IRISH GARDENING 



VOLUME XIII 

 ^o. 153 



Editor J. W. Besant 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE 



ADVANCEMENT OF HORTICULTURE AND 



ARBORICULTURE IN IRELAND 



NOVEMBER, 

 1918 "i 



The Fastigiate Scots Pine 



By Professor Henry, M.A., Royal College of Science, Ireland. 



-v^^ 



As is well known, sports of various kinds occur 

 in plants. A sport is not the ordinary wild 

 form of the species met with in countless in- 

 dividuals over a definite area. A sport is a 

 solitary phenomenon, arising either as a stray 

 seedling from a single seed, or developing out 

 of a bud on the tree as a single branch with 

 some peculiarity of leaf or twig. In sowing a 

 large number of seeds, we are apt to get a single 

 seedling peculiar in colour, habit, &c. The 

 fastigiate sport may occur in any species. In 

 it all the branches of the tr(v3 grow verticall,y 

 upwards, as is indicated by the name, derived 

 from the Latin fastigium, a projecting point. 



The commonest fastigiate tree is the Lom- 

 bardy Poplar, M'hich apparently originated 

 about 1700 as a solitary tree on the banks of 

 the Po. Its historj' is not clearly known, but 

 it is not represented in any Italian picture or 

 referred to before 1750. The fastigiate Oak is 

 less common, but there is a good specimen at 

 ]\Ielbury, about 40 feet high. The upright 

 Beech is very rare, the only specimen known 

 being the one which grows at Dawyck, in Scot- 

 land. The upright Thorn, a good example of 

 which grows at Glasnevin, is also rare. Amidst 

 tlie Junipers and Cypresses, the fastigiate forai 

 is so common that it can no longer be looked 

 upon as a freak, a considerable percentage of all 

 their seedlings being of this habit. The com- 

 mon Juniper in Norway is often of this charac- 

 teristic habit, and the ]\Iediterranean Cypress 

 has been known in its peculiar narrow form for 

 centin-ies. Here again the difficulty of defini- 

 tion in Nature is shown, the fastigiate habit 

 in Oak, Poplar, &c., is a freak or sport; in the 

 Cypress and Juniper it is a normal form. 



The fastigiate Scots Pine at Glasnevin, of 

 which an illustration is given, was obtained 

 from Kichard Smith & Co., "Worcester, in 1904, 

 and is now 15 feet in height. This form was 

 first described in 1867 by Carriere as Pinus 

 sylvestris, var. fastigiata. Its history is some- 

 what obscure; but there is little doubt that all 



Irelanc 



the trees of this kind in Britain and 

 were derived as grafts from an old tree at 

 Dryburgh Abbey. Messrs, Little and Ballan- 

 tyne, who have a fastigiate Scots Pine in their 

 nursery, about 15 feet high, state that it was 

 raised about 30 years ago from a graft of the 

 Dryburgh Abbey tree. 



Sir David Erskine, in the " Annals and 

 Antiquities of Dryburgh," page 74, published 

 in 1828, describes: — "A Cypress Fir near 

 the Eed Cross Well on the way to Bernersyde, 

 6 feet 6 inches (girth is here meant). It is ex- 

 ceedingly curious, being a Scots Fir and grow- 

 ing like a Cypress." Mr. W. Balfour Gourlay 

 wrote to me in 1913, that the original tree at 

 Dryburgh Abbey stands now in a thick ^yood 

 near the Eed Cross Well, but its circumference 

 at 4 feet above the ground is only 5 ft. 8 in. 

 Notwithstanding the discrepancy in measure- 

 ment, there is no doubt that this tree is the one 

 described by Sir David Erskine. He probably 

 took the girth at the level of the ground ; and 

 this fastigiate form is imdoubtedly very slow 

 in growth. Mr. W. Balfour Gourlay read a 

 note on the Dryburgh tree, and showed speci- 

 mens and photographs, now reproduced, at the 

 meeting of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 

 on 8th February, 1912. 



Close to Dryburgh House there is another 

 fastigiate Scots Pine, the girth of which was 

 2 feet 9 inches in 1912. It is supposed to be 

 80 or 90 years old, and to be a seedling of, but 

 is most probably a graft taken from, the tree 

 at the Eed Cross Well. I sowed seeds from the 

 cones of the Glasnevin fastigiate Scots Pine 

 in ]\Iay, 1914, and obtained five seedlings, all 

 of which are of the ordinary form \\\i\\ braiiches 

 spi'eading horizontally. It would seem then 

 that this sport is not hereditary ; but further 

 sowings on a more extensive scale are nacessary 

 to establish this quite definitely. 



Grafts taken from the Glasnevin fa^tigiate 

 tree and placed on ordinary Scots Pine at 

 Cambridge failed, v.hile one grafted on a young 



