Michael Peverett: Twenty Lambert

Saturday, January 28, 2023

Twenty Lambert

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana)

Picked up in the car park of Holiday Inn on the edge of Swindon. I think this might be Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana), first raised at Westonbirt (not far from here). But if it isn't then it's one of the parent species, whose homelands could hardly lie further apart: the Bhutan Pine (Pinus wallichiana) and the Mexican White Pine (Pinus ayacahuite).

I included a table knife to show how big the cone is.

The ripe cone is quite light and flexible, as pinecones go. You wouldn't fear it falling on your head. It may be different with the unripe cones (e.g. when they are chewed off by squirrels). Sugar Pine (Pinus lambertiana) is the tallest pine (to 60m) and its unripe cones can weigh 2kg. On another Californian pine, the Big-cone Pine (Pinus coulteri) the unripe cones can weigh 5kg: plantation workers wear hard hats.

I suppose my long-latent interest in pines has started to emerge on this blog, manifested in two relatively recent posts:

The Aleppo Pine:
https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/11/aleppo-pine.html
The Scots Pine, and pine vocabulary in English and Swedish.
https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/01/todays-swedish-vocabulary.html

This one is the third.

Pinus lambertiana is named in honour of Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761 - 1842), an early luminary of the Linnaean Society. He was a typical botanical enthusiast of the time, born in Bath to inherited wealth (partly founded on estates in Jamaica, worked by slaves I assume). In 1803 he published A Description of the Genus Pinus, a splendidly illustrated publication that must have been aimed at other wealthy amateurs: it will cost you a fortune to buy today. Further editions, with added content, came out over the next twenty years. The 1803 one, happily, is available to read online:

https://archive.org/details/mobot31753003472476

[If you're using a UK phone, you might not be allowed to see archive.org (for no apparent reason). Laptop access works fine.]

It's well worth a look; and, like most old scientific books, it's as revealing of ignorance as of knowledge. One inference from this is to feel smug about the greater knowledge of our own time; another is that science is the illusion that you almost understand something.

Lambert's book takes us back to a time when Pinus embraced other coniferous species; thus his Pinus nigra means the N.American Black Spruce (Picea mariana) and not, as it does today, the Black Pines of Europe (Austrian, Corsican etc), which surprisingly are absent: surprising, I mean, as these are now the most commonly-seen alien pines in the British Isles.

Today there are reckoned to be around 120 pine species: Lambert describes only 18 true pines (though I suppose some more were added in the later editions) -- only 17, really, as he knew hardly anything about Pinus occidentalis, the Hispaniolan endemic. A lot of the names have changed. His Pinus inops is what we now call Pinus virginiana; his Pinus variabilis is now Pinus echinata. (These are pines from eastern N. America, like five more of his inclusions: Pinus taeda, Pinus resinosa, Pinus rigida, Pinus palustris and Pinus strobus.) Pinus longifolia (from the Himalayas) is now Pinus roxburghii. Pinus pumilio ("The Mugho, or Mountain Pine") is Pinus mugo or uncinata. Lambert calls Pinus cembra the "Siberian Stone Pine" but for us it's the Arolla Pine of the Swiss Alps; the admittedly similar Pinus sibirica is usually considered a separate species. He calls Pinus pinaster the Pinaster or Cluster Pine; it is, he tells us, "frequent in English plantations". On the other hand what he calls Maritime Pine, with the Latin name Pinus maritima, is a tree he knew only from a single small specimen at Sion House, and from samples in the Sherardian herbarium: he evidently considered it a different species.

Some of the best reading comes at the end, in the supplements on "Medicinal and Other Uses" (by William George Maton) and on timber by Thomas Davis (of "Hommingsham, Wiltshire" -- which I think must mean Horningsham) and the Rev. William Coxe (on "Christiana Deal", i.e. from Oslo), an extract from his Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1784). I'll quote the latter, with Lambert's additional paragraph:

"The planks and deals are of superior estimation, to those sent from America, Russia, and from the different parts of the Baltic, because the trees grow on the rocks, and are therefore firmer, more compact, and less liable to rot than the others, which chiefly shoot from a sandy or loamy soil. The plan[k]s are either red or white fir, or pine. The red wood is produced from the Scotch Fir, and the white wood, which is in such high estimation, from the Spruce Fir. This wood is the most demanded, because no country produces it in such quantities as this part of Norway. Each tree yields three pieces of timber, eleven or twelve feet in length, and is usually sawed into three planks; a tree generally requires seventy or eighty years growth before it arrives at the greatest perfection.
"The environs of Christiana not yielding sufficient planks for exportation, the greater part of the timber is hewn in the inland country, and floated down the rivers and cataracts. Saw-mills are used for the purpose of cutting the planks, but must be privileged, and can only cut a certain quantity. The proprietors are bound to declare on oath, that they have not exceeded that quantity; and if they do, the privilege is taken away, and the saw-mill destroyed. There are one hundred and thirty-six privileged saw-mills at Christiana, of which one hundred belong to the family of Anker. The quantity of planks permitted to be cut amounts to 20,000,000 standard deals, twelve feet long, and one inch and a quarter thick."
In Scotland, they distinguish the wood cut in the native forests from that obtained in plantations, by calling the former Highland Fir, and the latter Park Fir. The Highland Fir is most esteemed, on account of its greater durability, being frequently found undecayed in ancient buildings, when the other sort is entirely wasted. This striking difference in the same species is probably to be attributed to the mountainous and rocky situations in which the native timber is found, and where the trees being of slower growth the wood is consequently of a harder texture; the latter may be readily distinguished from that of the Park Fir by its much deeper yellow colour.

(p. 84)

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana)

A bunch of five: needle tips of (probably) Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana)

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 26 January 2023.

Probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

The foliage swinging about on a blowy day, a very engaging sight.

Unripe cones of probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Two unripe cones that were lying on the ground. They were too sticky to put down anywhere, hence the paper napkin.

The other pine-cone in the photo is probably Dwarf Mountain Pine, Pinus mugo (see below).

Unripe cone of probably Holford Pine (Pinus x holfordiana). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

Probably Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo). Swindon, 13 November 2023.

There was also this dramatically different pine, a shrub with short needles and small cones (about 4cm). I think this is the Dwarf Mountain Pine (Pinus mugo), native to mountains of SE Europe. But if I'm wrong please say, I'm only a learner.