Pyrus 169 



There is a handsome tree on the lawn at Belton Park, which measures 41 feet 

 by 6 feet 7 inches. 



A very spreading, ill-shaped tree in a thicket at Mount Meadow, near Cobham, 

 Kent, is 9 feet 3 inches in girth. 



At Stowe, near Buckingham, there are several fine trees near the Queen's 

 Temple, which are about 50 feet high, but the tree when growing wild on the 

 Cotswold Hills, where it is common, rarely exceeds 30 feet with a stem 2 to 3 feet in 

 girth, and is more usually seen as a bush with many stems. 



The whitebeam, like the mountain ash, is occasionally found as an epiphyte 

 growing on other trees, where its seeds have been dropped by birds. Though this is 

 more common in the damp climate of the west of England, yet we know of two 

 cases which are remarkable on account of their situation. One is in the Yew Tree Vale 

 in Surrey, where a whitebeam is growing near the top of a yew tree ; * the other is 

 near Colesborne in the Cotswold Hills. In this case a large limb has been torn by 

 the wind from a Scots pine, and in the crevice on the east side of the tree, where 

 but very little vegetable matter has yet had time to form, a healthy young 

 whitebeam, now about 3 feet high, grew for seven or eight years, when it began to 

 lose vigour. 



Though it is well known that the decaying mossy trunk of a fallen tree is one of 

 the most favourable situations for the seeds of many conifers to germinate and grow, 

 yet in this case the roots of the whitebeam must derive their nourishment almost 

 entirely from the air, the case being very different from those so often seen in the 

 Himalayas and other countries, where a large quantity of moss, ferns, and decaying 

 vegetable matter accumulate in the forks of large old trees. 



The whitebeam is easily propagated by seed, which, if sown in autumn, will 

 germinate partly in the following spring and partly in the second year after sowing. 

 The seedlings grow slowly at first, and require five or six years in the nursery before 

 they are large enough to plant out. When planted on good soil the whitebeam is 

 a very ornamental tree, both on account of its leaves and fruit, which is larger and 

 more abundant than when wild. It is, however, so much liked by birds that it is 

 soon eaten up. 



Timber 



The wood is hard, heavy, and even in the grain, and is white in colour, with 

 some dark spots, and in old trees becomes occasionally tinged with red. It is used 

 on the Continent in turnery and in making tools. 



Loudon says that it was used for the axletrees, naves, and felloes of wheels, 

 carpenters' tools, and walking-sticks, but that the greatest use of its wood, until iron 

 superseded it, was for the cogs of small wheels. I have felled a tree 18 inches in 

 diameter, which when cut through was perfectly sound at heart, and was considered 

 to be well suited for chair-making. 



' Garden, 1882, xxii. 164. 



