142 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



inadequacy of natural cleaning, I will cite two instances : — 



(a) In the Bankfoot plantation at Ardgowan (planted 1898) 

 Japanese larches were mixed with other conifers at 3 to 4 feet. 

 The ordinary conifers were smothered years ago, but their 

 skeletons remain. x That they had been of no real use in 

 restraining side growth I can testify, having personally under- 

 taken last winter the clean pruning of the Japs. The lowest 

 branches opposite the dead trees required quite as much work in 

 removal as did the branches above the level of the dead tree tops. 



(b) In the Swallow Brae plantation at Ardgowan (planted 1905) 

 Japanese larches had been similarly mixed with other conifers 

 at 3 to 4 feet. Here I took personal pains in successive years 

 to shorten the branch-growth of the Japs in order to permit 

 the other conifers to survive and grow. Actually the latter did 

 grow to a height of 10 to 20 feet before being totally suppressed 

 (as all of them except a few Corsicans are now). But here also, 

 if clean boles are required, it will be necessary to prune the 

 Japanese stems down to within a foot of the ground. For all 

 the " cleaning " the other conifers effected, they might just as 

 well not have been there at all. Indeed, they would have been 

 better away, because the partial pruning which every one of the 

 Japs received (to give the other conifers a chance) could more 

 easily have been carried out in their absence. 



There is a further consideration, viz. that of root-room. 

 In a plantation of Japs mixed with other conifers, and in an 

 adjoining plantation of Douglas similarly mixed, on the summit 

 of the Beacon Hill at Fonthill, the strength of the surface roots 

 of both Japs and Douglas is particularly noticeable for a space 

 of several feet round each tree. The Japs and Douglas in these 

 two plantations (planted 1902) have easily outgrown all the 

 other conifers, with the exception of a few Weymouth pines 

 among the Douglas, and where any ordinary conifers still 

 survive, they appear to interfere with the strong root demand 

 of both Japs and Douglas ; and this without any benefit to 

 themselves, for they are generally semi-suppressed, where not 

 entirely dead, and will not pay for their own thinning out. 

 Most of the dominant trees, both Japanese and Douglas, stand 

 at a greater distance apart than 7 feet and are getting too much 



1 These have since been removed and burned. This plantation might have 

 been thinned or clear felled for pit-wood, etc., several years ago, but was 

 allowed to remain just as it had grown, for experimental purposes. 



