Cases of inosculation are rare among pines, but a remarkable instance of this was pointed out to me by Mr. Savile Foljambe in the Catwhins, near the lodge leading out of Thoresby park into the Retford road. It seems probable that when the trees were young they had come in contact, and eventually fused; the iron bands were put on afterwards, but the trees are now dead.
Another case, somewhat similar, occurs in a pine tree growing on the estate of Chenevières, near Montbour (Loiret), France, which a photograph kindly sent me by M. Maurice de Vilmorin illustrates. Here it seems that one tree had forked at or close to the ground, and become connected by a thick branch at a much later period. A third instance of natural inarching in the Scots pine is described and figured by Count von Schwerin[1] from a tree near Teltow in Germany. In this instance a branch of one tree grew into the bark of another and broke off, eventually forming just such a living connection between the two trees as is shown in Vol. I. Plate 4, but much thicker in proportion. The sap of the left hand tree appears to pass through this branch to the other, as the stem is thicker above the junction, and the branch has assumed the yellow bark of the upper part of the trunk.
The large, usually globular masses of dense shoots which sometimes appear on this species, and more rarely on larch and spruce, are not caused by a parasitic fungus. Prof. von Tubeuf[2] says that their origin is unknown, no insect or fungus having yet been discovered which might have caused the growth, which is composed of a mass of small buds, producing densely crowded tufts of short leaves. A specimen which was found at Schwarzenraben in Germany measured 53 centimetres in height and about the same in diameter, the weight of this mass being over eleven pounds.[3] Such growths are not uncommon[4] in England, and I have a photograph of one on a tree at Colesborne, which was about a foot in diameter.
Timber
On the timber of the Scots pine so much has been written that I will refer specialists to Laslett,[5] who gives a long account, mostly from a_shipbuilder's point of view, of the various foreign varieties known to him as Dantzig, Memel, Riga, and Swedish fir; but makes no reference to the quality of native-grown timber, which, though men-of-war were built from it by Osbourne in the last century, seems to have been unused by the Admiralty since then, as it is now by the Post Office authorities in England, and by architects and_ builders generally. The reason of this is, no doubt, that the rapid growth of the tree in this country, in our mild climate, causes the wood to be much softer,
- ↑ Mitt. D.D. Gesell. 194 (1906).
- ↑ Ibid. 222, fig. 13 (1905).
- ↑ Count von Schwerin, Mitt. D.D. Gesell. 222 (1905), says that in Bavarian Allgau, between Oberstaufen and Weiler, he has seen a forest of sixty-year-old spruce in which almost every tree was more or less affected by these growths, and supposes that the cause, whatever it is, must be contagious. He has seen similar growths on Picea orientalis and suggests that some of the horticultural monstrosities such as Picea excelsa echiniformis and C. Lawsoniana forsteckensis have originated from a similar cause.
- ↑ A specimen from a tree growing at Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk, was shown at a meeting of the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society in April 1899. Cf. Gard. Chron. xxv. 270 (1899).
- ↑ Timber and Timber Trees, ed. 2 (London, 1894).
