Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol03B.djvu/216

576 and the Seja territory to the Upper Amur. According to Komarov,’ it is a scarce tree on the banks of rivers in Manchuria. Its southerly limit in Siberia is not well known ; but it is known to occur in the mountains of Dahuria, in the territory around Lake Baikal, and in the Altai Mountains. Its southern limit in European Russia is a very irregular line, which begins in the Ural south of Orenburg at about lat. 52°, is most to the north in the government of Tula (lat. 54° 30’), and descends from there to Kharkof (lat. 49°), passing into Galicia about lat. 50°. Far south of this line, and separated from it by the Russian Steppes, on which no pine trees grow, occurs an area of distribution, not yet well made out, which includes the Caucasus, the mountains of the Crimea, Asia Minor,” and North-Western Persia. There is also an isolated area, in which the pine is found growing wild, in Macedonia, on Mount Nidjé. From Galicia the southern limit in Europe (exclusive of the last-mentioned area) passes southwards to the Transylvanian Alps; thence it extends along the mountains to Servia, where the tree grows on the Kopavnik mountain (about lat. 43°), continues through the mountains of Bosnia, Dalmatia, Illyria, Venetia, and through Lombardy to the Ligurian Apennines (about lat. 44°). It passes into France, across the Maritime Alps, into the Cevennes, and reaches the Eastern Pyrenees; in Spain it descends through the mountains of Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia to the Sierra Nevada in Andalusia, which is its extreme southerly point in Europe (lat. 37°). The westerly limit beginning here, stretches north-west through the mountains of Avila to those of Leon in North Spain; and is continued through the mountains of Scotland to the north-west coast of Norway.

In this vast area the pine is very irregularly distributed. The largest forests occur in the Baltic provinces of Russia, in Scandinavia, in Northern Germany, and in Poland. Towards the south it only occurs in mountains, and rarely forms pure forests of considerable extent. According to Huffel,* it is rare in Roumania, where he saw it at the confluence of the Lotru and Oltu rivers at 1700 feet altitude, and in the valley of Bistritza.*

In the British Isles, the common pine is found wild at the present day only in the Highlands of Scotland, where a few forests still remain. These occur in the valley of the Spey at Rothiemurchus, Duthill, Abernethy, and Glenmore, and in the valley of the Dee at Invercauld, Braemar, and Glen Tanar. There is also a fine wild forest, the “ Black Wood,” on the south side of Loch Rannoch in Perthshire.» That of Ballochbuie near Invercauld is probably the finest now existing.

The pine was widely spread over the British Isles in ancient times, as is evidenced by the occurrence of remains of logs, stumps of trees, and cones in the

1 Flora Manshuria, i. 175 (1901).

2 Pinus sylvestris grows on the Armenian plateau, and has been described in Levnea, xxii. 296 (1849), as P. armena, Koch; P. Kochiana, Klotzsch; and P. pontica, Koch. Cf. Moniteur Jardin Botanique Tiflis, ii. 26 (1906).

3 Forêts de la Roumanie, 6 (1890).

M.B. Golesco, in an article on the forests of Roumania, in Bull. Soc. Dendr. France, i. 171 (1907), states that in the Muscel district P. sylvestris is only found on calcareous soils ; and in a letter to Elwes confirms this statement, adding that it attains a diameter of one metre, and does not grow on the adjoining schist.

5 Buchanan White, Flora of Perthshire, 282 (1898), gives as additional localities for wild trees in Perthshire, Breadalbane, in Glen Lyon and near Killin and Tyndrum; and mentions one or two other places where the pine is doubtfully native.

According to the Rev. E. G. Marshall, Journ. Bot. xliv. 160 (1906), it is certainly native in the forest of Glenavon, but quite scarce, and the seedlings appear to be destroyed by deer browsing on them.