Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol03B.djvu/394

680 however, of several worthy of mention, of which the largest is growing at Park Place, near Henley-on-Thames, in the grounds of Mrs. Noble. This tree is in a thick wood on loamy soil overlying chalk, and if upright would be prob- ably over 60 feet high. It leans, however, very much to one side, where the branches extend as much as twenty paces from the trunk. It has a short bole of 8 feet, which girthed 9 feet 2 inches when I measured it in 1905. There were a few fruits on it, which, however, seemed unlikely to ripen. (Plate 191.)

Sir Hugh Beevor has lately discovered a tree in the grounds of Sir Robert Dashwood at West Wycombe, which is 83 feet high by 5 feet 11 inches in girth. It is nearly dead, being probably killed by mistletoe, as many of the branches show large spindle-shaped swellings, caused by this parasite.

At Arley Castle there is a tree which measured, in 1907, 64 feet high by 4 feet 8 inches in girth, At Dropmore one in a wood is 45 feet by 4 feet 10 inches. There are also small trees at Cornbury Park and at Tortworth. There is a healthy specimen at Syon 55 feet by 5 feet 1 inch, which had some seed in 1905. At Barton, Suffolk, there is an ill-shaped tree much crowded by others, which measures about 50 feet by 4 feet 6 inches.

Mr. Bartlett reports that there are five trees of this species at Pencarrow, and that another at Tredethy, Cornwall, is 50 feet high by 3 feet 5 inches in girth.

The Hon. Vicary Gibbs informs us that at Tyntesfield, Somersetshire, a number of sugar maples are growing, which are about fifty years old. The soil being shallow they have made low heads with very stout lateral branches. He has raised some seedlings from them at Aldenham. Young trees, which I raised from seed gathered near Boston in September 1904, have grown fairly well at Colesborne, and are now about 3 feet high.

The wood of the sugar maple has been well known in commerce for a long period, and at one time the variety of it which is known as bird’s-eye maple was very fashionable for furniture and cabinet-making, though it is now little used for first-class work in England.

The best account I know of the varieties of maple wood is in Hough’s American Woods, i. 50–51, where he says that there are peculiar freaks in the growth of timber as yet unexplained, but of which this is one of the most important from a commercial point of view, as well as one of the most beautiful. They are known as “ blister,” “ bird’s- eye”’ or “pin,” and “curly” figures. The first two are almost peculiar to the “hard” or sugar maple. The last is found even more commonly in the red and silver or “soft” maples as they are called in the United States and Canada. The three varieties of figure are often found more or less mixed in the same tree, and it requires much experience to detect their presence in the growing tree.

The blister variety, which is much the rarest, usually has a massive trunk in

1 In bird’s-eye maple there is a succession of elevations and depressions in the annual layers of the wood, and Hopkins considers that this is probably due to punctures made in the bark by woodpeckers, Cf. Garden and Forest, vii. 373 (1894).