Pinus Sylvestris 581 



it as well as the spruce, for the pine is a lover of a sandy soil and a dry long winter, 

 with a hot sunny summer. 



Dr. Schiibeler, in his Viridarium Norvegicum, i. 375, gives many details about 

 the pine, from which I gather that its range extends from the south, where it 

 reaches an elevation of 3500 feet above the sea, to the inner valleys of Finmark, where 

 in lat. 70 N. it attains in Alten and Porsanger fjords as much as 60 feet high and 

 7^ feet ''n girth. He tells us that formerly there were pines on the Dovrefjeld, near 

 Jerkin, at an elevation of 3200 feet, as much as i foot in diameter, where no trees 

 now exist ; and that near Roros, now one of the bleakest and coldest towns in 

 Norway, the forest was, in 1773, so dense as to be almost impassable. The tallest 

 pines in Norway that he mentions were near Holden in Lower Thelemarken, 

 where one was measured 104 feet high, with a diameter at the ground of 2 feet 

 10 inches, and at 70 feet high of 9!^ inches. Another at the same place was 105 feet 

 high, and 5 inches in diameter at 96 feet up. At Klosterskogen in Skien, one was 

 measured 108 feet by 6 feet 5 inches at breast height. The greatest girth that he 

 mentions is about 1 5|- feet. 



I have myself measured at Graddis in Junkersdal, within the Arctic Circle, and 

 at an elevation of at least 1200 feet, pines of over 50 feet high and 12 to 13 feet in 

 girth. One of these, which was cut down, was 34 inches in diameter and about 240 

 years old, but the outer rings were so close that I could not count them accurately, 

 the first 100 years' growth being over 26 inches in diameter, showing that in this 

 latitude at least the increase after this time is very slow. The tallest that I saw 

 in this valley was 84 feet high near the Government Forest Nursery at Storjold. 

 I observed that in Junkersdal the natural regeneration from seed was poor, and that 

 in the upper parts of the valley the young seedlings were very small and stunted, 

 and birch seemed to be taking their place. In this valley on July 10, 1904, 

 vegetation had only just commenced, and the pines had not pushed their young 

 growth, though Cypripedium Calceolus was in flower. A severe frost which took 

 place in April, - 14 to - 16 Rdaumur, after warm weather in March, had killed most 

 of the young shoots where not protected by snow. 



Schiibeler gives several illustrations of the curious forms which this tree some- 

 times assumes. His Fig. 59 shows a tree in which the branches are very short and 

 which has the shape of a northern spruce rather than that of a pine. Fig. 60 shows 

 a branch with a great bunch of forty to fifty closely packed cones surrounding it. 

 Figs. 61 and 62 show the power which the tree possesses of sending out upright 

 stems of considerable size from a fallen trunk whose roots still retain their hold on 

 the ground. Fig. 63 shows an immense witches' broom, forming a dense mass of 

 living twigs in a ball 10 feet in diameter, which surrounds the trunk of a pine 

 growing at Aasebostal in Nordfjord. 



It is occasionally planted in Iceland,^ but does not long survive the severe 

 climate, though Hooker was told that a single dwarf tree grew on an island in 

 a lake between the head of Borgarfjord and Reyholt. 



As little is known with regard to the so-called Riga pine, which was for long 



* Babington, m/oum. Linn. Soc. (Bot.) xi. 50 (1870).' 



