Cultivation: Corsican Pine
Of all the conifers introduced into England, of which great expectations have been formed, none except the larch has shown such good results as the Corsican pine, which has proved a hardy and vigorous grower on almost all soils, and in almost all parts of Great Britain and Ireland. It has not, however, been long enough in the country to have established a position in the English timber market, and until it does it is difficult to say much of its economic value in the future. All accounts of this wood for estate purposes, though often used long before it has attained sufficient age to give the best results, agree in saying that though rough and knotty when grown singly, it is at least as good as Scots pine; probably more durable and stronger when used before maturity. Though it does not grow so fast on very barren and stony soils as the Austrian pine, it is far better from a timber point of view, and occupies less space. Its greatest defect is the difficulty of transplanting it when young on account of its very scanty root system, and as this often, indeed usually, entails considerable loss on both nurserymen and planters, the cost of getting a crop of Laricio established is very much higher than in the case of the Scots pine.
I have been most successful in avoiding a high death-rate by purchasing two- year seedlings with as many roots as possible from French nurseries in the spring, not before the middle of March, planting them at once in nursery rows on as sandy a soil as possible, and transplanting them to their permanent habitation in March or April, two years afterwards. But the plants will not then be large enough for the better class of land, and may require another transplantation before finally going out, by which time they will have cost 40s. to 50s. per 1000, and in some cases much more. The seedling has a very long primary root at first with very little fibre. By cutting this tap-root when the plant is only a year old, without lifting it from its seed-bed, it may be induced to make more roots, but if left unprotected for the first winter on wet or heavy soil a great many of the seedlings will be thrown out of the ground altogether. In my own ground I prefer to sow the seed in boxes, as their growth in the open ground is slow in comparison with what are raised in France. In order to overcome this difficulty some nurserymen adopt the practice of lifting all their one-year seedlings before winter sets in, and laying them in until spring, when they are lined out for two seasons’ growth before being again transplanted.
I have on two occasions tried sowing the seed in the field where I wished the trees to grow, but with little success. The seedlings remain so small for the first two or three years that they cannot be seen among the grass, which soon covers them, and though this species seems to suffer less than any tree from being planted among Coarse grass, it takes five or six years before the seedlings become conspicuous, and it will also be found that in some places they are too thick, and in others have entirely failed.
The Corsican pine is distasteful in the young state to hares and rabbits. An experiment to test this was made some years ago at Tortworth Court, where Lord Ducie planted a young Laricio in the centre of a rabbit warren, which, until the ground was covered with snow, the teeming population of the spot did not touch;
