Picea 1349 



stems are covered with trees which have sprung from seeds germinating in the moss 

 on these trunks. Goppert mentions one about 50 ft. long on which he counted thirty- 

 six living trees of various ages from 4 ft. to 80 ft. high. On another 70 ft. long, there 

 were thirty-two trees from eighty to one hundred years old, all of which had their 

 roots resting on the fallen tree which had given them birth. Such examples are 

 figured in his plates vii., viii., and ix. 



Another form is shown in plate ii., figs. 7, 8, and 9, which illustrate trees which 

 have grown from seeds falling on stumps of broken or dead trees at a considerable 

 height from the ground, and which have forced their roots down through the decaying 

 wood, in one case from a height of 16 feet, to the ground. When the stump decayed 

 the roots were strong enough to support the young tree, which eventually was left 

 standing like a Pandanus on a pyramid of its own roots. 



In some cases, as shown in plate iv., fig. 11, two trees which had originated 

 separately on the same stump became perfectly inarched at the root. Plate iv., fig. 

 12, shows a remarkable instance of a stump no less than 6 ft. in diameter, which 

 had become covered with a thick layer of moss, and assumed the appearance of a 

 gigantic mushroom, on the top of which no less than seven young spruces from 2 to 

 40 ft. high were growing without their roots having reached the ground at all. 



Plate ix., fig. 22, proves, according to Goppert, the immense period which may 

 elapse in these forests before the fallen trees are absolutely decayed and resolved 

 into humus. It shows. A, a fallen tree, of which the wood was nearly all dissolved into 

 long brown pieces, only held together by the overgrowing thick moss, into something 

 like the original shape of the trunk ; jff is a tree which had fallen on the top of it at a 

 later period, and was decayed about half through ; C is a living tree estimated at 

 300 years old, which had germinated on B, and buried its roots partly in and partly 

 on one side of it. Goppert believes that from 1000 to 1200 years may have 

 elapsed since the germination of the lowest tree, A ; but it seems to me that even if 

 it was 400 years old when it fell, the second, B, may have fallen soon afterwards, and 

 owe the slower decay of its wood to the comparative dryness of its position 

 above A. Still it proves that the decay of such a comparatively soft wood as spruce 

 or silver fir (the species is not in this case specified) is extraordinarily slow under the 

 conditions prevalent in these forests. 



As a proof of its slowness of growth in some instances Forstmeister John 

 remarked that the spruce in the densest parts of the forest attained an age of 

 120 to 160 years without exceeding 5 to 7 in. in diameter. I have myself cut 

 in Norway a spruce which showed over forty annual rings, and was still thin enough 

 to serve as a walking-stick, which I used through three seasons of elk-hunting before 

 it broke under my weight. 



In the Bohmerwald the spruce comes to perfection at a higher level than the 

 beech and silver fir, from 3000 to 3400 feet ; and in the Kubany forest there are 

 thousands of trees from 120 to 150 ft. high, and 12 to 16 ft. in girth. It attains a 

 greater age than the silver fir, some trees showing no less than 700 annual rings, 

 though still quite sound. From 3600 ft. up to the highest peaks, which in this range 

 of mountains attain little over 4500 ft., the spruce changes its habit, the stems 



