58 PINES 
P. DENSIFLORA AND P. THUNBERGII.— 
Like strange mechanical grotesques 
Making fantastic arabesques, O. Wixve. 
These are the trees that the Japanese in particular 
exercise all their topiarian ingenuity upon, by 
trimming, distorting, or dwarfing them into all 
sorts and shapes of whimsical ornamentation. 
‘They are the Red and Black Pine respectively, and 
also the so-called Japanese representatives of our 
Scots and Austrian Pine respectively. As the date 
of their landing here was some fifty or sixty years ago, 
in the seed-stage, they have not had quite a sufficient 
time to make a reputation for themselves. Both seem 
hardy, and the P. Thunbergii is fast heaping up for 
itself—as surely even as it gathers together by the 
power attraction of its roots, the shifting sands of the 
sea—a character as a coast-line success that threatens 
to dispute the sovereignty of the sand dunes with 
its long-established presiding monarch, the Maritime 
Pine. 
Both these Pines have been ladled out in time past 
by nurserymen as P. Massoniana, and wrongly called. 
Lambert’s P. Massoniana is, as far as we can gather, 
still rather a mystery. It is probably a long-leaved 
more southern growing Chinese tree, and if it is in 
cultivation—and some of us fondly imagine that we 
have it—it is too early days to discuss its possibilities. 
P. Thunbergii is most noticeable for its curiously 
twisted leaves, but the similarly twisted leaves of the 
- P. Densiflora are of softer texture than the P. Thun- 
bergii. The long filaments of the basal sheath, which 
are shared in common by both, mark them out from 
other two-leaved Pines—as, for instance, the Scots, 
or Corsican Pine. Then there is the difference of 
barks, the one (P. Densiflora) red and the other 
(P. Thunbergii) dark grey ; the colours of their shoots 
