1 138 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



high. The whole character of the tree differs utterly from the little lodge-pole 

 pine usually growing elsewhere. These had bark of a warm pinky brown in 

 small flat flakes pressing closely to the stem. They were for the most part 

 over 200 years old, and indeed I counted over 300 rings in one tree not 2 ft. in 

 diameter. The altitude was about 8500 to 9500 ft., and therefore covered with 

 deep snow for about eight months in the year. Many dead trees stood among the 

 living ones, white and bleached, but showing uniformly that the fibre of the timber 

 grows with a twist. This twist in the wood saves it from the lumbermen. In 

 their opinion it would be a first-rate timber of great hardness and lasting quality, 

 were it not for this peculiarity. The older trees have fine open crowns with 

 perfectly straight stems, and no large branches. Where the bark has been bruised 

 off from any cause, the sap-wood shows bright saffron yellow till healed over. I 

 never saw this variety of Pinus contorta lower down than 8500 ft., and it grew 

 immediately above the Abies magnified belt." 



History and Cultivation 



P. contorta was discovered in 1825 by Douglas, near Cape Disappointment in 

 Washington, at the mouth of the Columbia river ; but it does not appear to have 

 been introduced until 1855, when it appeared in Lawson's Catalogue under the 

 name P. Macintoshiana} 



Var. Murrayana was discovered in 1852 by Jeffrey, who sent specimens and 

 seed, which reached Edinburgh in the following year. A further supply, which he 

 collected on 20th September 1853, on the summit of the Sierra Nevada in California, 

 near Walker's Pass, arrived in 1854. 



The characters, which separate P. contorta and its variety Murrayana in the 

 wild state, are not entirely preserved under cultivation. Trees labelled P. contorta 

 in Kew Gardens, show vigorous branchlets with broad leaves ; and owing to the 

 occurrence of spring shoots, the cones are often pseudo-lateral in position. These 

 trees have furrowed bark, as in their native home, and are widely branched, with 

 peculiarly curved branchlets. 2 Trees of var. Murrayana in cultivation show a 

 narrow pyramidal habit, with fine scaly bark ; but their leaves are scarcely as broad 

 as in wild specimens. Coming from the interior of the continent, they are not so 

 vigorous in growth as the typical form from the Pacific coast. At the nursery of 

 the Arboretum at Tervueren in Belgium, there are batches of seedlings of both 

 forms, those of typical contorta having vigorous shoots with short needles, those of 

 var. Murrayana with shorter shoots and longer bright green needles. 



(A. H.) 



The finest specimens of var. Murrayana which we have seen, are growing in 

 the pinetum at Westonbirt, where there are two trees narrowly pyramidal in habit 



1 Cf. Masters, in/oum. Linn. Soc. (Bot.) xxxv. 647 (1904). Fowler, in Gard. Chron., 1872, p. 1070, states that it was 

 often grown then under this name ; but he is in error in stating that P. contorta was introduced by Douglas, as there is no 

 record of this in Loudon, who first described the species. 



1 This is well shown in Gard. Chron. xix. 45, fig. 5 (1883), where a branch of typical contorta from Barron's nursery at 

 Borrowash is figured. Engelmann, in Gard. Chron. xix. 351, erroneously supposes, on account of the broad needles, that the 

 figure represents var. Murrayana. 





