414 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



practically untouched by the axe, and contains many very old trees of peculiar 



habit. 



The Laricio grows with extreme slowness in the mountains of Corsica, trees 

 40 inches in diameter averaging about 360 years old, and those over 5 feet in 

 diameter are often as much as 700 years. 



The timber of young trees is valueless in Corsica, as it contains practically 

 only sapwood, which rapidly decays on exposure to the air. The sapwood is white 

 in colour, and always considerable in thickness, varying on an average from 8 inches 

 in young trees {^^ years old) to 2 to 3 inches in old trees (250 years old and 

 upwards). The heartwood, which is reddish brown, only develops in quantity when 

 the trees attain an advanced age, exceptionally at 120 to 150 years, usually at 300 

 years. At the latter age the trees average 3 feet in diameter, and are considered 

 to be mature and at the most profitable period for felling. Most of the timber is 

 exported in the form of logs to Italy, where it is much esteemed, and is used for 

 shipbuilding purposes generally. The logs are squared in the forest, all the sapwood 

 being chipped off except a little at the four corners. Saleable logs must be at least 

 23 feet in length, and have a minimum section at the small end of i square foot. 

 They fetch at Bastia, after a long haulage by road and railway, 36 to 40 francs per 

 cubic metre, or about lod. to iid. per cubic foot. A small proportion of the timber 

 in the forests is cut up into planks and joists for local use. The timber is very 

 strong but heavy, and often contains a great deal of resin ; when of the first quality 

 it is considered to be as good as American pitch pine. It is very seldom used in 

 France, and the reasons for this are not very clear. 



I could obtain no information as to the collection of the seed of Lat'icio in 

 Corsica, though I made inquiries when visiting the forests and also at the Con- 

 servator's ofifice in Ajaccio. Mr. M. L. de Vilmorin, however, kindly informs me in 

 a letter that the annual collection amounts to about three or four tons, of which his 

 firm disposes of about one-half The main localities for collecting are near Corte 

 and Calacuccia, and at Vivario, which is not far from Vizzavona. The cones are put 

 in the ovens which the villagers use for drying chestnuts, and as the amount of heat 

 is not regulated with any precision, the seed is often over-heated. Though the crop 

 of cones in the forest varies very much in different years, there has been no difficulty 

 so far in procuring always a quantity of seed sufficient to meet the demand. 



In Sardinia the Corsican pine is recorded from only one locality, the valley of 

 the Flumini Maggiore, where it was collected by Moris. ^ 



Calabrian Pine. — In Sicily the Corsican pine is common, according to 

 Schouw,^ on Mount Etna, where it forms woods between 4000 and 6000 

 feet. It is, however, in Calabria, in Sila and Aspromonte, that Laricio occurs 

 in abundance, and there is little doubt that the tree here is identical with that of 

 Corsica. Schouw,'- who compared specimens from the botanical garden at Naples 

 with the large Corsican pine growing in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, is convinced 

 of their absolute identity. Longo, who has recently written an article ' on the flora 



1 ParlaKire, Fl. Italiana, iv. 53 (1S67). Moris's specimens, though without flowers or f.uit, are probably Laricio 

 according to Parlatore. 2 Ann. Sd. Nat., Ill Ser., hi. 234 (1845). 3 ^„„^,,, j, /,v<,;„„, iii. i.,;, tt. 1-6 (1905)' 



