The common alder is rarely planted as an ornamental tree, and only on wet situations or on the banks of ponds and streams is it able to attain its full dimensions. But if desired for ornament in such a situation, I should recommend the cut-leaved alder in preference to the common one; and for drier ground either the grey or the Italian alder.
Remarkable Trees
Among the finest trees that we have seen or heard of, those at Pain’s Hill take a high place. One of these on an island is probably over 90 feet, but we could not measure it, Another growing by the lake has seventeen stems about 75 feet in height, growing from a stool which is 19 feet in girth, I estimated the contents of these poles at about 200 cubic feet. At Whitton there is a tall slender tree about go feet by 6 feet without a branch for 46 feet, and with a clean stem to 70 feet up. At Betchford Park, Surrey, Henry measured a tree go feet high by 11 feet 4 inches at 3 feet from the ground, dividing into two stems at 4 feet. At Enville Hall, Stourbridge, he saw one which was 87 feet by 8 feet 2 inches. Sir Hugh Beevor tells us of a large one at Shottisham, Norfolk, 70 feet high and 18 feet in girth near the ground, out of the base of which a mountain ash of large size is growing.
At Holme Lacy there is a large tree near the home farm, which has a short bole 6 feet high by 18 feet in girth, dividing into four main stems about 60 feet high ; I estimated the contents of this tree to be not far short of 300 cubic feet.
On the banks of the Nene near Lilford Hall, Northamptonshire, there is a fine row of large and picturesque alders, of which Plate 252 gives a good representation, but I was unable to measure them on account of the water.
In Boughton Park, near Kettering, the property of the Duke of Buccleuch, a remarkable alder is growing near the Broad Avenue, in comparatively dry ground. It measures 70 feet by 9½ feet, and has the lower part of the trunk covered with bark so like that of an elm that it was difficult to recognise it as an alder, by the trunk alone.
At Aldermaston Park there is a very large old tree which looks as if it had been pollarded, and which in 1906 was 17 feet 4 inches in girth.
At Elvaston Castle, Derby, Mr. A.B. Jackson has seen a remarkably fine tree, which he estimates at 90 feet by 7½ feet, with a clean bole 60 to 70 feet long.
In Wales the finest alder I have seen is in a wood at Penrhyn Castle which is about 75 feet by 6 feet 9 inches, with a clean bole 4o feet long. The contents of this tree were estimated by me at over 100 feet of timber.
Of the cut-leaved alders the finest I have seen is about 68 feet by 10½ feet on the banks of the lake at Syon. At Melbury there is a tree very similar in size and appearance to that at Syon; and Henry measured, in 1905, one at Cassiobury Park, 85 feet by 11½ feet; and another at Belton, 85 feet by 10 feet 2 inches. Colonel Birch Reynardson sends me a photograph of a tree at
