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EXOTIC CONIFERS IN BRITAIN* 



Although Great Britain has only a small percentage of forest 

 land, she is able to show a great variety of extra-European 

 species of trees, many specimens of which have attained to a 

 size that is probably not equalled elsewhere in Europe. It 

 must be said, however, that much more attention has been given 

 to the introduction of conifers than of dicotyledons, a result 

 doubtless due to the fact that the humid climate of Britain is 

 pre-eminently adapted to the requirements of the former class 

 of trees. There seem to be, speaking generally, three out- 

 standing features in the exotic coniferous trees of Great 

 Britain. : — (i) Their age ; in a large number of cases we possess 

 the oldest specimens in Europe. (2) Their size ; the rate of 

 growth being usually very satisfactory. (3) Their abundance ; 

 the number of places where important collections of well- 

 matured conifers are to be found being counted by hundreds. 



Of the species of trees now growing in Britain only a few are 

 known to have been present in pre-glacial, inter-glacial, and 

 post-glacial times. With regard to some of these it may be said 

 that although they are present in Britain to-day, and were 

 undoubtedly present in pre-Roman times, it is possible that 

 they became extinct in prehistoric times to be afterwards intro- 

 duced by the Romans, or in the period subsequent to the 

 Norman Conquest. This is certainly true of Picea excelsa, 

 Rhamnus frangula, Pyrus torminalis, Pyrus aria, and Carpinus 

 Betulus, whose remains have been found in pre-glacial deposits, 

 but not in the peat bogs or other deposits of post-glacial times. 

 The Spruce is believed to have been re-introduced by man in 

 the sixteenth century. Perhaps it is fair to assume that trees 

 met with in the peat bogs and fluviatile and lacustrine deposits 



* Translation of a paper contributed by Dr. Sometville to the Congress of Forestry 

 Experimental Stations, Vienna, September, 1903. 



