scot-
land were sent to Duke James, at Dunkeld, in 1727,
from Italy, with some Orange-trees, and were accord-
ingly planted in a hot-house. Soon withering under
such treatment, they were thought to be dead, and
thrown on a rubbish-heap, where they speedily revived
and grew into strong trees. The planting operations
at Dunkeld and Blair Atholl were so perse veringly
carried out by Duke John, between 1774 and 1830,
as to cover nearly 10,000 acres with Larch planta-
tions, numbering over 14,000,000 trees ; whilst it

57 137

138 FAMILIAR TREES

was demonstrated not only that the Larch would
flourish in very poor soil, at an altitude of 1,800 feet,
in the Scottish Highlands, where the Pine will only
flourish up to 900 feet, but also that this species
does better in plantations by itself, and, when so
planted, has a marked effect in improving the char-
acter of the soil in which it grows. The example of
Scotland was soon followed in England and Wales ;
but it is found that in plains, or near the sea, though
it will make rapid growth for thirty years or more, its
timber is very liable to heart-rot. It seems to require
a clear and dry atmosphere, a moist surface soil, and
a moderately but habitually damp subsoil. It wants,
in fact, plenty of light and air, and will not grow on
stiff clay or in peat, nor form much wood Avhen
crowded together, as the trees are in our hop-pole
plantations in the South of England.

The Larch is essentially a mountain tree. It
abounds on the Alps up to an altitude of 5,000 feet,
and occurs on the Apennines and Carpathians, but is
unknown in a wild state on the Pyrenees, or in the
Spanish or Scandinavian peninsulas. It forms large
woods in Russia, but is represented in Northern Asia
by a variety (Larix sibi'rica) with smooth, grey bark,
sometimes considered a distinct species.

Though it grows well on a limestone subsoil, it
is on sloping mountain sides that the Larch is seen
in its greatest beauty. The regularly- tapering stem,
with its scaly, reddish grey bark, so prone to be-
come covered with the shaggy tufts of hoary lichen,
then loses its stiff, erect posture.

The genus Larix, to which the Larch (L.

THE LARCH 139

europcea) belongs, is distinguished among Firs by its
deciduous foliage, and the whole joyousness of spring-
seems epitomised in the emerald glory of its April
frondescence. The light-green needles appear in
tufts, as they do also in the evergreen Cedars, upon
the old wood of the slender branches, surrounding
the extremities of "dwarf shoots," which gradually
lengthen out until, as on the youngest shoots, each
needle stands alone as one of a spiral series.
The catkins soon follow the leaves,

" When rosy plumelets tuft the Larch,"

in April or May, the yellow male flowers being in
nearly spherical clusters, whilst the female ones form
the said " rosy plumelets." These young cones are
sometimes greenish white ; but the red or purple-
coloured ones are said to belong to varieties yielding
better timber. The scales of these cones, after fertil-
isation, become reddish brown in hue, and the cones
lengthen to more than an inch, with an egg-shaped
outline, before these scales spread outwards to dis-
charge their winded seeds in autumn. The cones
stand erect upon a short, but strong, bent foot-stalk
or peduncle, and often remain for years upon the
branches after having discharged their seeds, be-
coming then of a dead grey colour. The small
ovate seed is more than half surrounded by the
broad membranous wing, which often causes it to
be carried some distance by the wind, this tree ripen-
ing its seed and sowing itself in this country as
freely as does the Scots Fir.

In favourable situations the Larch grows to a

110 FAMILIAR TREES

height ot from eighty to upwards of a hundred feet,
and has been known to reach 140 feet, with a dia-
meter of from three to five feet; and it is stated
sometimes to exceed eighty feet in height in fifty
years, and to live to an age of from 150 to 200 years.
Unlike the Spruce and many other Firs, its growth
is rapid from the first, reaching fifteen or twenty
feet within twelve years of its being sown, whilst for
the first forty or fifty years of its life its average
annual increase in girth in Scotland is stated to be
from an inch to an inch and a half.

The Larch was not apparently known to the
Greeks ; but, being abundant on the Apennines, is often
referred to by Pliny, who speaks of the incorruptible
and incombustible nature of its timber. Csesar, too,
terms it " robusta larix, igni impenetrable lignum,"
the fact being that its wood does kindle slowly,
instead of blazing up like Pine. The woody fibres
being closely interwoven, Larch timber cannot be
readily split in a straight line, and, when properly
seasoned, is so hard as to be difficult to work. It is,
however, difficult to season ; and accordingly, in thin
boards, though not liable to crack or to shrink to any
great extent, is very prone to warp or twist — a fact
which renders it more suitable for use either " in the
round " or when merely squared. The heart-wood is
reddish brown when grown in a cold situation, and
very light in weight, weighing when dry about thirty-
six pounds per cubic foot ; but the wood of the richer
soils of lowland forests is often of a yellowish white.
Owino' to the small size of the lateral branches the
wood is comparatively free from knots, and those

MALE FLOWERS, CONES, AND LEAVES OF LARCH.

THE LARCH 141

which occur do not rot or become loose. No wood
remains longer uninjured by water, so that it was
once largely used on the Continent for water-pipes ;
and when the bark is left on. it is extremely dura-
ble, both above and under ground, and therefore
suited for use for posts, vine-props, and hop-poles,
For these purposes it is planted close, so that the
trunks are drawn up in a long and slender form.
The closeness of the grain, moreover, renders Larch
timber but little liable to splintering, which adapts
it for the superstructures of warships.

Though the bark is of use for tanning, it is inferior
to Oak, so that it is not remunerative to sacrifice anv
of the value of the timber by felling the trees, for the
sake of the bark, at an unsuitable season.

Its leaves, though they come at a season when
grass is generally plentiful, are eaten by sheep and
cattle in Switzerland ; and valuable charcoal can be
made from the branches. But next to its timber, the
most important product of the Larch is undoubtedly
Venice turpentine. This is collected in the Valais and
Briancon, by tapping fully-grown trees, when the
resinous spring sap begins to flow. Holes slanting
upwards are then bored with an auger into the trees
and fitted with wooden tubes, through which the tur-
pentine distils from May to September, a full-grown
and healthy Larch yielding, if tapped when at the
proper age, from seven to eight pounds of turpentine
annually for forty or fifty years. This turpentine
takes the name of Venice from being shipped from that
port. The wood from which the turpentine has been
thus extracted is of no value except as firewood ; but

142 FAMILIAR TREES

from the Alpine valleys, where the drooping Larch
branches have, it is suggested, determined the angle
of the low roofs of the chalets, Venice has derived not
only turpentine, but also the piles. upon which the city
is built — a strong testimony to the durability of Larch
timber under the most destructive conditions.

The Larch is generally raised from seed, that grown
in Germany being preferred, since with us the cones
are often incompletely ripened. The seedlings are
transplanted when two or three years old, and their
rapid growth, the utility of the thinnings at all ages
and the great value of the mature timber, especially
in shipbuilding, caused the Larch, though practically
it has only been in cultivation for a century, to be
generally recognised, until it proved liable to canker,
as affording a safer, greater, and more rapid return
to capital than any other tree grown in Britain.

Though admirably suited, from its rapid growth
and absence of large lateral branches (which might do
damage in windy weather), to be used as a " nurse "
in Oak or other hard-wood plantations, one of the
specially valuable features in the Larch is its suit-
ability for growth at high altitudes in barren soils,
and its power of improving these soils. The soft
needles annually deposited decompose into a soil
that soon reaches a considerable depth, and when
light is- readmitted by thinning this soil will grow
valuable pasture grasses.

Probably neither Gilpin nor Wordsworth had seen
the Larch in England under the most favourable cir-
cumstances, and it must be admitted that it har-
monises but little with other trees, and is inevitably

-w

ft

-'?.'.■;

P/iofo : H. Irving, Horley.

LARCH.

111

■

fmrnmhcM

■

R

f

f: |

EM 11 tf-fc

ffl HH

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ilK [j\ 'ft •

iiLi »i«fffeiwf

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF LARCH WOOD (X 30 DIAMETERS)

THE LARCH 143

monotonous in plantations. Still, the indictment
drawn up by Wordsworth, in his " Description of the
Scenery of the Lakes," is severe. " It must be
acknowledged," he says, " that the Larch, till it has
outgrown the size of a shrub, shows, when looked at
singly, some elegance in form and appearance, es-
pecially in spring, decorated as it then is by the pink
tassels of its blossoms ; but, as a tree, it is less than
any other pleasing. Its branches (for boughs it has
none) have no variety in the youth of the tree, and
little dignity even when it attains its full growth.
Leaves it cannot be said to have ; and, consequently,
it affords neither shade nor shelter. In spring, the
Larch becomes green long before the native trees ; and
its green is so peculiar and vivid, that, finding nothing
to harmonise with it, wherever it comes forth a disa-
greeable spot is produced. In summer, when all other
trees are in their pride, it is of a dingy, lifeless hue ;
in autumn, of a spiritless, unvaried yellow ; and, in
winter, it is still more lamentably distinguished
from every other deciduous tree of the forest ; for
they seem only to sleep, but the Larch appears
absoltely dead."

Wordsworth's want of appreciation of this species
may have been partly due to its unfamiliarity to his
childhood, and but few of his objections would apply
to the Larch as it appears in its native mountains —
as, for instance, in the Tyrol — where the trees often
stand apart, but with no other species to contrast
with them, inclined at every angle, and often damaged
by storm or avalanche, so as to show no absolute
geometrical regularity of outline. To other tastes,

144

FAMILIAR TREES

however, even in England, the slightly curved needles,
spreading with feathery gracefulness from the droop-
ing but upturning branchlets, seem as beautiful an
object as any in our spring woodlands, and we should
nowadays be loath indeed to be without the rosy
young cones.

TRANSVERSE SECTION OF NEEDLE-LEAF OF LARCH.

WEEPING WILLOW

THE WEEPING WILLOW.

Sa'lix babylvn'ica L.

Though of comparatively recent introduction, there
is no Willow so popular and familiar, from its ex-
ceptional form and beauty, as the Babylonian or
"Weeping" species (Salix babylonica L.). It is an
interesting- physiological fact that, though the first
Weeping Willows introduced into this country, and
also the original trees over the tomb of Napoleon
at St. Helena, were female, cuttings from those trees
have occasionally borne male catkins. In the genus
as a whole, the number of stamens, as we have seen,
is variable ; but in the Weeping Willow, as in many
other species, there are two in the axil of each scale
of the male, or " golden palm " catkin, which, how-
ever, is little known in this case.

The Weeping Willow proper seems to be a native
of extra- tropical Asia, from Japan and China to
Armenia and the banks of the Euphrates, and of
Egypt and North Africa ; but pendulous varieties
of other species are also known in cultivation.

Though some kinds of Willow inhabit the barren
tops of Alpine mountains, or the equally barren
plains of Arctic latitudes, the Weeping Willow agrees
with the majority of its genus in frequenting the
water-side, or at least some situation where its roots
can obtain a good supply of moisture. In such spots
it may attain a height of forty or fifty feet in as many

58 145

!46 FAMILIAR TREES

years, with a diameter of two or three feet. In
addition to many fine young trees on the banks of
the Thames and in other parts of Britain, slightly
exceeding these dimensions, one seventy years old
is recorded at Finborough Hall, Suffolk, as being,
in 1838, seventy feet high and three and a half feet
in diameter, with a head fifty-four feet across.

The Weeping Willow is a member of the group
known as Crack Willows, from the brittleness of
the twigs at the joints. These belong to the
section of the genus known as Vitisa'lix, character-
ised by producing their leaves and flowers simul-
taneously; by their flower-stalks bearing fully
developed leaves; by their catkin-scales being of a
uniform generally pale, colour ; by the filaments of
their stamens being perfectly free from one another
and hairy on the lower part, while the capsules are
free from hairs ; and by their leaves being " con-
volute "—i.e. rolled together in the bud, like a scroll
of paper, with one free edge. Considering that we
have between ninety and a hundred distinct kinds of
Willow in this country alone, the above apparently
elaborate description of one of the three main
divisions of the genus is not mere technical refine-
ment. The section Vitisalix contains three series,
distinguished by having five, three, or two stamens
respectively to each flower ; and the last of these three
series, to which, as has been implied, the Weeping
Willow belongs, contains two minor groups, the Al'bos,
or White Willows, and the Frag'iles, or Crack Wil-
lows. The White Willows have minute stipules,
" ovate-lanceolate " in form, capsules almost stalkless,

THE WEEPING WILLOW 147

and stigmas not only forked but recurved. The
Crack Willows, on the other hand, have good-sized
" semi - cordate " stipules, stalked capsules, and
merely forked stigmas.

The species in the last-mentioned group are dis-
tinguished from one another by the colour of the young
shoots and the forms of the leaves. The shoots of the
Weeping Willow are pale green, very slender, and
with a slight twist at the point of origin of each leaf,
being, of course, also distinguished by their droop-
ing habit of growth. The leaves are technically
termed " lanceolate - acuminate," being some five
inches long and only an inch across, tapering to a
point, with a finely serrated edge, smooth above, and
with a grey bloom on their under surfaces. The
leaf-stalk is short and hairy on its upper surface and
has at its base two minute, lanceolate, finely serrated
stipules, which, however, fall off early. The veining
of the leaf is practically identical with that of the
Crack Willow (S. fragilis L.). From the midrib, the
one prominent vein, a number of fine secondary veins
proceed pinnately, alternately from either side, and
sometimes reaching as many as twenty on each side,
at acute angles of about 45°, towards the edge of the
leaf, and with a slight curve. Before reaching it,
however, they break up into branches, and between
them is an intricate and very fine polygonal mesh work
of tertiary veins. Rapid as is the ascending transpir-
ation current in Willows, and large as is the volume
of moisture given off, it passes .almost entirely through
the under surfaces of the leaves, there being very few
"stoinata" or transpiration-pores, on their upper sur-

148 FAMILIAR TREES

faces. Almost all known trees in Britain are female,
and this form — for Ave can hardly term it a species —
is also characterised by the ovate form of its ovary.

As to the scientific name Salix, we are told, in
Thomas Newton's " Herball for the Bible" (1587),
that "the Willow is called Salix, and hath his
name & saliendo, • for that it quicklie groweth up,
and soon becommeth a tree. Herewith do they in
some countres trim up their parlours and dining
roomes in sommer, and sticke fresh greene leaves
thereof about their beds for coolness."

Though this etymology " from leaping " may
be doubtful, even with the analogous case of our
own word " quick " applied to the Hawthorn, there can
be little doubt that the old English name " Sallow "
is a corruption from the Latin, whilst the other
two names, Willow and Withy, both probably refer
to the flexibility of the young branches.

Though the Weeping Willow is commonly
planted in burial grounds both in China and in Turkey,
its tearful symbolism has been mainly recognised in
modern times, and among Christian peoples. As has
been Avell said : " The Cypress was long considered as
the appropriate ornament of the cemetery ; but its
gloomy shade among the tombs, and its thick, heavy
foliage of the darkest green, inspire only depressing
thoughts, and present death under its most appalling
image, whilst the Weeping Willow, on the contrary,
rather conveys a picture of the grief felt for the loss
of the departed than of the darkness of the grave.
Its light and elegant foliage flows like the dishevelled
hair and graceful drapery of a sculptured mourner

LEAVES OF WEEPING WILLOW

THE WEEPING WILLOW 149

over a sepulchral urn, and conveys those soothing,
though melancholy reflections that made the poet
write —

" ' "lis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.' "

In the classical poets, we meet with only a few
allusions to the Willow as growing by the water-side,
and as twisted into baskets by the ancient Britons,
the word " basket " itself being one of the few words
which, under the form " bascauda," ancient Britain
seems to have given to the Latin vocabulary. The
word Willow itself, from the early English ivelig,
indicates pliability or willingness, and is assuredly
more appropriate to the Weeping Willow, with its
lonsf, slender, flexible shoots, than to some other
species ; but from Elizabethan times the tree has in-
variably been the symbol of forsaken love. This is
remarkable, since, with one exception, all the Biblical
references to this group of trees are associated with
joyfulness and fertility. Yet for Spenser it is—

"The Willow worne of forlorne paramoures " ;

whilst in addition to the ballad fragment sung by
Desdemona, the beautiful description of Ophelia's
death, and various other allusions to the tree, Shake-
speare, in the Merchant of Venice, represents
Dido lamenting the loss of /Eneas

" with a Willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage."

It is difficult not to associate the Willow that

" grows ascaunt the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,"

150 FAMILIAR TREES

-with the Babylonian species, which, however, Shake-
speare certainly never saw ; but so pathetic is the
lament of the Jewish captives, that one can well
believe it may have permanently altered the sym-
bolism of the once joy-inspiring Willow. There is a
pretty legend that its boughs first drooped under the
weight of the harps, as the exiled Hebrews sang:
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
yea, we wept, when we remembered Sion. We
hanged our harps upon the Willows in the midst
thereof." The Arabian story-tellers, however, have a
very different tale to tell. They relate that David,
after he had married Bathsheba, was one day playing
on his harp in his private chamber, when two angels
appeared before him and convinced him of his sin.
Thereupon he threw himself upon the ground, and
lay forty days and forty nights weeping bitter tears
of penitence ; and in those forty days he wept as many
tears as the whole human race have, or will, shed on
account of their sins, from then until the Day of
Judgment ; so that two streams of tears flowed out
into the garden, whence there sprang up two trees,
the Weeping Willow and the Frankincense-tree, the
boughs of the one drooping in grief, whilst the other
constantly distils tears of sorrow.

The torches used at funerals by the ancients were
made of Willow wood; and it may have been a tree of
ill omen, seeing that the soothsayers of Babylon are
said to have foretold the early death of Alexander
the Great, from the fact that the boughs of a Weeping
Willow swept the crown from his head as he was
crossing the Euphrates in a boat.

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THE WEEPING WILLOW 151

This beautiful tree is said to have been introduced
into Europe by Tournefort, and was almost certainly
first brought to England, in 1748, by Mr. Vernon, a
Turkey merchant of Aleppo, who planted a tree, from
the Euphrates, at his seat at Twickenham Park. Its
alleged introduction by the poet Pope is a poetical
fiction, of which there are several versions. The poet,
it is said, was with his friend Lady Suffolk, when she
received a basket of figs from Turkey, or Spain, and
noticing that some of the twigs of the basket seemed
to have life in them, he exclaimed : " Perhaps these
may produce something that we have not in
England," and accordingly planted them in his
garden. The poet's tree, the outcome, it is alleged,
of this incident, was afterwards cut down because
the owner of Pope's villa was bothered by too many
hero-worshipping visitors.

As the greenish yellow flowers that appear in May
never produce seed in this species, and as almost
all Willows can be readily propagated by slips, this
is the way in which the tree is always multiplied,
and in this way it was introduced by Governor
Beatson into the island of St. Helena, where there
are no native Willows. The form, however, planted
over the tomb of Napoleon, from which many
cuttings have now grown into large trees in England,
seems to be a distinct variety, having reddish
shoots and no stipules to the leaves.

Thousrh its wood might be used, like that of other
Willows, for crayon charcoal or for paper pulp, and
its bark possesses some of the medicinal and tan-
ning properties of the group, the Weeping Willow is

152 FAMILIAR TREES

practically a purely ornamental tree. As Gilpin says,
it is " a perfect contrast to the Lombardy Poplar.
The light, airy spray of the Poplar rises perpendicu-
larly, that of the Weeping Willow is pendent. The
shape of the leaf is conformable to the pensile char-
acter of the tree, and its spray, which is lighter than
that of the Poplar, is more easily put in motion by
a breath of air. The Weeping Willow, however, is
not adapted to sublime subjects. We wish it not to
screen the broken buttresses and Gothic windows of
an abbey, or to overshadow the battlements of a
ruined castle. These offices it resigns to the Oak,
whose dignity can support them. The Weeping
Willow seeks a humble scene — some romantic foot-
path bridge, some quiet grave, which it half
conceals, or some glassy pond, over which it hangs
its streaming foliage." In the words of Cowper,
a poet who would be familiar with the newly in-
troduced species —

" the Willows dip
Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink."

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS.

The following is a summary, in language as little technical
as is consistent with our limited space, of the distinctive
botanical characters of the trees dealt with in this work : —

ANGIOSPERMIA (FRUIT-BEARERS).

NATURAL ORDER, RANUNCULACE.E {BUTTERCUP

FAMILY).

Clematis Vitalba L. — Traveller's Joy. Bark in long strips.
Leaves opposite, pinnate, of three or five ovate leaflets,
climbing by their stalks. Flowers greenish white, one inch
across, scented. Fruit a head of numerous dry achenes with
long feathery white styles. Flowering July, August.
Distribution, Central Europe, North Africa, and West Asia.
—Vol. I., p. 121.

NATURAL ORDER, TAMARISCINE^E {TAMARISK

FAMILY).

Tamarix anglica Webb. — Tamarisk. Bark reddish. Branches
slender, upright, feathery. Leaves minute, closely overlap-
ping. Flowers pinkish, minute, crowded on lateral spikes.
Fruit a three-cornered capsule. July to September. West and
North coasts of France and South and East of England. —
Vol. I., p. 145.

NATURAL ORDER, TILIACEJE {LINDEN FAMILY).

Tilia europsea L. — Linden, or Lime. Sub-species, T.
cordata Mill. Bark smooth. Twigs yellowish brown. Leaves
59 153

154 BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS

alternate, cordate, oblique, serrate, with tufts of yellowish
hair at the branching of the veins beneath. Flowers in
umbellate cymes of three or four, with leafy bract adherent
to the peduncle, sweet-scented. Fruit spherical, faintly
ribbed, quarter of an inch in diameter. July, August.
Europe (excluding Balkan Peninsula) and Siberia.— Vol. I.
p. 89.

Sub-species, T. platyphyllos Scop. Twigs downy. Fruit
with five prominent ribs. Europe from Denmark south-
ward.—Vol. II., p>. 89.

NATURAL ORDEB, ILLCINEAE (HOLLY FAMILY).

Ilex Aquifolium L. — Holly. Bark smooth, ash-grey.
Shoots slightly pubescent. Leaves evergreen, alternate,
glossy, with waved spinous margins, except sometimes on
the upper ones. Flowers white, quarter of an inch in
diameter, in axillary clusters. Fruit a scarlet, four-seeded
berry. May to August. Europe, from South Norway to
Turkey and the Caucasus, and West Asia. — Vol. II., p. 9.

NATURAL ORDER, CELASTRINE.FJ (SPINDLE- 1 REE

FAMLLY).

Euonymus europseus L.— Spindle-tree. Bark smooth, grey.
Shoots quadrangular, green, fetid. Leaves opposite, ovate-
lanceolate, finely serrate, smooth. Flowers pale green, half
an inch in diameter, parts in fours. Fruit a rose coloured,
four-angled, fleshy capsule, containing four orange seeds.
May, June. Europe, West Siberia, and North Africa —
Vol. III., p. 9.

NATURAL ORDER, RHAMNACEJE (BUCKTHORN
FAMILY).

Rhamnus catharticus L. — Common Buckthorn. Bark
blackish. Twigs spinous. Leaves tufted, ovate, serrate.
Flowers yellow-green, axillary, sub-sessile, small, parts in
fours, dioecious. Fruit small, round, black, with four stones.

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS 155

May to July. Europe, North Africa, and Siberia. — Vol. II.,
p. 25.

R. Frangula L. — Alder Buckthorn. Without spines.
Leaves scattered, obovate, entire. Flowers greenish white,
parts mostly in fives. Fruit with two stones. May,
June. Europe, North Africa, and Siberia. — Vol. II., p. 25.

NATURAL ORDER, ACERINEJE (MAPLE FAMILY).

Acer Pseudo-Platanus L. — Sycamore. Bark smooth. Leaves
opposite, palmately five-lobed, unequally serrate, four to
eight inches across, dull. Flowers in pendulous clusters,
green. Fruit a two-winged samara ; wings divergent, scimi-
tar-shaped, one and a half inches long. May, June. Middle
Europe and West Asia. — Vol. I., p. 153.

A. campestre L. — Maple. Bark furrowed, corky. Leaves
opposite, cordate, two inches across, palmately five-lobed,
lobes obtuse ; stalks red. Flowers in erect, terminal
clusters, green, downy. Fruit a two-winged samara, wings
spreading horizontally, oblong, half an inch long, reddish.
May, June. Europe, from Denmark southward, and West
Asia.— Vol. I., p. 137.

NATURAL ORDER, HFFFOCASTANEJE {BUCK-EYE

FAMILY).

^Esculus Hippocastanum L. — Horse-chestnut. Bark smooth.
Leaves opposite, palmate, of seven obovate-cuneate leaflets,
serrate, one foot to two feet across. Flowers in an erect thyrse,
white, splashed with pink and lined in yellow, with seven
stamens. Fruit a spinous leathery capsule, containing two
to four brown chestnuts (seeds). May. Probably native of
the Balkan Peninsula.— Vol. I., p. 9.

NATURAL ORDER, LEGUMLNOSA? {PEA AND BEAN

FAMILY).

Cvtisus Laburnum L. — Laburnum. Bark smooth, grey-
green. Leaves scattered, pinnate, of three elliptical leaflets.

156 BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS

Flowers in long pendulous racemes, yellow, papilionaceous.
Fruit a silky green pod, becoming black. May. Central
Europe.— Vol. I., p. 17.

Robinia Pseudacacia L. — Acacia. Bark furrowed. Leaves
pinnate, of from four to nine pairs of egg-shaped leaflets,
and a terminal one, each about an inch long, with two
stipular thorns. Flowers in long pendulous racemes, white,
fragrant, papilionaceous. Fruit a Hat pod with a ventral
flange. June, July. Carolina to Canada. — Vol. III., p. 129.

NATURAL ORDER, ROSACEA {ROSE FAMILY).

Primus communis Hudson.— Plum. Bark smooth. Branches
spinous. Leaves alternate, convolute, variable. Flowers
solitary or in pairs, shortly stalked, white. Fruit a
glaucous, purple, black, or yellow drupe. March, April.
Europe, West Asia, and North Africa. — Vol. I., p. 113.

Sub-species P. spinosa L. — Sloe or Blackthorn. Bark
black. Branches numerous. Flowers preceding leaves. Drupe
globose, erect, black, half an inch in diameter. Europe. —
Vol. L, p. 114.

Sub-species P. msititia L. — Bullace. Bark brown.
Branches fewer, less spinous. Flowers with the leaves.
Drupe globose, drooping, yellow or black, over three-quarters
of an inch in diameter. Europe, North Africa, and Western
Asia.— Vol. I., ]• 118.

Sub-species P. domestica L. — Plum. Bark brown.
Branches mostly without spines. Drupe oblong, drooping,
black, an inch or more in diameter. Western Asia. — Vol. I.
p. 113.

P. Padus L. — Bird Cherry. Bark smooth, grey, astringent.
Leaves alternate, conduplicate, with glandular serrations.
Flowers in pendulous racemes, white. Fruit a small, black,
round, polished, bitter drupe, with a wrinkled stone. May.
Arctic Europe and Siberia, North Africa, and the Himalayas.
Vol. I , p. 57.

P. Avium L.— Wild Cherry, or Gean. Leaves drooping.
Flowers in umbels. Fruit heart-shaped, bitter, black or

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS 157

red. Few suckers. May. Europe to the Himalayas. — Vol. I.,
p. 57.

P. Cerasus L. — Dwarf Cherry. Leaves erect. Flowers
in umbels. Fruit round, red, acid, and juicy. Many suckers.
May. Not extending into Scotland or Africa. — Vol. I.,
p. 57.

P. Laurocerasus L.— Common or Cherry Laurel. Eark
dark green. Shoots green. Leaves evergreen, alternate,
conduplicate, yellowish green. Flowers in erect racemes,
shorter than the leaves, white. Fruit a smooth, black>
ovate-acute drupe. April, May. Persia, the Caucasus,
and the Crimea.— Vol. II., p. 49.

Crataegus Oxyacantha L. — Hawthorn. Bark smooth, dull
grey. Branches crowded, spinous. Leaves very variable,
obovate-cuneate, three- to four-lobed. Flowers in sessile,
corymbose cymes, white, with pink anthers, fragrant. Fruit
a sub-globose pome, usually crimson, with white mealy flesh
and a bony core. May, June. Europe, North Africa,
Siberia, West Asia to India. Introduced into North America.
—Vol. III., p. 49.

Sub-species C. oxyacanthoides Thuill. — Flower-stalks and
calyx-tube smooth. Carpels, two to three.— Vol. III., p. 50.

Sub-species C. monogyna Jacquin . — Flower-stalks and
calyx-tube downy. Carpel solitary.— Vol. III., p. 50.

Mespilus germanica L.— Medlar. Much branched, spinous.
Leaves downy beneath. Flowers solitary, white, one and
a half inches across. Fruit large, globose, surmounted by
persistent leafy calyx and with a five-chambered bony core.
May, June. Europe, Asia Minor, Persia.— Vol. II., p. 73.

Pyrus communis L.— Pear. Bark rough. Branches more
or less pendulous and spinous. Leaves alternate, ovate-
oblong, acute, serrate, on slender stalks. Flowers white,
one to one and a half inches in diameter. Fruit a turbinate
pome, one to two inches long, gritty. April, May. Europe,
from Ireland and Denmark to the Balkans.— Vol. II, p. 129.

Sub-species P. Pi/raster Bor. — Leaves acuminate, downy
beneath when young. Fruit obconic at the base. — Vol. II.,
p. 131.

158 BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS

Sub-species P. Achras Bor. — Leaves acute, slightly downy
beneath. Fruit rounded at the base. — Vol. II., p. 131.

Sub-species P. cordata Desv. — Leaves cordate, nearly
smooth. Fruit small, globose. Devon and Cornwall. —
Vol. II., p. 129.

P. Malus L.— Apple. Branches spreading, sometimes with
thorns. Leaves oblong, acuminate, serrate. Flowers in
sessile umbels, pink and white, one to one and a half inches in
diameter. Fruit an umbilicate pome, one inch or more in
diameter, red or yellow when ripe. May. Europe. — Vol. II.,
p. 33.

P. Aucuparia Ehrhart. — Rowan or Mountain Ash. Bark
smooth, silver-grey. Branches ascending. Leaves alternate,
pinnate, of thirteen to seventeen linear-oblong, acute, serrate
leaflets, each one to two inches long, pale beneath and downy
at first. Flowers cream-white, small, in corymbose cymes four
to six inches across. Fruit a small scarlet pome with yellow
flesh. May, June. Europe and Northern Asia. — Vol. I.,
p. 97.

P. Aria Ehrhart. — White Beam. Bark reddish brown.
Young shoots white with mealy down. Leaves elliptic,
irregularly serrate, snow-white beneath. Flowers small,
white, in loose corymbs. Fruit sub-globose, scarlet, dotted
with brown points, with orange flesh. May, June. Europe,
North Africa, North and West Asia. Vol. I., p. 105.

P. fennica Bab.— Leaves partly pinnate, grey- webbed
beneath. Probably a hybrid between P. Aucuparia and
P. intermedia. Arran. — Vol. I., p. 112.

P. intermedia Ehrh. — Leaves pinnatifid at base, white
beneath. Fruit with yellow pulpy flesh. North-west Europe,
West of England, Wales, Arran.— Vol. I., p. 112.

P. rupicola Syme. — Leaves entire at base, lobed at apex,
white beneath. Fruit smaller. — Vol. I., p. 111.

P. latifolia Syme. — Leaves broad, lobed, grey beneath.
Flowers with sickly smell. Fruit reddish brown. North-
west Europe, Cornwall. Vol. I., p. 111.

P. torminalis Ehrh.— Service-tree. Bark smooth, grey.
Twigs reddish brown, polished. Leaves pinnately lobed, the

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS 159

basal lobes being enlarged. Fruit oval, brown. April,
May. Europe, West Asia, and North Africa, but not ex-
tending to Scotland or Ireland.— Vol. II., p. 65.

NATURAL OR HER, CORN ACE JZ {CORNEL
FAMILY).

Cornus sanguinea L.— Cornel. Much branched. Branches
and leaves red in autumn. Leaves opposite, stalked, ovate,
entire. Flowers cream-white, small, in dense, sub-globose
terminal cymes, parts in fours. Fruit a small globular black
berry. June, July. Europe and North and West Asia. —
Vol. II., p. 113.

NATURAL ORDER, CAPRJFOLIACEjE {HONEYSUCKLE

FAMILY).

Sambucus nigra L. — Elder. Bark corky, brownish grey.
Leaves opposite, pinnate, of three to nine ovate lanceolate,
serrate leaflets, each two to three inches long. Flowers small,
creamy-white, in flat corymbose cymes nearly a foot across,
sweet-scented. Fruit a small, round, juicy berry, generally
black. June, July. Europe and North Africa. — Vol. III.,
p. 65.

Viburnum Lantana L.— Wayfaring- tree. Bark fissured,
grey-brown. Twigs and leaves mealy, with stellate hairs.
Leaves opposite, simple, ovate. Flowers small, white, in
flat-topped cymes with stout branches. Fruit flattened,
turning from coral-red to black. May, June. Central
Europe, North Africa, North and West Asia. — Vol. L,
p. 89.

V. Opulus L.— Guelder Rose. More slender, glabrous.
Bark brown. Shoots green. Leaves opposite, simple, downy
when young, palmately three-lobed. Flowers in corymbose
clusters, white, the outer ones three-quarters of an inch across
and neuter, the inner ones small and perfect. Fruit a trans-
lucent, blood-red, sub-globose berry. June, July. Europe,
North and West Asia, and North America.— Vol. I, p. 73.

160 BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS

NATURAL ORDER, ERIC ACE jE {HEATH FAMILY).

Arbutus Unedo L.— Strawberry-tree. Bark, red brown,
flaking. Leaves alternate, oblong-lanceolate, serrate, dark
green, evergreen. Flowers small, bell-shaped, creamy white,
in hanging clusters Fruit a globose, scarlet berry, two-thirds
of an inch across, with a roughened surface. September,
October. Mediterranean region and Killarney. — Vol. I,
p. 49.

NATURAL ORDER, OLEACEA? {OLIVE FAMILY).

Fraxinus excelsior L.— Ash. Eark smooth, olive-grey.
Buds black. Leaves opposite, pinnate, of from four to seven
pairs of oblong-lanceolate, serrate leaflets, each from one to
three inches long. Flowers preceding the leaves, in erect
clusters, without perianths. Fruit a linear-oblong samara,
notched at the apex, glossy green, streaked with black. April,
May. Europe and North Africa. — Vol. I., p. 65.

NATURAL ORDER, EUFHORBIACEJkJ (SPURGE
FAMILY).

Buxus sempervirens L. — Box. Bark rough, grey. Branches
downy when young. Leaves evergreen, sub-opposite, oblong,
obtuse, not more than an inch long. Flowers monoecious, in
axillary cymes, minute, whitish. Fruit a small, dehiscent,
horned capsule. April, May. Europe, from Belgium south-
ward, North Africa, and Asia. — Vol. III., p. 121.

NATURAL ORDER, MORACE.fi [MULBERRY
FAMILY).

Morus nigra Poir.— Mulberry. Bark rough, reddish
brown. Leaves ovate, cordate, irregularly serrate. Flowers
monoecious, in catkins, inconspicuous, greenish white. Fruit
multiple, oval, about an inch long, turning red and reddish
black, very juicy. June, July. Northern Persia and Arme-
nia ; but cultivated throughout Southern and Central Europe.
— Arol. I , p. 25.

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS 161

NATURAL ORDER, ULMACEM (ELM FAMLLY).

Ulmus surculosa Stokes.— Common Elm. Bark furrowed.
Suckers. Branches often long and horizontal. Leaves
alternate, oblique, irregularly serrate, acute, variable in size.
Flowers preceding the leaves, vinous red. Fruit a samara,
winged all round, obovate, with the seed above its centre.
March, April. Middle and Southern Europe, Siberia, and
North Africa— Vol. I., p. 41.

U. montana Stokes. — Wych Elm. Bark furrowed. No
suckers. Branches ascending and pendulous. Leaves and
flowers much as in the above. Samara sub-orbicular, with
the seed below its centre, more often ripening. March,
April. Europe and Siberia.— Vol. III., p. 81.

NATURAL ORDER, BETVLACEAV (BLRCR
FAMILY).

Betula alba L.— Birch. Bark smooth, silvery-white,
scaling off in transverse strips. Branches copper-brown,
often weeping. Leaves alternate, deltoid or rhomboid, irregu-
larly serrate, on long stalks. Flowers monoecious. Male
catkins one to two inches long, pendulous. Female catkins,
sub-erect at first, their scales deciduous. Fruit minute,
winged. April to May. Europe and North Asia. — Vol. III.,
p. 1.

Sub-species B. verrucosa Ehrh. — White Birch. Leaves
truncate at the base, acuminate, with raised veins. — Vol. III.,
p. 4.

Sub-species B. glutinosa Fries. — Leaves cordate-acute,
with veins on the under surface.— Vol. Ill, p. 1.

Alnus glutinosa Gaertn. — Alder. Bark black, with clefts.
Branches triangular when young. Leaves alternate, obovate,
blunt, wavy, serrate, glutinous when young, dark. Flowers
in monoecious catkins. Female catkins not an inch long,
their scales woody and persistent. Fruit hardly winged.
March, April. Europe, Asia, and North Africa. — Vol. III.,
p. 97.

60

162 BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS

NATURAL ORDER, JUGIANDACE^E {WALNUT
FAMILY).

Juglans regia L.— Walnut. Bark furrowed. Branches
smooth, grey. Leaves pinnate, of three or four pairs of ova),
acute, somewhat fleshy leaflets, and a terminal one, aromatic
when bruised. Flowers monoecious. Male flowers in solitary
drooping catkins on shoot of previous year. Female flowers
terminating the shoot of the year. Fruit inferior, bicarpellary,
drupaceous, oval, with nut-like endocarp and one seed. April,
May. Persia.— Vol. I., p. 81.

NATURAL ORDER, FLATANACEyE {PLANE
FAMILY).

Platanus orientalis L.— Oriental Plane. Bark green, scaling
off in square flakes. Outline compact and rounded. Leaves
alternate, deeply palmately five-lobed, cuneate at the base,
six to eight inches across, glossy. Flowers monoecious,
collected in globular unisexual capitula ("buttons"), two to
five on a branch. Fruit small, one- seeded nuts similarly
arranged in buttons. May, June. Native in Persia.—
Vol. II., />. 145.

P. occidentalis L— Western Plane. Scarcely distinct from
the above. Outline looser ani less rounded. Leaves lobed
to a moderate extent, not cuneate at the base. Fruit
button solitary on a branch. Canada to Mexico, and
Atlantic to Bocky Mountains.— Vol. II., ;). 145.

NATURAL ORDER, SALIOINEA< {WILLOW
FAMIL Y).

Populus alba L.— Abele. Bark smooth, grey. Suckers
numerous. Leaves of suckers lobed, those of the branches
white and cottony beneath, broadly ovate, cordate. Leaf-
stalk very long, compressed. Flowers dioecious, in drooping
catkins. Catkin-scales lobed, ciliate. Anthers purple. March,
April. Central Europe, North Africa, North and West
Asia.— Vol. III., p. 33.

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS 163

P. tremula L. — Aspen. Branches becoming pendulous.
Shoots downy, reddish. Buds slightly viscid. Leaves silky
beneath when young ; those on the suckers heart-shaped ;
those on the branches rounded, with incurved teeth. March,
April. Europe, North Asia, Asia Minor, and North Africa.
—Vol. II, p. 121.

P. pyramidalis Roz. — Lombardy Poplar. Branches as-
cending. Shoots smooth. Buds viscid. Leaves rhombic,
ciliate, and silky beneath when young ; but more rounded,
finely serrate, and smooth when older. Suckers. March,
April. Probably native in Western and Northern Asia. —
Vol. III., p. 73.

Salix fragilis L.— Crack Willow. Branches smooth, yellow-
brown, brittle in spring. Leaver elliptic-lanceolate, pilose
when young, afterwards smooth, three to six inches long,
with semi-cordate deciduous stipules. Flowers in dioecious
erect catkins, appearing with the leaves and with leaves on
the flower-stalks. Catkin-scales not notched, linear-lanceo-
late. Stamens two, distinct, hairy below. Capsules stalked,
with bifid but not recurved stigmas. April, May. Native
in South-west Asia, but doubtfully so in Europe. Intro-
duced in America. — Vol. III., p. 26.

S. decipiens Sm. — Orange Willow. Similar to the above,
but with polished orange or reddish brown branches, crimson
when young, smaller leaves, and longer styles. — Vol. III., p. 29.

S. Russelliana Sm.— Bedford Willow. Very similar to
S. fragilis, but with smooth green flexible twigs and long
tapering leaves, very glaucous beneath. — Vol. III., p. 29.

S. Babylonica L. — Weeping Willow. Branches drooping,
pale green, very slender, slightly twisted at each node.
Leaves lanceolate-acuminate, finely serrate, five inches long
and one inch across, smooth above and glaucous beneath.
Otherwise like S. fragilis. Extra-tropical Asia, from Japan
to Armenia and Syria, and North Africa. — Vol. III., p.
145.

S. alba L. — White or Huntingdon Willow. Bark deeply
furrowed. Branches silky, olive green. Leaves narrowly
lanceolate-acuminate, convolute, silky on both surfaces, two

1G4

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS

to four inches long, with minute ovats-lanceolate, deciduous
stipules. Flowers much as in S. fragilis, but with nearly
sessile capsules and recurved bifid stigmas. May. Europe,
North Africa, Siberia, and West Asia. — Vol. Ill, p. 25.

S. cserulea 8m.— Blue Willow. Similar to the above, but
with leaves which are grey beneath and become smooth
when old.— Vol. III., p. 30.

S. vitellina Sm.— Golden Willow. Similar to the last,
but with, yellow or reddish twigs. — Vol. IIL, p. 30.

S. viminalis L. — Osier. Branches long, slender, silky
when young, polished later. Leaves sometimes ten inches
long, with wavy, recurved margins. Catkins before the
leaves. April. Northern Asia and Russia. — Vol. III.,;). 31.

S. cinerea L.— Sallow. Twigs and buds downy. Leaves
obovate-lanceolate, wrinkled, dark green, glaucous, with
reddish brown hairs beneath, and large, kidney - shaped
stipules. March. — Vol. IIL, p. 31.

S. Caprea L. — Goat Willow. Buds smooth. Leaves ovate,
wrinkled, with wavy margins. Closely allied to the last.
March to May.— Vol. IIL, p. 25.

NATURAL ORDER, CUPULIFFRAV (OAK
FAMILY).

Quercus Robur L. — Oak. Bark corky, deeply furrowed,
grey. Branches tortuous. Leaves alternate, obovate-sinuate,
with blunt lobes, three to six inches long. Catkins monoe-
cious, appearing with the leaves, two to three inches long,
pendulous, lax. Stamens ten. Ovary inferior, three-cham-
bered, forming a one-seeded " acorn," surrounded at base
by a cupule of numerous, adpressed, imbricate scales.
April, May. From Syria and Mount Atlas almost to
the Arctic Circle. Var. pedunculata Ehr., White Oak.
Leaves sessile, downy beneath when young. Acorns on
long stalks. Var. intermedia D. Don, or pubescens Willd.
Durmast Oak. Leaf - stalks and peduncles both short.
Leaves remaining downy beneath. Fruit dark-coloured.
Var. sessilijiora Salisb. Bed Oak. Young branches downy.

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS 165

Leaf-stalks long. Leaves smooth beneath. Acorns sub-
sessile. — Vol. II., p. 1.

Q. Ilex L. — Holm or Evergreen Oak. Generally branched
down to the ground. Leaves evergreen, ovate-oblong, acute,
entire or serrate, dark, glossy green, hoary beneath, one to
five inches long. Catkins one to two inches long Acorns
long, oval, half-enclosed by cupule of downy adpressed
scales. May. South Asia, North Africa, and South Europe.
—Vol. II L, p. 113.

Castanea sativa Miller. — Sweet or Spanish Chestnut.
Bark deeply and often spirally furrowed, grey. Shoots
red-brown, smooth. Leaves alternate, simple, oblong-lanceo-
late, mucronate, serrate, glossy. Catkins five to six inches
long, monoecious. Fertile flowers in threes, surrounded by
a prickly cupule. Fruit a brown nut, surmounted by the
six-leaved perianth and five to eight styles, and enclosing
one to three seeds. May. South and Central Europe. —
Vol. II., p. 41.

Fagus sylvatica L. — Beech. Bark smooth, olive-grey to
white. Buds chestnut-brown, long, acute. Leaves alternate,
ovate, plicate, and ciliate when young, glabrescent, glossy.
Male catkins globose. Female flowers in twos in a four-
cleft prickly cupule. Fruit a three-cornered, polished, brown
nut. April, May. Asia Minor and Spain to Norway. —
Vol. II., p. 105.

NATURAL ORDER, CORYLACEjE (HAZEL FAMILY).

Corylus Avellana L. — Hazel. Bark split, ash-grey on stem.
Shoots browm, hairy, glandular. Leaves alternate, roundish,
obliquely cordate, irregularly serrate. Floweis monoecious,
preceding the leaves. Male catkins one to two inches long,
pendulous. Female catkins short, erect, ovoid, with crimson
stigmas. Fruit a nut, surrounded at base by a leafy invo-
lucre. February, March. Europe, Siberia, and North
Africa— Vol. II., p. 57.

Carpimis Betulus L. — Hornbeam. Bark smooth, light grey.
Buds short, adpressed. Leaves alternate, elliptic-ovate

60*

166 BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS

acuminate, plicate, doubly serrate. Catkins monoecious,
pendulous. Male ones, one to two inches long, of ovate acute
bracts, each with rive to fourteen forked stamens : female ones,
two to four inches long, of three-lobed leafy bracts, each
with two flowers. Fruit a nut, a quarter of an inch long.
May. Central Europe and West Asia.— Vol. III., p. 17.

GYMNOSPERMIA (CONE-BEARERS).

NATURAL ORDER, PIN ACE 'jE {PINE FAMriY).

Pinus Pinaster Ait. — Cluster Pine. Bark coarse, deeply
fissured longitudinally. Branches whorled, bending upward.
Needle-leaves in pairs, six to twelve inches long, light green.
Cones in star-like clusters of from four to eight together,
four to six inches long, glossy light brown, with ash-grey,
pointed "umbo:' in the centre of each "apophysis" or
enlarged end of the cone-scale. June. Mediterranean region.
—Vol. I., p. 33.

P. Laricio Poiret. — Corsican Pine. Bark reddish grey,
scaling off in large, thin plates. Branches whorled, with a
lateral spiral twist round the tree. Needle-leaves in pairs,
four to eight inches long, dark green. Cones, one to three
together, two or three inches long, glossy, tawny, with a
very small, pointed umbo to each apophysis. June. Corsica
and the Maritime Alps.— Vol. II., p. 17.

P. Pinea L.— Stone Pine. Bark reddish grey, fissured
longitudinally, often deeply. Branches large, ascending,
rendering the tree flat-topped. Needle-leaves in pairs, five
to eight inches long, dark green. Cones solitary, sometimes
four inches wide, very light brown, with a broad, blunt
umbo to each apophysis. Seed large, edible, very slightly
winged. May, June. Possibly a native of China, but long
grown in the Mediterranean region. — Vol. II., p. 137.

P. sylvestris L.— Scots Fir. Bark red-brown, furrowed,
scaling, much as in P. Laricio. Needle-leaves in pairs, two
to three inches long. Cones, one to three together, ovoid
acute, one to two inches long, with deciduous umbo. Seed

BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS 167

half an inch long, with a wing thrice as long. May,
June. Europe and Siberia. — Vol. III., p. 41.

Larix europsea D.C. — Larch. Bark scaly, reddish grey.
Branches drooping. Outline pyramidal. Leaves short,
needle-shaped, tufted, light green, deciduous. Cones red
when young, erect, ovate, one to one and a half inches long,
persistent, the scales becoming grey, but not thickening at
the ends. April, May. Central Europe, from Russia to
the Apennines.— Vol. III., p. 137.

Cedrus Libani Barr. — Cedar of Lebanon. Bark brown,
scaly. Branches horizontal, dorsi-ventral. Needle-leaves
tufted at first, afterwards spirally arranged, glaucous when
young, dark green, evergreen. Cones erect, ovate, from
three to five inches long, of broad, thin, brown scales,
persistent. Seeds broadly winged. May, June. Lebanon. —
Vol. II L, p. 89.

Picea excelsa Link. — Spruce. Bark thin, warty, reddish
brown. Branches whorled, spreading, dorsi-ventral. Outline
pyramidal. Leaves needle-shaped, four-angled, acute, stiff,
less than one inch long, bright green, evergreen. Cones at
first erect, then pendulous and falling whole, five to seven
inches long, their scales thin, notched, bright brown. May,
June. Northern Europe. — Vol. III., p. 105.

Pseudotsuga Douglasii Carr. — Douglas Fir. Stem tapering.
Bark thick, scaling, reddish brown. Branches drooping.
Outline pyramidal. Leaves needle - shaped, flat, slightly
twisted so as to be sub-distichous, bright shining green
above, with two white lines below. Cones egg-shaped, two
and a half to four inches long, " feathered " with three-lobed
bract scales, reddish brown, falling whole. Western North
America. — Vol. II., p. 97.

NATURAL ORDER, TAXODINEJE {REDWOOD
FAMILY).

Sequoia gigantea Dec. — Wellingtonia. Stem tapering,
Bark thick, spongy, fibrous, reddish brown. Branches slen
der, sweeping to the ground. Outline pyramidal. Leaves

168 BOTANICAL SYNOPSIS

short, awl-shaped, rigid, spirally arranged, closely adpressed
to the branch, bluish green at first, becoming a dull grass-
green, evergreen. Cones solitary, egg-shaped, two inches
long, woody, with twenty-five to thirty peltate scales, each
bearing five to seven seeds. California and Oregon. — Vol. I.,
p. 129.

NATURAL ORDER, CUFRESSINEJE {CYPRESS
FAMILY).

Cupressus sempervirens L. — Cypress. Bark scaly, reddish
brown. Branches ascending. Shoots quadrangular. Leaves
minute, needle-shaped on main stem, broader and adpressed
in four rows on the shoots, dark evergreen. Cones globose,
from one inch to one and a half inches in diameter, of a few
polygonal scales which have a central point and become
woody. May, June. Persia, Asia Minor, and the Eastern
Mediterranean region. — Vol. III., p. 57.

NATURAL ORDER, TAXACEAU {YEW FAMILY).

Taxus baccata L. — Yew. Bark furrowed, brown, pink-
tinged, flaking. Branches dorsi-ventral. Leaves linear,
acute, one inch long, dark, apparently distichous, evergreen.
Flowers dioecious, male of peltate stamens, female of solitary
ovule, surrounded later by pink, fleshy, cup-like aril. March,
April. Northern Temperate Zone.— Vol. II., p. 81.

INDEX.

Abele, III. 33-40

Abietinse, I. 33, 36-37

Acacia, I. 18; III. 129136

Acer, I. 153-160

^Elfric, I. 31 ; II. 73, 115

Alder, III. 97-104

Angiosperms, I. 3

Apple, II. 33-40

Arbutus, I. 49-56

Aristophanes, II. 90

Aristotle, I. 76-78

Ash, I. 4, 19, 65-72

Aspen, II. 121-128

Aubrev, John, II. 69

Avebury, Lord, I. 73-74, 76, 107

Babington, Prof., I. 52; II. 75;

III. 27
Bacon, Lord, II. 145
Bark, I. 4-5 [124

Barrington, Hon. Dailies, III.
Bauhin, Caspar, II. 78
Beech, I. 4, 5 ; II. 105-112
Betula, III. 1-8
Birch, I. 5; III. 1-8
Blackthorn, I. 115-120
Bletting, II. 77
Boerhaave, III. 67
Box, III, 121-128
Box-Elder, I. 143
Branching, I. 1
Britten, Mr. James, II. 143
Broom, I. 17, 19
Browne, Sir Thomas, II. 85
Browne, William, I. 151; III.

102
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,

II. 93
Bryant, VV. C, II. 146

Buckthorn, II. 25-32

Buds, I. 4, 10, 75, 107; II. 19

Bud-scales, I. 10, 75

Bullace, I. 115-118

Burns, Robert, III. 55

Bushy Park, I. 16

Byron, II. 1

Cjesar. Julius, III. 140

Campbell, Thomas, II. 110

Carlyle, I. 66

Carpinus, III. 17-24

Costarica, II. 41-48

Cedar, I. 5, 37 ; III. 89-96

Chaucer, II. 50, 73, 93, 116

Chequers, II. 67, 69

Cherry, I. 57-64

Chestnut, I. 4, 14; II. 41-48

Clare, John, II. 37

Classification, I. 122-123

Clematis, I. 121-128

Clusius, II. 52

Cobbett, William, III. 131

Coleridge, III. 1

Collinson, Peter, II. 143

Cone, I. 36; II. 21; III. 44

Coniferae, I. 2, 8, 33-35

Cornel, II. 113-120 ; III. 11

Cornus, II. 113-120

Corylus, II. 57-64

Cotyledons, I. 4

Cowley, I. 81, 87-88 ; II. 77

Cowper, I. 32. 78, 158; III. 152

Craik, Mrs., I. 29

Crataegus. III. 49-56

Cross, I. 100

Ciipressus, III. 57-64

Cyme, I. 12

Cypress, III. 57-64

1G9

170

INDEX

Damson, I. 115

Danewort, III. 71-72

Darwin, Charles, I. 124; II. 34;

III. 46
Daubeny, Dr., II. 124
David, III. 150
De Candolle. Alphonse, II. 42,

83; III. 126
Dicotyledons, I. 3
Dioecious plants, I. 25
Divining rod, II. 62-63
Dogwood. I. 77, 80; II. 113-120;

III. 11
Douglas, David, II. 97
Douglas Fir, II. 97-104
Drupacese, I. 58, 63
Dryden, III. 99, 106, 127
Dyer, John, III. 70

Ebony, I. 20

Economy of nutrition, I. 76

Eddvstone lighthouse, II. 1

Elder, I. 77, 80; III. 65-72

Ellacombe, Rev. H. N., II. 58

Elm, American, I. 47-48

Elm, Common, I. 41-48

Elm, Wych, I. 41; III. 81-88

Ericaceae, I. 49-50

Euonymus, III. 9-16

Evelyn, John, I. 61, 67, 83, 98;

II.' 15-16, 53-54, 60, 62, 94;

III. 62, 94, 100, 115, 119, 129,

137
Evergreens, I. 51
Exogenous stem, I. 3
Ezekiel, III. 90

Far/us, I. 4, 5 ; II. 105-112

Fir, I. 37; II. 97-104; III. 41-48,

105-112
Flowers, I. 13, 17, 35-36, 50-51,

55-56
Fruits, I. 6, 56

Gamopetalse, I. 49

Gean, I. 58

Gerard, I. 32, 39, 94, 116, 123,

126-127, 149; II. 27. 39, 71, 76,

116, 124; III. 115, 125
Gibbons, Grinling, II. 95
Gilpin. William, I. 65, 68, 99;

II. 45, 141-142; III. 83, 98, 142,

152
Goat-moth, I. 45

Goethe, I. 78
Golden Chain, I. 20
Goldsmith, Oliver, III. 55
Gower, John, II. 61
Greenness of stems, I. 9
Grindal, Archbishop, I. 149
Guelder-rose, I. 73-80
Gunpowder, II. 32
Gunpowder-charcoal, I. 15 ; III.

101
Gymnosperms, I. 2, 129

Haggard, Mr. H. Rider, III. 88

Hartlib, Samuel, II. 40

Hawthorn, III. 49-56

Hazel, II. 57-64

Heartwood, I. 8

Heath familv, I. 49-50

Heine, Heinrich. II. 142

Hemans, Mrs., II. 125

Herrick, II. 84; III. 123

Holly, II. 9-16 '

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, I. 47-48;

II. 2
Holm Oak, III. 113-120
Homer, II. 123-4
Honev-glands, I. 58
Hood, Thomas, III. 42
Horace, I. 53; III. 60. 73, 115
Hornbeam, I. 4; III. 17-24
Horse-chestnut, I. 9-16
Howitt, Mary and William, I.

11, 93; 111.-54

Ilex, II. 9-16
Incomplete, I. 25
Insect-pollination, I. 6, 22-23, 56
Ivy, II. 10. 81

Jcfferies, Richard, I. 44-45
Johnson, Thomas, I. 92; II. 53,

71
Judas-tree. I. 17
Juf/hins, I. 81-88
Jussicu, Bernard de. III. 95
Juvenile leaves, I. 34

Karr, Alphonse, III. 6

Killarnev, I. 51, 56

Kipling,' Mr. Rudyard, III. 100

Laburnum, I. 17-24
Laburnum, Purple, I. 24

INDEX

171

Lamartino, III. 92-93

Larch, I. 37; III. 137-144

Latex, I. 26

Lauder, Sir Thomas, I. 159;

III. 83. 98, 111-112
Laurel, Cherry, II. 49-55
Leaf-action, I. 1, 13
Leaf-arrangement, I. 1, 35
Leaf-scars, I. 6, 15
Leaf sections, I. 40
Lees, Dr. Edwin, II. Ill
Leguminosse, I. 17
Linden, II. 89-96
Efindley, John, II. 50, 90
Linnaeus, II. 90
Lobel, III. 40

Locust, I. 17-18; III. 129-136
Loudon, J. C, II. 117

Maidenhair-tree, I. 131
Mandeville, Sir John, II. 34;

III. 51-52, 65
Manna, I. 150-151
Maple. I. 137-144, 153-160
Matthiolus, II. 115
Medlar, II. 73-80
Merrett, Christopher, II. 78
Mespilus, II. 73-80
Miller, Philip, II. 55, 116, 152;

III. 130, 137
Milton, I. 30; III. 47, 54-55
Miocene flora, I. 138
Monoecious plants, I. 25
Mountain Ash, I. 97-104
Mulberry, I. 25-32
Mycorrhiza, I. 2

Natural system. I. 7. 122-123
Needle-leaves, I. 132-133
Newberrv, Professor, II. 98
Newton, Thomas, III. 148

Oaks, II. 1-8; III. 113-120
Oblique leaves, I. 42
Oleaeese. I. 65

Ovid, I. 31. 53, 126; II. Ill; III.
62-63, 76-77

Parkinson, John, I. 54. 91-92,
149-150; II. 27-30. 40, 52-53, 71,
76, 78, 114, 116; III. 125, 129,
137

Patmore, Henrv, I. 145

Pear, II. 129-136

Pea-tree, I. 19

Periderm, I. 75

Phillips, Ambrose, II. 37

Piers Plowman, III. 67

Pilgrim's Way, II. 82

Pine, Cluster," L 33-40

Pine, Corsican, II. 17-21

Pines, I. 33, 37-38; II. 17-21, 137-

144; III. 41-48
Pine, Stone, I. 38; II. 137-144
Pine, Weymouth, I. 38
Plane, II. 145-152
Plata nus, II. 145-152
Pliny, I. 18. 29, 81, 148; II. 39,

42, 75. 90, 106, 114, 131, 137,

150; III. 61, 100, 105, 115, 127,

140
Plum, I. 113-120

Pollination, I. 5-6, 22-23, 25, 55-56
Pome, I. 113; II. 38
Pope, Alexander, III. 151
Poplars, II. 121-128; III. 33-40,

73-80
Populus, II. 121-128; III. 33-40.

73-80
Pores, I. 8

Prior, Dr., I. 19; II. 81, 105, 117
Primus, I. 57, 113-120; II. 49-56
Pseudotsucja, II. 97-104
Pulvinus, I. 35
Pyrus, I. 97-112; II. 33-40^65-72

Quercus, II. 1-8

Ray, John, II. 40, 54, 72, 78, 94;

III. 95, 126, 130
Resin-ducts, I. 8
Rhamnus, II. 25-32
Rhizobium, I. 22
Rings, Annual, I. 7
Robin, Jean and Vespasian, III.

129
Root-action, I. 1
Rosa, Salvator, II. 45
Rowan. I. 97-104
Rubber, I. 26
Ruskin. John, I. 2, 14, 63; II.

123-124 ; III. 47-48

Sackville, Thomas, III. 52
Salix, III. 25-32
Samara, I. 41
Sap-wood, I. 8
Sargent, Professor, II. 99
Scots Fir, I. 38 ; III. 41-48

172

INDEX

Scott, Sir Walter, II. 125
Seed-dispersal, I. 6
Selby, I. 62, 159
Senilis, Johannes, II. 22
Sequoia, I. 129-136
Service-tree, I. 77, 97; II. 65-72
Seyny, I. 19
Shakespeare I. 31, 60, 116; II. 2,

39, 44, 64, 73, 76, 85, 132; III.

7, 43, 48, 65, 66, 149
Simpson, Mr. John, II. 22
Sloe, I. 115-120
Smith, Sir J. E., I. 149; II. 79;

III. 18, 70
Snowball-tree, I. 78
Spenser, Edmund, I. 65 ; II. 61,

122, 145 ; III. 54, 60, 66, 77, 149
Spindle-tree, III. 9-16
Spruce, I. 37; III. 105-112
Step, Mr. Edward. I. 52
Stipules, I. 5, 76
Stomata, I. 13
Strawberry-tree, I. 49-56
Sycamore, I. 153-160; II. 147
Symbiosis. I. 22
S>on House, I. 30; III. 96

Tamarisk, I. 145-152

Taxus, II. 81-83

Tendrils, I. 124

Tennyson, I. 61. 69, 143; II. 91,

109, 150; III. 16, 43, 139
Theophrastus, I. 53, 125; II. 17,

42; III. 160
Thomson, James, II. 124
Threlkeld, I. 54
Ti/i,,. II. 89-96
Touchwood, I. 46
Tradescant, John, II. 149; III.

129
Transpiration, I. 13

Traveller's Jov, I, 121-128
Trees, Broad-leaved, I. 124
Trees defined, I. 1
Turner, Dr. Robert, I. 151; II.

86-87
Turner, Dr. William, I. 30, 32.

53, 80, 116. 148-149; II. 44, 75,

85-86, 116, 143, 147; III. 1, 7,

58, 78, 81, 105, 125

Ulmacese, I. 42
Ulmifrondes, I. 43
Uiticacese, I. 25

Veneer, I. 21

Viburnum, I. 73-80, 89-96

Virgil, I. 53, 91, 103, 126; II.

61-62, 90; III. 99-100, 105, 115,

127
Vitruvius, III. 100, 127

Walnut, I. 81-8

Ward, Professor Marshall, I. 59,

77; II. 7, 19; III. 39
Wayfaring-tree, I. 73-74, 89-96
Wellingtonia, I. 129-136
Westminster Hall. II. 48
White-Beam, I. 107-112
White, Gilbert, I. 67; II. 87
Willows, III. 25-32, 145-152
Willow, Weeping, I. 19; III.

145-152
Wind-pollination, I. 5, 25
Witches' Brooms, III. 7
Wood, I. 2, 8, 132
Wood structure, I. 7-8, 20-21
Wordsworth, I. 102; III. 48,

142-3

Yew, II. 81-88

Printed by Cassei.l and Company, Limited, Ludcate Hill, London, E.C.

47C 9