247 



Usually pines on high moor soil develop a very crooked form^ Yet 

 ihe seeds of these crippled pines, after the moor has been drained dry, grow 

 into erect trunks. Schroter and Kirchner- also state that, on too wet places 

 in the high moor, Pinus montana makes a reduced cripple growth 

 ("Kusseln"), but recovers after the water has been drained from the soil. 

 Our pines form such ("Kusseln") also on wet meadows. In the cases I 

 have observed, this form of growth was produced by the resinification of the 

 terminal bud of the main shoot, because of insect and fungus injury; there 

 then develops below this bud a number of shoots which remain short (and 

 in part some rosette 

 shoots). 



Figure 31 shows a 

 pine 48 years old which 

 came from the Liinebur- 

 ger moor and which Dr. 

 Graebner most kindly 

 placed at my disposal. 

 The height of the whole 

 tree,- — including the tops 

 and measured from the 

 root neck up, amounted 

 to 74 cm. ; the length of 

 the trunk up to the first 

 branch, 39 cm. ; the girth 

 of the trunk below the 

 lowermost branch, 8 :3 

 cm. ; the average length 

 of the needles, 2 cm. The 

 foliage of the whole tree 

 is very sparse. The 

 needles have remained 

 only on the latest shoots, 

 all the older ones have 



fallen. The branches are greatly thickened in places and cracked open 

 as a result of injury from frost. The perpendicularly growing tap 

 root is 8 cm. long to its place of horizontal bending; the largest horizontal 

 root branch, 18 cm. The branch growth is sparse and the branches have 

 sharp angles {k) and often dead tips (a). These sharp angles or bow-like 

 curves {k) arise because the branches and the main trunk have received one- 

 sided, canker-like frost wounds to which correspond an increased wood for- 

 jnation and a stretching on the opposite side. Greater frost wounds, extend- 

 ing over more than half the circumference of the axis, are found at / and /'. 



l-'iy. 30. An (juls from the Liineburger moor planted 

 after the meadow ere had been broken through. 

 The layer of meadow ore had closed later. 



r raw humus, b layer of sand 20 cm. thick, o meadow ore. 

 g yellow sand. (After Graebner.) 



1 V. Sievers, Ueber die Vererbung- von Wuchsfehlern bei Pinus silvestris. 

 Forstl.-naturwiss. Zeitschr. 1898. Part 5. 



- Lebeng-eschichte der Blutenpflanzen Mitteleuropas, Part III, 1905. p. 222. 



