FLORA 



AND SYLVA. 



Vol. I. No. 9.] 



DECEMBER, 190 3. 



[Monthly. 



MAST OR BRUSHWOOD? 

 There is a mistake running through the 

 whole of our planting, which does infi- 

 nite harm from an artistic and even a cul- 

 tural point of view, and which is as diffi- 

 cult to eradicate as Twitch or Bishops- 

 weed. It is the common way of insisting 

 that every precious tree we have should 

 be planted as an isolated specimen on 

 the grass. The other day in an interest- 

 ing garden I saw a noble Monterey Pine 

 (P. insignis), a tree about seventy years 

 old and in perfect health, but instead of 

 a stem such as a great Pine ought to 

 show, its branches were massed close to 

 the ground like a huge bush and one 

 could scarcely get under them. Thus 

 the tree afforded an immense leverage 

 for rain, or wind, or (worse than all) 

 that wind-carried sleet which is so often 

 harmful to such trees. It grew in grass 

 as usual, and that it throve in the cli- 

 mate of the district was clear from its 

 healthy foliage ; but the timber was very 

 much less than it would have been if the 

 tree had been planted rightly, for, in- 

 stead of being (as in a forest Pine) massed 

 in the stem, it was wasted in twenty great 

 arms. In this way of planting, trees like 

 the Scotch Fir, the Cedar of Lebanon, 



and the Monterey Pine, grow too much 

 to branches, not losing their lower limbs 

 but pushing them out until they become 

 the enemies of the main stem. Hence 

 it is we have so many trees thrown down 

 by storms, apart from other evil results of 

 the practice. Other Pines, like the Co- 

 lumbian Fir (Abies nobilis), never assume 

 this bushy habit, but go up like arrows, 

 their lower branches getting weaker as 

 the tree grows higher; massed together, 

 as in Nature, they lose them quicker. 

 When the bare stem is seen in such trees 

 many, who have not seen the trees in 

 their native home, complain as to their 

 loss of health, whereas they are merely 

 throwing off tired branches for which 

 they have no further need. In the case 

 of nearly all forest trees, and the Pines 

 more than any, it is a distinct gain in 

 beauty to show the stem. The column 

 or stemmed trees escape the wind, and 

 do not suffer from exposure or from 

 being set on grass, which during sum- 

 mers of light rainfall takes all the mois- 

 ture. In Nature they shelter each other, 

 and the mast-like stems are sufficient to 

 uphold them in any storm. What is the 

 remedy for the mistake so often made 

 in their planting ? Certainly grouping 



