CXVI.— THE WHITE BEAM. 
Pyriis Aria Ehrhart. 
W E do not expect to see snowdrifts in May. Blackthorn winter is then over 
and the Beech-trees may be already green when we see on the brow of some 
chalk hill or the ledges of some limestone escarpment what looks at first sight like 
some lingering snow-wreath. It is the white under surfaces of the leaves of the 
White Beam {Pyrus Aria Ehrhart) which the wind has turned towards us. The white 
flowers, which may also be out at this season, combine to entitle this shrub, with its 
long flexible branches, to its Hampshire names Hoar Wiihy and White Rice [Rice 
meaning a shrub), to Evelyn’s name for it, Whiteleaf or to the general name of 
White Beam. As the species is abundant thereabouts, it may well have given its 
name to the modern village of Whyteleafe in the chalk downs of Surrey ; whilst as 
“ Beam ” is merely the Old English form of the German baum., a tree, to add “ Tree ” 
to “ White Beam ” is obviously a mere pleonasm. 
A native of the mountains of Greece, and of most of the countries of Europe, 
except the extreme north, and also of Northern Africa and Western Asia, its name 
Aria., which it has borne since the days of Theophrastus, may possibly refer to 
Khorassan, the country which was known in ancient times by that name. The 
French name Alouchier has been connected with alluchon, a cog, the tough wood 
of the White Beam being used for making cogs among other articles of turnery ; 
but the form Alisier and the German Arlasbaum have also been derived from some 
supposed mediaeval forms, such as aliarius and arloxerius. The shrub is so 
distinctively at home in exposed elevated situations that Bauhin’s name Sorbus alpina 
is decidedly appropriate, while the Dutch Bergsorbenboom is only a translation from 
this Latin form. Of the many local names which this species bears in the British 
Isles, Cumberland Hawthorn would seem to be merely one of Gerard’s deliberate 
coinages ; whilst Sea Ouler, quoted by Parkinson as in use in the same part of 
England, is merely Sea Alder, the leaves being not unlike in form to those of the 
Alder, while the shrub itself is specially luxuriant on the exposed seaward front of 
the limestone hills of Cumberland and Lancashire. We may recall that when Tom 
the chimney-sweep in Kingsley’s “ Water Babies ” climbed down the limestone 
ledges of Lewthwaite Crag, 
“He came to a bank of beautiful shrubs : whitebeam with its great silver-backed leaves, and mountain ash, and oak." 
On these hills of north-western England the White Beam grows at altitudes of 
1,500 feet, and its structure exhibits several marked adaptations against cold and 
damp. The older bark is smooth and red-brown ; but the young shoots have a 
white mealy surface with conspicuous lenticels or cork-warts of a paler hue. The 
dwarf-shoots or spurs, given off at angles of about 45*^, are also downy and bear 
leaves clustered in tufts, preceded by downy buds with leathery scales exuding a 
