1342- The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



12. Var. virgata, Caspary, op. cit. xiv. 125 (1873). 



Abies excelsa, De Candolle, var. virgata, Jacques, in Ann. Soc. Hort. Paris, xliv. 653 (1853). 



Abies excelsa Cranstonii, Knight and Perry, Syn. Conif. 36 (1850). 



Picea excelsa, Link, var. denudata, Carrifere, in Rev. Hort. iii. 102, fig. 7 (1854). 



Branches very few and usually not in whorls, elongated, straight or curved, 

 with very few or without branchlets. Leaves radially arranged, either longer or 

 shorter than in the common spruce, persistent ten or twelve years. 



This variety,^ which is known as the snake spruce, owes its peculiarities to the 

 arrest of nearly all the buds, which do not develop. Most of the examples recorded 

 are young trees, but one ' forty years old at Buttes, near Neuveville in the Swiss 

 Jura, was 40 ft. high in 1898. The snake spruce is not uncommon in Norway, 

 where Schubeler found it in seventeen localities between lat. 59^° and 6i^° ; and also 

 occurs here and there in Sweden between lat. 58° and 63°. Isolated examples are 

 reported from Finland, Livland, and Courland which are probably P. obovata ; and 

 others occur in different parts of Germany. It is common in Bohemia; and one 

 example is known in Moravia. Schroter mentions seventeen trees growing in ten 

 localities in Switzerland. Carriere knew only one example, growing in Cochet's 

 nursery at Suynes, near Brie-Comte-Robert, in Seine-et-Marne. 



Varieties intermediate between the snake spruce and vars. pendula, monstrosa, 

 and viminalis also occur, but are very rare. 



13. Var, monstrosa, Schroter, op. cit. 170 (1898). (Not Carriere.*) 



Abies excelsa, De Candolle, var. monstrosa, Loudon, ^r^. et Prut. Brit. iv. 2295 (1838). 



Abies aclada, Salvi, in Flora, 1844, p. 519. 



Picea excelsa. Link, var. monocauUs, Nordlinger, ex Willkomm, Forstl. Flora, 76 (1887). 



This variety, which never develops any lateral branches, has a single thickened 

 stem, bearing leaves near the apex, persistent for many years, and about i^ in. 

 in length. 



This variety was first described by Loudon, who mentions a single specimen 

 growing in the Chiswick garden, twelve years planted, and about 3 ft. in height. 

 A specimen at High Canons, Hertford, produced cones of the ordinary form in* 

 1907. Salvi found in 1842 four specimens, growing wild in the Euganean Hills, 

 west of Padua. One of these which was transplanted to I sola Bella in Lake Maggiore, 

 where I saw it in 1909, is attached to a bamboo, and trained up the wall of the chateau ; 

 it measures about 30 ft, in height and is nearly as thick (i-i^ inch) at the top as at 

 the bottom, bearing leaves with very sharp points only on the upper two feet of 

 the stem. Schroter records another specimen at Stockach in Baden, another in 

 Bohemia, and another at Ansbach in Bavaria. A form of this variety is recorded 



1 An analogous form of the common silver fir, Abies pecHnata, var. virgata, Caspary, in Bot. Zeit. 778, t. ix. (1882), 

 occurs ; but only four examples are known — two in Alsace, one in the Bohemian forest, and another in the Swiss Jura near 

 Neuveville. The latter is described and figured by Schroter, op. cit. 168, fig. 15 (1898). Cf. vol. iv. p. 722. 



2 The oldest known to Schroter was one near Dorpat, in Livland, said by Berg, in Schrf. Naturf. Ges. Univ. DorpcU, 

 ii. t. 2 (1887), to be sixty years old. 



3 Carriere, Conif. 248 (1855), wrongly applied the name monstrosa to var. virgata, Caspary. 



4 According to Card. Chron. xxv. 146 (1886), var. monstrosa b.1 Lucombe, Pince and Co.'s Nursery, Exeter, produced 

 cones in 1886 which were similar to those of the ordinary spruce. 



