At Croome Court, the seat of the Earl of Coventry, there are two good-sized trees in the shrubbery, one of which is 59 feet high and 6 feet 2 inches in girth. The other, with a clean stem, about 50 feet by 7, is beginning to decay.[1] Lady Coventry told me that the fruit, which is only produced in good seasons, makes excellent jam when fully ripe, but some seeds which she was good enough to send me did not germinate.
Loudon mentions a tree at Melbury Court, Dorsetshire, estimated to be 200 years old, and 82 feet high, with a diameter of 3 feet 4 inches, growing in dry loam on sand. If this was really a true sorb, it must have been the largest on record, but I learn from the gardener at Melbury that it has long been dead.
There are two good-sized trees at Painshill, and another at Syon which Henry found to be 44 feet high and 6 feet 9 inches in girth, but on this heavy soil the tree does not seem to be so long lived, and is dying at the top.
In the Botanic Gardens at Oxford are two well-shaped trees of this species, which were laden with fruit in 1905, and supposed to have been planted by Dr. John Sibthorp, who was Professor of Botany in 1784-95. The largest measures about 50 feet by 5 feet, and is of the maliform variety. Its fruit, which ripens and falls about the middle of October, is very sweet and pleasant to eat, much better than medlars, whilst the fruit of the other, which is the pyriform variety, does not turn red, is smaller, and ripens later. I have raised seedlings from both of these trees.
In the Cambridge Botanic Garden there is a tree with very upright branches, which measured, in 1906, 42 feet by 3 feet 4 inches.
At Tortworth there is a healthy, well-shaped tree, not more than 40 years planted, which is about 40 feet by 5 feet 11 inches. This is in a rather exposed situation, and it had no fruit in 1905.
At Woodstock, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland, there is a tree which seems to be the largest now living in this country. Henry measured it in 1904 and found it 77 feet high by 10 feet 8 inches in girth, with a bole dividing into three stems at 10 feet from the ground and bearing fruit.
Timber
A large tree was blown down at Claremont Park, Surrey, the seat of H.R.H. the Duchess of Connaught, in 1902, which I am assured by Mr. Burrell, the gardener there, was a sorb.[2] Its trunk was sent to Mr. Snell of Esher, to whom I am indebted for two fine planks of its wood. These show a very hard, heavy, compact surface of a pinkish brown colour with a fine wavy grain, which takes an excellent polish, and this wood has been used with beautiful effect in the framing
- ↑ Loudon gives the measurements in 1838 as 45 feet high, with a diameter of trunk at a foot from the ground of 1 foot 9 inches, and states that it was in a state of decay at that time.
- ↑ "Among interesting trees to be found at Claremont is a good specimen of the pear-shaped service, carrying a heavy crop of fruit. It is rather over 60 feet high and 7 feet 6 inches in girth at 2 feet from the ground." Note by E.B. in Garden, 1883, xxiv. 422. Mr. E. Burrell gives a fuller account of the Claremont trees in the same journal, 1888, xxxiii. 154, in which he states that he thinks the variety maliformis does not increase in height after it gets to be about 30 feet high, whereas pyriformis at Claremont is close on 70 feet high.
