Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol03B.djvu/34

460 As most people prefer the spreading forms of cedar for lawns or parks, the Lebanon cedar is probably the best for such places ; but when surrounded by other trees it may be drawn up to a great height with few side branches, though I should prefer the Algerian cedar for planting in such situations.

Generally it may be said that the Lebanon cedar is the best for the hotter and drier parts of England, and the deodar for the moister and milder districts. The Algerian cedar seems to be hardier, and according to Sargent this is also the case in the United States; but none of the cedars succeed in New England, though near Philadelphia, Washington, and at Biltmore, North Carolina, there are fine specimens of the Algerian form.

The transplantation of large cedars is rarely desirable, but has been sometimes effected with success, A case is recorded! in which a cedar at Southsea 30 feet high, with a spread of 36 feet, was transplanted at a cost of about £100.

Mr. J.W. Odell, gardener at the Grove, Stanmore, in a communication to the Royal Horticultural Society on 14th February 1899, states that during a recent gale a large branch was broken off a cedar there, which showed that a great mass of adventitious roots had started from the seat of a previous injury and grown down- wards towards the base of the tree, between the splintered portions of the wood. I observed a precisely similar occurrence in a cedar which was partly blown down at Stoke Hall, Notts, in October 1903. The roots were bright reddish-brown in colour, and the thicker ones, an inch in diameter, were covered with rough pustules. Some of these were sent to the Museum at Kew.

Among the existing trees in England it is difficult to say which is the finest. If height and girth combined are taken there is none to equal the splendid tree at Pains Hill, near Cobham, now the property of C. Combe, Esq., of Cobham Park. An account of this place, published in Country Life for March 19, 1904, states that these cedars were probably planted between 1750 and 1760 by the Hon. Charles Hamilton. In 1781 Sir Joseph Banks visited Pains Hill with the younger Linnzus, who said that he saw there a greater variety of fir trees than he had seen anywhere else. Curiously enough, Loudon, though he often mentions Pains Hill, gives no measurements, and neither Strutt, Lambert, nor Lawson alludes to the cedars there ; but when I saw them in 1904 I measured the largest (Plate 128) to be from 115 to 120 feet high by 26 feet 5 inches in girth. It grows on sandy soil near the lake and divides into several tall, straight stems, which form a spreading crown, and seems to be in perfect health.

The next finest of this type that I have seen is perhaps a tree standing in Good- wood Park, near the kitchen garden, which, when I measured it in 1906, was about 95 feet high, though its flat top makes the exact height difficult to ascertain, and 264 feet in girth, the branches spreading over an area of 133 paces in circumference (Plate 129). Goodwood’ is perhaps more celebrated for its cedars than any other

1 Gard. Chron. xxv. 42 (1899).

2 Cf. Gard. Chron. xxvii. 124 (1900), where the finest cedar at Goodwood was reported to be 294 feet in girth in 1900.