594 ^h^ Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Cases of inosculation are rare among pines, but a remarkable instance of this 

 was pointed out to me by Mr. Savile Foljambe in the Catwhins, near the lodge 

 leading out of Thoresby park into the Retford road. It seems probable that when 

 the trees were young they had come in contact, and eventually fused ; the iron 

 bands were put on afterwards, but the trees are now dead. 



Another case, somewhat similar, occurs in a pine tree growing on the estate 

 of Chenevieres, near Montbour (Loiret), France, which a photograph kindly sent 

 me by M. Maurice de Vilmorin illustrates. Here it seems that one tree had forked 

 at or close to the ground, and become connected by a thick branch at a much later 

 period. A third instance of natural inarching in the Scots pine is described and 

 figured by Count von Schwerin^ from a tree near Teltow in Germany. In this 

 instance a branch of one tree grew into the bark of another and broke off, eventually 

 forming just such a living connection between the two trees as is shown in Vol. I. 

 Plate 4, but much thicker in proportion. The sap of the left hand tree appears to 

 pass through this branch to the other, as the stem is thicker above the junction, and 

 the branch has assumed the yellow bark of the upper part of the trunk. 



The large, usually globular masses of dense shoots which sometimes appear on 

 this species, and more rarely on larch and spruce, are not caused by a parasitic 

 fungus. Prof, von Tubeuf '^ says that their origin is unknown, no insect or fungus 

 having yet been discovered which might have caused the growth, which is composed 

 of a mass of small buds, producing densely crowded tufts of short leaves. A 

 specimen which was found at Schwarzenraben in Germany measured 53 centi- 

 metres in height and about the same in diameter, the weight of this mass being 

 over eleven pounds.^ Such growths are not uncommon* in England, and I have 

 a photograph of one on a tree at Colesborne, which was about a foot in diameter. 



Timber 



On the timber of the Scots pine so much has been written that I will refer 

 specialists to Laslett,* who gives a long account, mostly from a shipbuilder's 

 point of view, of the various foreign varieties known to him as Dantzig, Memel, 

 Riga, and Swedish fir; but makes no reference to the quality of native-grown 

 timber, which, though men-of-war were built from it by Osbourne in the last 

 century, seems to have been unused by the Admiralty since then, as it is now 

 by the Post Office authorities in England, and by architects and builders 

 generally. The reason of this is, no doubt, that the rapid growth of the tree 

 in this country, in our mild climate, causes the wood to be much softer, 



> Milt. D. D. Gesell. 194 (1906). Ibid. 222, fig. 13 (1905). 



* Count von Schwerin, Mitl. D. D. Gesell. 222 (1905), says that in Bavarian Allgau, between Oberstaufen and Weiler, 

 he has seen a forest of sixty-year-old spruce in which almost every tree was more or less affected by these growths, and 

 supposes that the cause, whatever it is, must be contagious. He has seen similar growths on Picea orientalis and suggests 

 that some of the horticultural monstrosities such as Picea excelsa echiniformis and C. Lawsoniana forsteckensis have originated 

 from a similar cause. 



* A specimen from a^ tree growing at Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk, was shown at a meeting of the Scientific Committee of 

 the Royal Horticultural Society in April 1899. Cf. Card. Chron. xxv. 270 (1899). 



' Timber and Timber Trees',-^- a (London, 1894). 



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