they have plenty of light and air; and though the great bulk of timber they produce in a short time may make them worth planting on such soils, yet I doubt the possibility of getting a sale at remunerative prices in most districts. In mixed or pure plantations their lower branches die off and leave large snags which are difficult and costly to remove, and though the very resinous nature of the wood may fit it for some purposes, I have never heard of its being utilised to any extent, except for pitwood. Austrian pine’ has been planted very successfully as a shelter belt on the southern shore of Belfast Lough, about forty yards from the sea, in heavy clay ; and behind it hardwoods and other trees are doing well. The tree has been extensively planted in many provinces of Austria and Hungary, mainly, according to Seckendorff, with the object of improving the soil for other trees; it has been recommended for this purpose on the poorer limestone soils of England, but the cost of so doing would in my opinion make the operation very unprofitable.
Though there is no reason why the Austrian pine should not sow itself in Great Britain, as the seeds ripen in hot years freely, yet I have never seen self-sown plants except near Sarsden Park, Oxfordshire, the property of Lord Moreton, and here only two or three young trees have sprung up on the rough limestone close to some old quarries.
The Austrian pine, according to Schübeler, is hardy in Norway as far north as Stenkjaer, at the upper end of the Throndhjem fjord. A tree in the Botanic Garden at Christiania, which Schübeler says was planted in 1842, is over 4o feet high, but was not a fine specimen when I saw it in 1906.
The Austrian pine’ has been largely planted in the northern United States as an ornamental tree, and in youth is a handsome tree; but it generally succumbs to the attacks of boring insects before it has lost its bushy juvenile habit, and an Austrian pine in the United States more than fifty feet high is exceptional.
An account of Austrian turpentine,’ which is derived from Pinus Laricio, is given by Georg Schmidt in an inaugural dissertation before the University of Berne in 1903.
Cultivation: Calabrian Pine
The Calabrian variety of Laricio was introduced into France by M. de Vilmorin in 1819–21, and a full account of its development at Les Barres was given in a catalogue of the trees cultivated there, published at Paris in 1878 by the Forest Department.* From this it appears that the tree has proved superior to other pines as a forest tree, and is especially recommended for planting in mixture with oak, which it rapidly surpasses in height, but without injuring it, on account of the slight development of its lateral branches. It has attained on this poor sandy soil a considerable size, and the young trees raised from seed grown there have preserved their superiority in the second and third generation. It produces seed abundantly there, but has the same defect as P. Laricio of being difficult to transplant. It is not easy to distinguish from the Corsican variety. M. Maurice de Vilmorin tells
1 Journal of Forestry, 1879, p. 165.
Garden and Forest, ix. 453 (1896) and x. 470 (1897).
3 Harzbalsam von Pinus Laricio (Bern, 1903).
4 Cf. Pardé, Arb. Nat. de Barres, 61 (1906).
