95 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



mediate between that species and A. glutinosa. The branchlets are glabrous and 

 covered with wax glands. This hybrid, which in general aspect strongly resembles 

 A. cordata, but is readily distinguished by the thinner leaves, not cordate at the 

 base, appears to be very vigorous in growth at Kew, where there is a tree growing 

 beside the lake, which is 72 feet in height and 5 feet in girth. The bark is like 

 that of A. cordata, being greyish in colour and slightly warty on the surface. 



Alnus cordata has a very restricted distribution, being confined to Corsica and 

 southern Italy. In Corsica it ascends to 3000 feet, as at Vizzavona, where I saw 

 it in a beech forest, growing not only beside a stream, but also on the side of the 

 hill at some little distance off. Here the trees were about 70 feet high and 5 feet in 

 girth, with clean timber to 50 feet, and were narrowly pyramidal in habit, with 

 ascending branches. It grows in southern Italy from the Bay of Naples south- 

 wards ; and according to Tenore occurs both on marshy ground and in the 

 mountains. It forms woods on Mt. Serino. 



This elegant species, with foliage somewhat resembling at a distance that of the 

 Caucasian lime, which is retained late in the autumn, was introduced, according to 

 Loudon, 1 in 1820. It flowers in March, before the leaves appear; and seems to 

 grow as fast and to be as hardy as the common alder. 



It supports well the climate of the north of France ; and at Nancy, where 

 the winters are severe, flowers and fruits regularly, and has attained 7 inches in 

 diameter after twelve years' growth. According to Mouillefert, 2 it succeeds better 

 on dry soils than either the common or the grey alder ; and has been planted on 

 the chalky soil of Champagne, where it is treated as coppice with a short revolution. 

 At Grignon it has borne 4 Fahr. without injury, but suffered in 1880, when 

 the temperature fell to 13 Fahr. Here on poor chalky soil it has attained, at 

 thirty-five years old, 48 feet in height and 2 feet 8 inches in girth ; and on better 

 soil, 64 feet by 3 feet 1 inch. 



The finest tree that we have seen of this species grows on the lawn at Tottenham 

 House, Savernake, Wilts, and is a well-shaped tree, measuring no less than 69 feet 

 high by 9 feet 3 inches in girth at four feet from the ground (Plate 254). When 

 Elwes found it on April 3, 1908, it was in full flower, and covered with the cones of 

 the previous year. It does not appear to be a very old tree, and is growing in a 

 deep and rather heavy soil overlying chalk, at an elevation of about 400 feet. 



In the new park at Merton Hall, Thetford, a tree, growing in a wind-swept 

 situation, on very dry, light, sandy soil, measured in 1908, 50 feet high and 10 feet 

 in girth, with a spread of branches 56 feet in diameter. Lord Walsingham believes 

 that this tree was planted about 1843, as the new park was enclosed in the preceding 

 year. The bark at the base is deeply fissured and scaly. 



1 Arb. et Frut. Brit. 1689 (1838); but in Loudon, Gard. Mag. 1837, p. 143, and 1839, p. 39, a tree at Britwell 

 House, Bucks, growing on gravelly soil, was reported to be 60 feet high ; and this would show that the date of introduction 

 was earlier than 1820. So far as we can learn, this tree no longer exists. 



2 Essences Forestiires, 252 (1903). However, two trees at Verrieres near Paris, about 80 years old, have only attained 

 60 feet in height and 5 feet 8 inches in girth ; and M. Philippe L. de Vilmorin states (Hortus Vilmorinianus, 54 (1906)), 

 that their growth seems to have come long ago to a standstill. 



