276 



FLORA AND SYLVA. 



picturesque disorder, with the Cluster Pine 

 (P. Pinaster) serving for foil and background, 

 it seems an essential feature in the southern 

 landscape, gracing with equal charm the classic 

 ruins of Rome's lost empire or Nature's fretted 

 fragments around her shores. Oftenest, and 

 best, the tree is found in scattered groups 

 about the villages skirting the coast, always a 

 thing of beauty and valued by the peasant for 

 their seed, — used to enrich his soup or the 

 homely cakes prepared for festal days — while 

 the empty cones kindle his fire and warm 

 his heart with their crackle and fragrance. 

 Throughout the summer's glare he welcomes 

 its shade, while the cygale hidden within its 

 creviced bark rings out the live-long day its 

 chirping cry, varied only by the sudden rend- 

 ing of the ripening cones. More rarely the 

 trees are massed until their spreadingbranches 

 touch in unbroken canopy, but this is oftenest 

 where it creeps down to the sandy shores that 

 bound the tossing blue, its stout limbs careless 

 of the breeze until the roots dip in the brine 

 itself. Such a forest was once the glory of the 

 town of Cannes, skirting the plain of Laval 

 from St. Cassien to La Bocca; but the railway 

 cut it through and only scattered groups recall 

 the beauties past. Similar and larger forests 

 known as the " Pineta," — their glories sung 

 by generations of poets, extend for miles upon 

 the sandy salt-washed tracts of the Adriatic, 

 about Ravenna — "Queen of the Marshes," 

 where immense quantities of fruit are gathered 

 yearly. The neighbourhood of Rome is noted 

 for its groups of Stone Pine, while many of the 

 finest individual trees exist within that "little 

 land apart," lying between Toulon and San 

 Raphael, amid the sheltered gorges of the 

 Mountains of the Moors. 



Valued and cultivated from the 

 Range. earliest times for its sweet nut- 

 like seeds — charred remains and rude drawings 

 of them having been dug up in Pompeii and 

 Herculaneum — the Stone Pine is spread over 

 a wide area in Europe and Asia, though Italy 

 would seem to be the centre of its distribution, 

 and here alone it reaches the lofty and majestic 

 form which singles it out as "the Italian Pine." 

 From scattered groups amid the hills of south- 

 ern France and above Genoa, it increases to 

 forests around Florence, growing freely from 

 the foot of the Alps to Sicily upon every sunny 



hill and sandy sea-board, rarely rising above 

 1,500 feet, while 3,000 feet in the south is its 

 extreme of altitude. From Italy it passes the 

 Adriatic to the western shores of Greece and 

 its archipelago, and thence more sparingly 

 through Croatia and Syria into Asia, where its 

 range is unknown, though the tree is certainly 

 plentiful in parts of China. Westward it is 

 scattered through northern Africa to Madeira 

 and the Canary Islands, is common in parts of 

 Spain and Portugal, forming forests in Cata- 

 lonia, while northward it is found wild in the 

 Rhone valley and amid the Carpathians. Cul- 

 tivated trees are hardy in many parts and as far 

 north as Paris where they have frequently re- 

 sisted severe cold. Introduced into Chili and 

 other parts of America, it thrives freely upon 

 the mild Pacific coast, while in South Africa, 

 particularly around Capetown, it is firmly es- 

 tablished and flourishing. 



The old trees seen here and 

 Character. .1 • , 



there measure at times nearly 



100 feet in height, but less than half this is 

 usual, and even in the south many years pass 

 before they reach the size of timber trees. Nor 

 is the wood in demand save for common uses, 

 though clean, free of resin, and easily worked; 

 at one time used for masts and boat-building it 

 is now quite discarded, and the tree valued 

 mainly for its fruits and the balsam extracted 

 from its resin. The nut-like seeds, nearly an 

 inch long, of which there are 90 to 100 in a 

 single cone, are of soft rich flavour, shut within 

 very hard shells, and embedded in the scales ot 

 the cone from which they are freed with diffi- 

 culty. The cones are large, light red in colour, 

 with very thick scales, and take three full years 

 to mature before bursting naturally ; immature 

 cones are sometimes roasted and broken open, 

 but the unripe seeds are poor in flavour, and 

 while the nuts will keep for years within the 

 cone they quickly spoil upon exposure. Spite 

 of its more pyramidal habit the Cluster Pine 

 [Pinus Pinaster) often passes for Pinus Pinea 

 amongst those unfamiliar with the true Stone 

 Pine, whose leaves are shorter, less tufted, and 

 more erect than in the first, of a deeper green 

 also, while the cones are quite unlike. 



Though perhaps the earliest 

 of foreign Pines to reach our 

 shores, the Stone Pine has remained rare with 

 us and left few traces of age, owing to its slow 



In Britain. 



