"O look at the trees!" they cried

Press, 21 June 1980, Page 15

"O look at the trees!" they cried

...Robert Bridges (Z London Snow

21. BEECH

Pencil drawing by OVrEiX K. LEE Text bv DERRICK ROONEY

The common beech. Fagus sylvatica, is a large, deciduous tree, rendered distinctive by its habit ot clinging to its dead, russet-brown leaves throughout most of the winter. It is widely distributed throughout Europe and very common in the British Isles, where it is an important timber tree; and it is an accommodating species for the makers of public gardens, for it is of regular shape, grows well even in shallow soils, and bulks up quickly into a large tree. When grown in forest conditions the beecn develops a lofty, clear trunk, free of branches to a good height. As an isolated specimen, it develops a broad, spreading crown with massive horizontal branches and paper-smooth, silver-grey baric, by which it can be recognised at a glance. In outline, in its well-spaced branching, and m its ponderously graceful bearing, the beech is perhaps the most handsome of the “English” trees. It is also a useful species, not only for its timber, which is hard and dense, and makes furniture of high quality; but because it is the best of British firewoods, burning well even when green, and because its seeds are the source of an edible oil. The beech has one defect—-by the standards of most forest giants It is short lived, its span beiore the inner timber starts to decay being reckoned at about 120 years in Britain, less in the cl m-rn of New Zealand. By this judgment the tree m the drawing, viewed from the Pine Mound in the Botanic

Gardens, near the Robert McDougall Art Gallery, is on the wrong side of middle aged, for it is about 60 years old. , , , .. The exact planting date is not known, but it was put in by Lord Jellicoe, who was Gpyernor-Geneial from 1920 to 1924. It is one of the horticultural kinds cf the tree, the variety “Atropunicea, with purple leaves rather than the ordinary green ones. Behind it is one of the historic trees of the Botanic Gardens, a Lebanon cedar more than a century old, planted, sometime “before 1880,” by the Marchioness of Londonderry 7 , when the Armstrong Lawn was at the beginning of its transformation from a gravel pit to one of the great vistas of fin® trees. This tree, Cedrus libani, reputedly produced the timbers of the Temple of Solomon. Once, according to the writings of early travellers, it grew in vast groves in the mountains of Lebanon. It is rare there now. but still plentiful in the Cilician Taurus. When domesticated, the Lebanon cedar grows into one of the most picturesque of all trees, wit.i a widely-spreading, symmetrica) crown and massne trunk. It has been in cultivation at leas, two centuries longer than its North African cousin the Atlas cedar. Cedrus atlanticn, from which it differs mt e in appearance. The two cannot be separate y their foliage; only the broader crowm and droopy leader growth of the Lebanon cedar confirm »• identity. Modern scentific thinking is that the tw are geographical variations of the one species. I