Varieties
In the wild state there is considerable variation in the size and shape of the leaves, dependent upon conditions of soil, shade, and climate. Fliche[1] describes two distinct forms in France. In the hot and dry region of the Esterel, the leaves are small in size, not exceeding 2½ inches in length by ¾ inch in breadth, and are very coriaceous, spathulate, with feebly serrated and revolute margins. In the forest of La Pinouse, near Quillan in Aude, which is mainly composed of Pinus sylvestris with a slight mixture of beech and silver fir, the climate being cool and the altitude considerable, the Arbutus has very large leaves, often 5 inches long by 2 inches broad, which are lanceolate with sharply serrate and non-revolute margins.
The following varieties are often cultivated:—
1. Var. rubra, Aiton, Hort. Kew, ii. 71 (1789). (Var. Croomei,[2] Hort.).—Flowers pink or reddish. Mackay[3] noticed a single plant of this variety, growing on red slate near Glengariff.
2. Var. integerrima, Sims, Bot. Mag. t. 2319 (1822) (vars. integrifolia and rotundifolia, Hort.).—Leaves entire and smaller than in the type. This is said to have been raised by Loddiges from seed of the ordinary form. The leaves vary in shape, often being obovate or almost orbicular.
3. Var. guercifolia, Hort.—Leaves obovate-lanceolate, with a few irregular teeth in the upper half, about 2 inches long by ¾ inch broad. In cultivation at Kew.
4. Var. turbinata, Persoon.—This variety occurs wild in Greece, and is remarkable for its large top-shaped fruit, more than an inch in length.
5. Other varieties have been noted, which I have not seen, as salicifolia with narrow leaves, crispa with crumpled leaves, and plena, with semi-double flowers.
Distribution
This species is widely spread throughout the maritime regions of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, occurring in Spain, France, Corsica, Sardinia, Italy, Istria, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Algeria, and Morocco. It is also met with in the maritime belt along the Atlantic from Portugal to Kerry in Ireland. It occurs either as undergrowth in the forests, where in favoured situations it reaches the dimensions of a small tree, or is one of the shrubs composing the maguts or heaths, which spread over large tracts of siliceous soil that have been denuded of trees in past ages. It is apparently only in Ireland that the Arbutus grows to be a forest tree, moderate in size, but equalling in height and girth the trees of other species, with which it is associated,
In France, the Arbutus is common in the departments whose shores are bathed by the Mediterranean and extends inland as far as Dréme and Lozére; it is not unfrequent along the west coast from Bayonne to La Rochelle, and is recorded[4] from
- ↑ Bull. Soc. des Sciences, 1886, p. 26.
- ↑ Figured in Garden, xxxiii, 320 (1888).
- ↑ Fl. Hibernica, 182 (1836).
- ↑ Arbutus is very abundant, in company with oak and mountain ash, in a wood, about 1½ mile in length, on the abrupt and rocky slope of the cliff of Trieux, near Paimpol, in Côtes-du-Nord. Cf. Dr. Avice, in Bull. Soc. Bot. France, xiiii. 123 (1896), and Coste, Flore de la France, ii, 506 ( 1903). Ina note on the occurrence of this species in the Landes, in Bull. Soc. Bot. France, xlix. p. lvii. (1902), it is stated that wherever the Arbutus grows, in that region, holly is absent, the two species seeming to exclude each other.
