Wayside and woodland trees : $b a pocket guide to the British sylvaStep, Edward
Science
Wayside and woodland trees : $b a pocket guide to the British sylva
Step, Edward
Shrubs -- Great Britain; Trees -- Great Britain
Not in the woods or by waysides in Great Britain will the
Strawberry-tree be found, though it may be seen in parks and gardens;
but in parts of the Emerald Isle it is native. Killarney, Muckross, and
Bantry are given by Hooker as its Irish stations, but we have also found
it in the woods at Woodstock, Co. Kilkenny, in a situation where it
seemed unlikely such a tree would be planted. It does not attain a large
size--ordinarily about ten or twelve feet--though in cultivation it may
attain to twenty or even thirty feet. The bark is rough and scaly,
tinged with red, and twisted. The leathery leaves are more or less oval,
two or three inches long, with toothed edges and hairy stalks. Although
arranged alternately on the shoots, they present the appearance at a
little distance of being clustered, rosette fashion, at the tips of the
twigs. The creamy-white flowers are clustered in drooping racemes at the
ends of the twigs, and are about one-third of an inch across,
bell-shaped. When the seed-eggs have been fertilized the corollas
drop off, so that in the flowering season (September and October) the
ground beneath will usually be found strewn with them. The fruit is a
round berry, of an orange-red hue, whose surface is completely studded
with little points. As these berries do not come to maturity until about
fourteen months after the flowers have dropped their corollas, we may
see both flowers and almost full-formed fruit on the tree at the same
time. They are not eatable until quite ripe, and even then they are not
to everybody's taste, on account of their austerity. In truth, we have
it on the testimony of Pliny that the old Latin name _unedo_, now
enshrined in the specific scientific name, was given to it because to
eat one of these tree strawberries was a sufficiently extensive
acquaintance for most persons.
[Illustration: Strawberry-tree.]
It is perhaps unnecessary to add that, in spite of the name, there is no
relationship existing between this tree and _the_ Strawberry; nor is
there more than a faint superficial resemblance between the fruits of
the two plants. The Strawberry belongs to the great Rose family, whilst
the nearest British connections of the Arbutus are the Bilberries and
Heaths.
[Illustration: _Pl. 124._ Strawberry Tree.]
Dogwood (_Cornus sanguinea_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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