1092 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



2000 ft. above the sea. It averages about 100 ft. in height, and occasionally reaches 

 1 20 ft., girthing 6 ft. to 8 ft. ; and grows usually in pure forests, but near the limits of 

 its area is mixed with other trees. 



No tree has suffered so much at the hand of man as the pitch pine. When I 

 first passed through the southern States in 1888 it formed an almost unbroken forest 

 for hundreds of miles along the railway, but is now diminishing so rapidly, that to use 

 Sargent's words, " it seems hopelessly doomed to lose its commercial importance at 

 no distant day." 



The literature of this species is very voluminous, and has been largely quoted 

 by Sargent and Loudon ; but as it seems impossible to cultivate in this country, we 

 need not say much about it, except that it has been repeatedly tried since 1 730 and 

 has usually failed to grow ^ for more than a few years. However, a tree of about 

 12 ft. high exists in a stunted state at Kew ; and another similar in size and un- 

 healthy was seen by Mr. H. Clinton-Baker in 1908 at Menabilly, Cornwall. A 

 seedling raised at Steventon and planted in the Tubney arboretum near Oxford, 

 survived about 25° of frost in the winter of 1908-9. 



I n France P. palustris ^ has been grown successfully in one place at least, as we 

 learn from an article ^ by M. Maurice de Vilmorin, who gives an excellent photograph 

 of two trees at Geneste, near Bordeaux, which were sown in 1831, and are the only 

 survivors of seventeen. In 1897 the largest was 18 metres high by 170 metre in 

 girth, the other 16 metres by 1-50 metre. Near them was a Loblolly pine, whose 

 volume was said to be twice as great, though no dimensions were mentioned. They 

 grow on the edge of the dunes near the sea, and M. de Vilmorin states that as 

 producers of timber they cannot in that region compare with P. Pinaster, which is 

 mature at forty years old, I visited Geneste, the property of Mile. Ivoy, in April 

 1909, and measured these trees carefully. The two largest are 68 ft. by 6 ft. 3 in., 

 and 59 ft. by 5 ft. They seem perfectly healthy, but bear no cones. As the tempera- 

 ture in occasional severe winters, as in 1893, descends at Bordeaux to — 16° Cent,, it 

 seems as though the want of sufficient heat in summer is the reason why this tree will 

 not grow, in England. I believe that on the coast of Portugal it would succeed well. 



On the banks of Lago Maggiore, however, in the garden of Rovelli Freres, there 

 is a pitch pine with a clean trunk measuring about 60 ft. by 5^ ft. ; and at Intra, in 

 the grounds of the Villa Barbot, I measured a still finer tree, about 75 ft. by 7 ft. 



Though the import of the timber of this species to Europe has only assumed 

 great importance in the last twenty years, it is now shipped in larger quantity than 

 any other American timber, Marshall Ward * identified the pitch pine of commerce 

 with P. rigida, which it certainly is not ; but Laslett himself was evidently writing 

 of the true pitch pine, which he said came chiefly from the ports of Savannah, 

 Darien, and Pensacola, where P- rigida is not found. He says it was much used 

 for masts in shipbuilding, and in architecture wherever long, straight, and large 



1 Webster in ffardy Coniferous Trees, 95 {1896), says a few specimens have done well at Penrhyn and Woburn. There 

 are no trees of this species at either place, the tree named P. australis at Penrhyn being P. ponderosa. 



2 According to ^«». Hort. Paris, xix. 212, quoted by Loudon, Card. Mag. xv. 236 (1839), the species may be grafted 

 on P. Laricio, and is then rendered much hardier. 



3 Garden and Forest, x. 112 (1897). 4 Laslett, 7im6er and Timber Trees, 367 (1894). 



