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io The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland be expected, in this variety are considerably larger than those of the ordinary form. Van rotundifolia, Round-leaved Beech. 1 The leaves are very small, round, and bright green, and are set close on the twigs. This variety has an upright habit of growth, and was introduced in 1894 by Jackman of Woking. Var. grandidentata.—A form with conspicuously toothed leaves. Var. pemhila, Loddiges, Weeping Beech. Several forms of this variety occur, but in all the smaller branches hang down. The main branches are irregularly disposed, so that the tree often has a very rugged outline. This variety should be grafted at a good height, as otherwise many of the pendulous branches will lie upon the ground; and the main branches, if they show a tendency to droop too much, should be supported. Weeping beeches may be tall and slender, or low and broad, or quite irregular, depending upon the direction of the larger branches, which may grow outwards or upwards, or in almost any direction; the smaller branches only are uniformly pendulous. The weeping beech has been observed wild in the forest of Brotonne, in Seine- InfeYieure, France. A good example of a tall, slender, weeping beech may be seen near Wimbledon Common, on the estate lately owned by Sir W. Peek. A fine specimen occurs at Barton, which in 1904 was 77 feet high and 5 feet 2 inches in girth. Elwes has noted a very picturesque and well-shaped one at Endsleigh, near Tavistock, the Devonshire seat of the Duke of Bedford. Several have been figured in the Gardeners Chronicle, e.g. a group of three trees 2 at Ash wick Hall, Gloucestershire, which were planted about 1860. In the Knap Hill Nursery 3 at Woking, and in the nursery 4 of R. Smith and Co. at Worcester, there are fine specimens. Another good specimen, 5 occurring in Dickson's nursery at Chester, is figured in the Garden. Many forms of weeping beech have been described as sub - varieties, as purpurea pendula, mentioned above; var. miltonensis, with branches less pendulous, found wild in Milton Park, Northamptonshire; var. borneyensis, found wild in the forest of Borney, near Metz, and described as having an erect stem and distinctly pendulous branches; var. pagnyensis, discovered in the forest of Pagny in the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle in France; var. remillyensis, found in the forest of Remilly, near Metz. Var. tortuosa, Parasol Beech.6 In this curious form, the branches, both large and small, and the branchlets are all directed towards the ground. It is not to be confounded with the preceding variety, in which only the slender branches are pendulous ; and is analogous rather to the weeping ash. Beeches of this form have, even in old age, a very short and twisted stem, with a hemispherical crown, which sometimes touches the ground ; and it scarcely ever grows higher than io feet. This variety has been found wild in France, in the forest of Verzy, near Rheims, and also 1 Gard- MaS- ' 894. P- 339, with figure. 2 Card. Chron. June 20, 1903, fig. 155. 3 Hid. Dec. 24, 1870, p. 70. < Ibid. Dec. 29, 1900, suppl. « Garden, Dec. 5, 1903, p. 167. 0 For a complete account of the occurrence of this curious form in the forests of the east of France, see Godron, Les Metres tortillards des environs de Nancy, Mem. de 1'Acad. de Stanislas, Nancy, 1869. Godron says that their growth is infinitely slower than that of normal beech. See also Rev. Hort., 1861, p. 84, and 1864, p. 127. Fagus 11 in the neighbourhood of Nancy. Fruits of this form have been sown in the garden of the Forest School of Nancy, and have reproduced the twisted form in about the pro portion of three - fifths; the other two-fifths of the fruit produced form like the common beech and intermediate varieties. 1 Many other varieties have been described ; and other forms possibly occur wild which have not been noticed. Major M'Nair sent to Kew in 1872 from Brookwood, Knaphill, Surrey, a specimen from a tree growing there, and reported to be in vigorous health, in which the leaves are remarkably small and have only four pairs of lateral nerves. (A. H.) DISTRIBUTION The beech is indigenous to England. Remains of it have been found in neolithic deposits at Southampton docks, Crossness in Essex, in Fenland, in pre- glacial deposits in the Cromer forest bed, and at Happisburgh, Norfolk. 2 Names of places of Saxon origin, in which the word beech occurs are very common, as Buckingham, Buxton. Boxstead, Boxford, Bickleigh, Boking, etc. The exist ence of the beech in Britain in ancient times has been questioned on account of the statement by Julius Caesar 3 that Fagus did not occur in England. H. J. Long 4 has discussed what tree the Romans meant by Fagus, and the evidence is conflicting. Pliny 5 described as Fagus a tree which is plainly the common beech. However, Virgil's 6 statement that Castanea by grafting would produce fagos indicates rather that Fagus was a name used for the sweet chestnut; and this view is confirmed by the fact that out of the wood of Fagus the Romans made vine-props and wine-casks. The Latin word Fagus is derived immediately from the Greek $17705; and the $17705 of Theophrastus is certainly the chestnut, probably the wild tree which is indigenous to the mountains of Greece. Caesar's statement probably implies that in his day the sweet chestnut did not occur in Britain. The beech is not believed to be indigenous in Scotland and Ireland, 7 and no evidence is forthcoming of its occurrence in prehistoric deposits in those countries. An able writer in Woods and Forests ( 1884, June n, p. 404) contests this view, and speaks of the existence of two beech woods in the north of Scotland, not io miles from the most easterly point of Britain, where the trees were larger than any other timber tree, not excepting the Scotch fir, and where it produced fertile seed, while that of the oak was abortive. These woods were high and exposed, but the soil was good. In view of the way in which the beech ascends in the Vosges and the Jura to cold, bleak situations, finally becoming at 4000 feet a dwarf shrub, which 1 The parasol beech, or a form closely like it, has been found in Ireland, according to a correspondent of Woods and Forests, Jan. 1885, who writes as follows :—" Near to Parkanour, in Tyrone, the residence of Mr. J. Burgess, stand two beeches, which at a short distance resemble heaps of leaves more than trees. They were found in the woods sixty years since, and are from 6 feet to 8 feet in height and 15 feet diameter, and of dense drooping habit. Upon creeping inside, I found them to branch off at 2 feet or 3 feet from the ground, where one was nearly 5 feet in circumference. The arms and branches are not unlike corkscrews. The inferior branches and matted rubbish, if cleared out, would greatly improve their appearance, as the singular growth would then be visible. They might, if sent out, become a valuable adjunct to the upright yew, which flourishes in Ireland, the finest of which I have yet seen being 24 feet high and 12 feet through, and well filled in the centre.—C. I." 2 C. Reid, Origin of British Flora, 28, 69, 146. s B. G. v. 12. 4 Loudon, Gard. Mag. 1 839, p. 9. 6 N. H. xvi. 7. 6 Georg. ii. 71. 7 The name in Irish is creaut sleamJiain, the "slippery tree," so-called from the smoothness of the bark.
12 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland forms the timber line, it would be remarkable if the beech had not in early days gained a footing in Scotland and Ireland. The mere negative evidence is of little value, as scarcely any scientific work has yet been done in the way of exploration of the peat-mosses and other recent deposits ; and the woods, from which are made the handles of numerous prehistoric implements preserved in our museums, have rarely been examined. 1 The beech occurs in a wild state throughout the greater part of Northern, Central, and Western Europe, usually growing gregariously in forests which, when undisturbed by man, have a tendency to spread and take the place of oak, which, owing to its inability to support such dense shade, is often suppressed by the beech. In Norway, according to Schubeler, 2 it is called bok, and is wild only near Laurvik, where he believes it to be truly indigenous, and is a small tree, the largest he measured being 7 feet 4 inches in girth. At Hosanger, however, a planted beech had in 1864 attained 75 feet at 81 years old, with a diameter of 27 inches. It ripens seed as far north as Trondhjem in good years, and exists in Nordland as far north as lat. 67 .56. In Sweden its most northerly wild habitat is Elfkalven, lat. 60 .35, though it has been planted as far north as lat. 64 . In Russia the beech extends only a little way, its eastern limit in Europe passing the Prussian coast of the Baltic between Elbing and Konigsberg, about 54 30' N. lat, and running south from Konigsberg, where the last spontaneous beeches occur on the Brandenburg estate, continuing through Lithuania, eastern Poland, Volhynia, where beech woods still occur between lat. 52 and 50 , and Podolia to Bessarabia. It is absent from the governments of Kief and Kherson, but re appears in the Crimea, where, however, it is only met with in the mountains of the south-east coast. In the Caucasus, Persia, and Asia Minor it is replaced by the closely allied species, Fagus orientalis. In Finland and at St. Petersburg it exists as a bush only, but is not wild. On the southern shores of the Baltic it forms large forests, and in Denmark is one of the most abundant and valuable timber trees, growing to as large a size and forming as clean trunks as it does farther south. Lyell speaks of it as follows : 8 " In the time of the Romans the Danish isles were covered as now with magnificent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this tree flourish more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen centuries seem to have done little or nothing towards modifying the character of the forest vegetation. Yet in the antecedent bronze period there were no beech trees, or at most but a few stragglers, the country being then covered with oak." At page 415 he says further " In Denmark great changes were taking place in the vegetation. The pine, or Scotch fir, buried in the oldest peat, gave place at length to the oak ; and the oak, after flourishing for ages, yielded in its turn to the 1 In a paper by H. B. Watt on the " Scottish Forests in Early Historic Times," printed in Annals of the Andersonian Nat. Sac. ii. 91, Glasg., 1900, which contains many interesting particulars of the oak and other trees, no mention is made of the Beech. In the Highland Society's Gaelic Dictionary ( 1828), faidhbhile is given as the word for beech; here fafdA is cognate \i\\hfagus, bhile being one of the Gaelic terms for tree. This name is also known in Ulster. 2 Schubeler, Viridarium Norvegicum, vol. i. 521. 3 Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 2nd. ed. 1873, PP- ^7. 4'5- Fagus beech ; the periods when these three forest trees predominated in succession tallying pretty nearly with the ages of stone, bronze, and iron in Denmark." All over Germany, except in the sandy plains of the north, it is one of the principal forest trees; but, so far as we have seen, does not or is rarely allowed to attain such a great size as in England. In Central and Southern Germany and in Eastern and Southern France it seems to be indigenous only in hilly districts and mountains. In the north of France it attains perfection, and forms very large forests, usually mixed with oak, which sometimes contain trees of immense height, but is not planted as an ornament to parks as much as in England. According to Huffel's Economic Forestiere, 362 (1904), the finest beech forest in France is that of Retz, also called Villers Cotterets, which contains 37,000 acres, on a soil composed of deep sand, mixed with a slight proportion of clay. The trees consist almost entirely of beeches, there being only a small number of oaks and hornbeams. In the best plot of this forest, the canton of Dayancourt, which is 30 acres in extent, there were, in 1895, 1998 beech trees, 20 oaks, and 16 hornbeams. The beeches contain 329,433 cubic feet of timber, and reach a height of nearly 150 feet with clean stems of 80 to 90 feet. Their age in 1895 was 183 years, and they were considered to have reached their maximum development and to be on the point of going back. In an account of the beech, Mr. Robinson has stated in Flora and Sylva that in the forest of Lyons-la-Foret, near Rouen, beeches of 160 feet in height are found ; but on asking my friend M. Leon Parde, inspector of forests at Beauvais (Oise), near Paris, whether this statement could be confirmed, he was good enough to send me a letter from the forest officer there, who says that the tallest beech known in France is the one which I saw in the Foret de Retz, when the English Arboricultural Society visited France in I9O3, 1 the height of which was given as 45 metres, about 147 feet. This tree measured 13 feet 2 inches in girth, and was straight and clear of branches to 91 feet. It was estimated by the English measurement to contain 560 cubic feet to the first branch, or 700 feet in all. This letter goes on to say that the tallest trees at Lyons-le-Foret do not, in his opinion, exceed a total height of 35 metres, though one has doubtfully been stated to attain 37^ metres. Two of the finest and tallest beeches in France are the one called " La Bourdigalle" in the Foret de Lyons at La Haye (Seine Inf.), which is 35.80 metres high by 5.55 metres at i metre, and is supposed to be from 375 to 575 years old. 2 Another called " Le Trois Hetres," in the forest of Brotonne at Guerbaville (Seine Inf.), has three straight clean stems rising from a single base to a height of nearly 35 metres, with a girth at i metre of about 18 feet. This very remarkable tree is figured on plate xi. of the work cited below.2 In Switzerland pure beech forest is found as high as 4500 feet, and at 5000 assumes a shrubby habit. In the Austrian Alps and Carpathians it is also a common tree, forming vast forests, which are sometimes pure, sometimes mixed with other trees. 1 Trails. Eng. Art. Soc. v . pt. ii. p. 209. 2 Gadeau de Kerville, Les Vieux Arbres de la Normandie, 1 43 (1893).
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Page 7 and 8: PREFACE THE United Kingdom offers a
Page 9 and 10: CONTENTS PAGE DEDICATION ........ v
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Page 29 and 30: SOPHORA Sophora, Linnaeus, Gen. PI.
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in The Trees of Great Britain and I
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n6 The Trees of Great Britain and I
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120 The Trees of Great Britain and
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132, The Trees of Great Britain and
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2OO The Trees of Great Britain and
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a 7" KSrJi «£^«~ **». . "" ^ '"
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INARCHED BP;ECH AT ASIIRIDGE TLATE
Page 117 and 118:
13KECII WOOD AT SLINHON A ru 6.
Page 119 and 120:
BEECH AT NEWBATTLE Pi .ATE 8.
Page 121 and 122:
I BEECH AT GORDON CASTLE TLAI-K 10.
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KING BEECH AT KNOLE I'LAIE 12.
Page 125 and 126:
AILANTHUS AT BELTON PLATE 14.
Page 127 and 128:
SOI'HORA AT CAMBRIDGE PLATE 16.
Page 129 and 130:
ARAUCARIA FOREST IN CM ILK I'l.MT.
Page 131 and 132:
ARAUCARIAS AT BEAUFORT
Page 133 and 134:
MAIDENHAIR T liEK AT FKOGMOKF. PLAT
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TULIP TREE IN NORTH CAROLINA 1'LATE
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TULIP TREE AT KILLERTON PLATE 26.
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PLATE SERVIAN SPRUCE IN BOSNIA 28.
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MENZIES' SPRUCE AT BEAUFORT PLATE 3
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YEW AVENUE AT MIDIIURST PLATE 32.
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i '*m i t /n b &; y'JM i /Jk, - •
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•• *-' YEW AT WHITTIKGHAME PLAT
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CRYPTOMERIA FOREST IN NORTH JAPAN 1
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CRYPTOMEKIAS AT IMAICHI I'l.ATE 40.
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CRYPTOMERIA AT HEMSTED PLATK 42.
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PYRUS. PLATE 44.
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SORB TREE AT ARLEV PLATE 46.
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SERVICE TREE AT RICKMANSWORTH >.mmm
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'^iji^m^^Jt^.^M. SERVICE TREE AT SY
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DECIDUOUS CYPRESS IN VIRGINIA PLATE
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DECIDUOUS CYPRESS AT SYON Tr.ATE 54
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GIANT THUYA IN VANCOUVER'S ISLAND P
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Plate 58 represents the trunk of wh
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j« WESTERN HEMLOCK GROWING ON FALL
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