At the Piltdown Nurseries in Sussex there are many fine specimens,[1] one of which is said to have been 50 feet by 9½ feet in girth in 1854. Messrs. Dennett and Sons, the present tenants of this nursery, inform me that they believe this is one of the oldest trees in the country, and that in April 1903 it was about 70 feet high (perhaps more), with a girth of 7 feet at 5 feet, and 11 feet close to the ground. But a correspondent of the Gardeners' Chronicle[2] says that in 1891 it was 65 feet by 10½ feet at 4 feet, and that 3½ bushels of seed were collected in this nursery in 1889, which produced hardier plants than imported seed. He also states that one of the trees which was cut down in 1880 threw up in 1884 a sucker from the roots, which grew 15 feet high in five years, and showed in 1891 no signs of branching out in any way.[3] He also states that it does not matter when Araucarias are pruned, as they grow steadily all the year. The soil at Piltdown is a deep loam with gravel subsoil, and though, as it is here stated, it is generally thought that a dry, well-drained subsoil is essential to the success of this tree, yet I have seen in the garden of Foss bridge Inn in the Cotswold Hills, in a low damp situation close to the banks of the Coin, two Araucarias, male and female, about 40 feet high, which produced ripe seed in 1903, from which Mr. Holyoake, gardener to the Earl of Eldon of Stowell Park, has raised plants.
At Bicton, Devonshire, the seat of the Honourable Mark Rolle, there is a fine avenue of Araucarias, which has been often mentioned in print; but the trees in it do not appear to be increasing in height so fast as the good soil and climate would lead one to expect. When I saw them in September 1902 the best which I measured was about 50 feet high by 8 feet 9 inches in girth. Ripe seeds were falling at the time, from which seedlings were raised.
There are also fine trees at Castlehill, North Devon, the seat of the Earl Fortescue, which have produced seed for many years past.
At Tortworth Court, Gloucestershire, the seat of the Earl of Ducie, who has one of the best collections of trees in England, and to whom I am indebted for very much assistance and advice in this work, there are many large Araucarias,[4] the best of which I found to be 53 feet by 7 feet 6 inches in 1904. It is producing many young shoots among the dying branches of the trunk.
In Scotland the Araucaria grows well not only in the south-west where, at Castle Kennedy, the seat of the Earl of Stair, there is a fine avenue, 200 yards long, in which the largest tree is 50 feet by 6 feet 2 inches in girth, and from which self-sown seedlings have sprung, but also in Perthshire, where there are fair-sized trees, one of which on the banks of the Tay in the grounds of the Duke of Athole at Dunkeld, I found in 1904 to be 50 feet high, but only 3 feet 11 in girth. It grows well at Gordon Castle exposed to the full force of the north-east wind, and has ripened seeds as far north as Inverness.[5] But some of the trees recorded in Perthshire and other places in Scotland have been killed during severe frosts, and as a rule the growth is not so rapid as in the south of England. Two
- ↑ Gard. Chron. 1885, xxiii. 342.
- ↑ Ibid. 1891, i. 342.
- ↑ Sir Herbert Maxwell informs me that he saw at Cairnsmore an old trunk of Araucaria which had died twenty years ago, still standing, with a young growth 3 feet high from the stool.
- ↑ Cf. Gard. Chron. 1890, ii. 633.
- ↑ Ibid. 1868, p. 464; 1872, p. 1323; 1894, xvi. 603.
