CHAPTER VI. 



CONIFERS FOR ECONOMIC PLANTING.^ 



Out of about two hundred species of conifers that have been 

 described in this book it is a rather strange fact that not 

 twenty can be recommended for economic planting, or, in 

 other words, for the value of the timber they produce. 

 Equally strange, too, is it that, with perhaps one exception, 

 the very trees the timber of which is imported in such large 

 quantities to this country for constructive purposes have 

 received but little attention at the hands of the British planter, 

 being found unsuitable in one way or another for extensive 

 planting in almost every part of the country. 



From long personal experience the following are the only 

 species, so far as is known, that can be recommended where 

 the value of the timber produced is a point of first considera- 

 tion. 



The Comnrion Larch {Larix europcea) has no equal 

 as a profitable timber conifer in this country, and I make this 

 statement after years of note-taking and comparison of it with 

 three other conifers whose merits place them high in the rank 

 of such as are suitable for economic planting. Some of the 

 valuable properties of this tree are as follows : First, no 

 other conifer is so valuable in a young state, as from the first 

 the thinnings can be utilised for stakes, temporary fencing, 

 and other purposes, and this can be said of no other conifer 

 grown in our woods, at least the durability of the timber 

 would not in any other tree be sufficient to repay the cost of 

 erecting or otherwise converting. 



1 Condensed from my paper read at the Chiswick Conifer Conference ; and con- 

 tained in the "Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society," vol. xiv., 1892. 



