Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/369

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Pinus Laricio
423

the others. At Albury, Sussex, there is one over 100 feet high by only 6 feet 9 inches in girth. At Highclere, Berks, in Great Pen wood, on sandy soil, are the best plantation Laricios which I have seen. At about 70 years old they measure about go feet high by 7 to 8 feet in girth, and have clean boles for about half their height: several of these, however, are forked at some distance from the ground. At Bayfordbury there is a tree which in 1906 was 94 feet by 8 feet 7 inches, and in many other places we have seen specimens 80 to 90 feet high, which need not be specially mentioned.

Austrian Pine.—Of the Austrian pine we have seen no specimens in England which rival the Corsican in height, though at Wolterton Park, Norfolk, the seat of the Earl of Orford, there are two large trees about 85 by 9½ feet, which show the characteristic difference in habit and in the colour of the leaves very clearly. From Grigor’s account of this place in the Eastern Arboretum, p. 114, they seem to have been planted before 1840. Among the largest is a large spreading tree of this type at Nuneham Park, the seat of the Right Honourable L. Harcourt. Another at Canford Manor, Dorset, measured 83 feet by 9 feet; and at Williamstrip Park, on rather heavy soil, which this tree by no means seems to dislike, there is one of nearly the same dimensions, the largest I know in Gloucestershire.

Var. Pallasiana.—The best authentic specimen I know is a fine tree at Elveden, Suffolk, the property of Lord Iveagh. It is a flourishing tree with the foliage and cones of the Austrian variety, and measured when I saw it in 1907 94 feet by 8 feet 3 inches (Plate 118). Prof. A. Newton of Cambridge informs me that this tree was raised from seed sent by his eldest brother General Newton of the Coldstream Guards from Balaclava in 1854. The parent tree stood in a garden, which was used as a cemetery during the early days of the occupation of the Crimea. In the historic gale of 14th November 1854 the tree was blown down, and the graves covered with rubbish, and a cone was sent home in memoriam.

Other noteworthy trees are as follows:—

At Dropmore 108 feet by 11 feet 5 inches fide A. Henry, 1904.
At Beauport 85 feet by 11 feet 5 inches fide A. Henry, 1904
At Penrhyn 95 feet by 11 feet 4 inches fide A. Henry, 1904
At Smeaton-Hepburn 64 feet by 6 feet 5 inches fide A. Henry, 1905.

At Chiswick House there is a good-sized tree, remarkable for having an immense growth of the character of what is usually called “witches’ broom.”

M. Gadeau de Kerrville has figured1 a very fine example of this pine, which was considered to be of the Calabrian variety by M.L. Corbiere (though this identifica- tion seems to me somewhat uncertain), which measured in 1894 35 metres (about 110 feet) high and 3.84 metres in girth. This tree is growing at Vatimesnil (Eure) in the park of M. de Vatimesnil, who believes it to have been planted by his ancestor about the year 1780. If this is correct, it is the oldest and probably the largest planted tree of the species either in France or England.


1 Les vieux arbres de la Normandie, fasc. iii, p. 317, plate ix.