The following varieties, occurring in the wild state, have been distinguished, though they are not so clearly defined in nature, as they seem to be from their description.
1. Var. genuina, Heer. Cones usually solitary, long-stalked, symmetrical, acute at the apex; apophysis flat or convex, not hooked. Needles about 2 inches long, persistent three years.
This is the common pine, growing on good soil in Germany, Southern Scandinavia, Poland, and North-Western Russia. Two races have been distinguished on the Continent in cultivation:—
(a) rigensis (Pinus rigensis, Desf.). Riga pine, raised from seeds collected near Riga. At Les Barres, this is the best race of P. sylvestris, the stem being very straight and cylindrical, rising to a great height, and with few lateral branches; bark very red, stripping off above in very thin papery scales. Von Sievers states that the form native to the Baltic provinces of Russia is superior in growth and timber to that introduced there by seed from Germany. Willkomm, however, is of opinion that the so-called Riga pine is only a fine tall-growing form, and occurs in North Germany and Poland, as well as in Russia.
(b) Haguenensis, Loudon. Haguenau pine, raised from seed obtained in the forest of Haguenau in Alsace. At Les Barres, this form, though vigorous in growth, is defective, on account of its tendency to form numerous irregular branches, so that the stem is not so clean and does not reach the same height as the Riga variety. The bark is not so red, and is not so fine-scaled as in that variety.
Two trees of the Haguenau variety, raised from seed, procured by Loudon in 1828, are growing at Seggieden in Perthshire, and are now about 65 feet high by 8 feet in girth. According to the forester, they are distinguishable in bark, buds, shoots, and leaves from the Scots pine growing near them.
2. Var. scotica.—This variety, which grows wild in the Highlands of Scotland, differs in the redder bark of the stem; in the shorter more glaucous leaves (1½ inch long), often persistent four years; and in the shorter cones (1½ inch long), which are symmetrical, with apophyses usually flat near the base, tending to be pyramidal in the upper part of the cone.
3. Var. engadinensis, Heer.—Bark reddish; needles short, 1 to 1½ inch long, thick and stiff, persistent for five years; buds resinous. Cones ovoid-conic, 2 inches long, oblique at the base; apophyses convex on the outer side of the cone, umbo large and blunt. A small tree, rarely 30 feet high, growing in the Engadine Alps.[1] It is perhaps a hybrid between P. sylvestris and P. montana.
4. Var. lapponica.—Pinus lapponica, Mayr, Fremdländ, Park. u. Waldbäume, 348 (1906). This variety, which grows in the north of Norway and Sweden and in Finland, is considered by Willkomm and Christ' to be identical with var. engadinensis, with which it agrees in the short, straight stiff leaves, persistent for
- ↑ Dr. Christ, in Flore de la Suisse, 197, and Suppl. 31 (1907), considers the Engadine pine to be precisely the same as specimens he examined, which were collected at Quickjock in Lapland (lat. 67°). He also mentions (p. 285) a curious form of the common pine, slender and tall in habit, with very short green needles, which grows at Flims in Switzerland, and also in one or two places in Silesia.
