1672 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



In the west garden at Hatfield House, Herts, there is a remarkable pergola of 

 the common lime, about 280 yards long, and 10 ft. wide. The trees, which are 

 pruned every year, stand 1 2 ft. apart in the row on each side, and are 7^ ft. high. 



In some parts of England, especially in Essex and Herts, the lime is infested by 

 mistletoe, which often kills the branches and causes irregular excrescences, which 

 sometimes have an elongated gourd-like shape. A remarkable specimen of this, 

 taken from a tree in front of Spains Hall, the seat of A. W. Ruggles-Brise, Esq., in 

 Essex, is now in the Forestry Museum at Cambridge, It was stated in the 

 Gardeners Chronicle^ in answer to an inquiry by me, that such swellings are 

 abundant on the limes at Hampton Court and at Dropmore, where Mr. Page states 

 that a large tree was cut down on account of it being in a dying condition. 



In Scotland ^ the lime is at many places almost as fine as in England. An 

 immense tree growing at Kinloch, Meigle, is, as I am told by Sir John Kinloch, 

 about 90 ft. by 21 ft., and spreads over an area of a hundred yards in circumference. 

 A wide-spreading lime at Gordon Castle, which is known as the Duchess' tree, 

 measures about 89 ft. high and 1 7 ft. 4 in. in girth ; its layered branches form a dense 

 mass of shoots and have not been trained into trees like the lime at Knole. Their 

 total circumference is not less than 126 paces, so that it covers as large an area of 

 ground as the Newbattle beech.^ This tree is mentioned in Old and Remarkable 

 Trees as having been, in 1867, 70 ft. by 16^ ft. at 3 ft., the circumference of the 

 branches being 310 ft. There is a wide-spreading common lime at Pitfirrane, near 

 Dunfermline, of which the gardener, Mr. Percy Brown, has sent us a photograph. It 

 was, in 191 2, 74 ft. high, and 1 3 ft. 3 in. in girth, the circumference around the branches 

 being 298 ft. At Leny there are some fine limes, one of which I found to be 105 ft. by 

 12 ft. 3 in., which, at such a high elevation above the sea, is remarkable. At Ancrum, 

 near Roxburgh, Mr. Renwick saw a common lime 17 ft. 3 in. in girth in 1909. 



At Roseneath, near the great silver firs (see p. 729), is an old avenue of large- 

 leaved limes, covered with such a mass of small spray that it was impossible to see 

 the bark near the ground, and one of these, measured over the spray with the tape 

 as tight as I could make it, was no less than 24 ft. There are some fine lime trees 

 of great size in the park at Taymouth Castle. 



In Ireland we have seen no limes of remarkable size, and the tree never seems 

 to have been so generally planted as in England. There is an avenue of fair-sized 

 trees at Muckross Abbey ; and Loudon mentions a tree in the park at Charleville 

 forest, Co. Meath, which was reported at that time to be no ft. high and 5^ ft. in 

 diameter at i ft. from the ground. At Rossanagh a remarkable tree was growing in 

 1908 which, as I was informed by Mr. W. T. Tighe, was blown down about 1825. 

 His grandfather had it pulled up into a leaning position, and placed a large boulder 

 over the roots to keep it firm. It now leans at an angle of about 40°, and has 

 grown into a flat trunk 6 ft. wide on the side but only 14 ft. 10 in. in girth. It is 

 about 100 ft. in height and twice as large in girth as any other of the trees in the 

 same line, which appear to have been planted at the same time. 



1 Card. Chron. xli. 240, 257 (1907). 2 cf. Christison, in Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. xix. 494 (1893). 



3 Vol. I. p. 23, Plates 8, 9. 



