58 PINES 



P. Densiflora and p. Thunbergii. — 



Like strange mechanical grotesques 



Making fantastic arabesques. O. Wilde. 



These are the trees that the Japanese in particular 

 exercise all their topiarian ingenuity upon, by 

 trimming, distorting, or dwarfing them into all 

 sorts and shapes of whimsical ornamentation. 



They are the Red and Black Pine respectively, and 

 also the so-called Japanese representatives of our 

 Scots and Austrian Pine respectively. As the date 

 of their landing here was some fifty or sixty years ago, 

 in the seed-stage, they have not had quite a sufficient 

 time to make a reputation for themselves. Both seem 

 hardy, and the P. Thunbergii is fast heaping up for 

 itself — as surely even as it gathers together by the 

 power attraction of its roots, the shifting sands of the 

 sea — a character as a coast-line success that threatens 

 to dispute the sovereignty of the sand dunes with 

 its long-established presiding monarch, the Maritime 

 Pine. 



Both these Pines have been ladled out in time past 

 by nurserymen as P. Massoniana, and wrongly called. 

 Lambert's P. Massoniana is, as far as we can gather, 

 still rather a mystery. It is probably a long-leaved 

 more southern growing Chinese tree, and if it is in 

 cultivation — and some of us fondly imagine that we 

 have it — it is too early days to discuss its possibilities. 

 P. Thunbergii is most noticeable for its curiously 

 twisted leaves, but the similarly twisted leaves of the 

 P. Densiflora are of softer texture than the P. Thun- 

 bergii. The long filaments of the basal sheath, which 

 are shared in common by both, mark them out from 

 other two-leaved Pines — as, for instance, the Scots, 

 or Corsican Pine. Then there is the difference of 

 barks, the one (P. Densiflora) red and the other 

 (P. Thunbergii) dark grey ; the colours of their shoots 



