Planting. PLANTING, or the culture of trees, is a branch of agriculture necessarily of much more recent date than either the culture of grain and herbage plants, or the breeding and rearing of cattle. The culture of those plants which in every country supply the food of mankind, whether directly, or by nourishing the domestic animals used for food by man, must have exclusively occupied his attention for many ages; whilst the timber which was employed in houses, ships, and machines, or for fuel, was found in the native woods. Hence, though we hear of the culture of fruit-trees, and occasionally also of ornamental trees and shrubs, amongst the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, the cultivation of timber-trees on a large scale by art only took place in modern times. In the days of Charlemagne, the greater part of France and Germany was covered with immense forests; and one of the benefits conferred on France by that prince, was the rooting up of portions of these forests here and there throughout the country, and substituting in their room orchards or vineyards. Artificial plantations appear to have been formed in Germany sooner than in any other country, and apparently as early as the fifteenth century. In Britain they took place, though but sparingly, nearly a century afterwards. Planting, however, was by no means general in England till the beginning of the seventeenth century, when, in consequence of the extensive transfers of property which took place in the preceding century, on the seizure of the church-lands by Henry VIII., much timber was sold by the new owners, in order to make good their payments. The quantity of timber thus thrown into the market lowered its price considerably, inasmuch, as Hollingshed informs us, that the builders of cottages, who had formerly employed willow, and other cheap and common woods, now built them of as good oak as their lords. The demand for timber thus constantly increasing, and a demand for an extended surface of farming land going on at the same time, the natural forests became everywhere greatly circumscribed, till at last timber for naval purposes and house-building began to be imported, and the proprietors of land to think, first of protecting their native woods from the inroads of cattle; afterwards of enclosing pieces of waste ground, and allowing them to become covered with young trees from seeds carried thither by the wind or other accidental circumstances; and ultimately of sowing acorns and mast in such enclosures, or of filling them with young plants collected in the woods; a practice which exists in Sussex, and some other parts of England, even at the present day. Planting received a great stimulus in Britain soon after the breaking out of the late general war, partly in consequence of a real or supposed scarcity of timber fit for naval purposes, and partly owing to the high price to which the article for general use rose, in consequence of the increased expense of obtaining supplies from other countries. Since the peace, the rage for planting, with a view to profit, has subsided; but there is still a universal taste for cultivating trees and shrubs, with a combined view to ornament and use; and there is also an increased and increasing taste for the introduction of trees and shrubs from foreign countries.
Having in this slight manner noticed the origin of planting, we shall next give a brief outline of its present practice in Britain; noticing in succession: 1. A general view of the different properties possessed by trees; 2. selections suitable for different purposes; 3. the nursery culture of trees; and, 4. the culture of trees in plantations.
It is necessary to premise, that in this article we confine ourselves entirely to trees which are well known in Britain,
and quite hardy; and to the formation of such plantations as are made with a view to their timber-produce. Fruit-trees and fruit-shrubs, flowering shrubs of every kind, and ornamental plantations, we consider as belonging to gardening, and as already disposed of under the article HORTICULTURE.
The sort of trees which it is desirable to plant, is necessarily the first point which a proprietor will take into consideration before he commences a plantation. Trees differ from one another in many particulars: in magnitude; in slowness or rapidity of growth; in their suitability for poor soils or rich soils, moist grounds or dry grounds, elevated exposed situations, or low and sheltered plains; in the texture, colour, and durability of their timber; in their delicacy or hardness in any given climate; in their being difficult or easy to propagate and rear; in retaining their leaves all the year, or dropping them every autumn; in producing showy flowers or fruits; and in a great variety of other particulars. In regard to magnitude, those trees which, in the latitude of Britain, and in the same parallels of latitude throughout the northern hemisphere, attain the greatest height, are the spruce and silver fir, the larch, and the Scotch pine; and these also are the trees which, in most parts of Britain, produce the greatest quantity of timber in their trunks relatively to that contained in their branches, and that in the shortest time. The poplar, the willow, and some species of elm, are rapid-growing trees, and produce a great bulk of head in a short period; but the timber of these trees is not all contained in one straight trunk, as in the case of the pines and firs, a considerable portion of it being distributed among the branches. Hence, where the speedy production of timber is the main object of planting, the pines and firs above mentioned are decidedly the trees that ought to be preferred. The production of timber, however, is not always the sole object of planting. Effect, or, in other words, the production of the appearance of woodiness on an estate, is perhaps oftener the object than mere timber. For this purpose the Scotch and English elms, the white, black, and black Italian poplars, the Huntingdon willow, and in some situations the birch, and in others, such as on the sea-shore, the sycamore, are the most desirable trees. Where the object is to clothe a sterile surface of dry sand, the birch and the Scotch pine are among the best trees that we have; and if the situation be exposed to the sea-breeze, the common and the Norway maple may be substituted for the birch and the pine; and, in the warmer parts of the island, the evergreen oak. For moist soils which cannot be drained, there are trees that have the remarkable property of sending their horizontal roots along the surface of the ground; among these are the white, the trembling, and the Ontario poplars; and, for the marshes of the warmer parts of the island, the deciduous cypress. There are trees which will grow near water, in situations where their roots can enter into it, but which will not grow in undrained soil, such as the different species of willow, and most of the poplars. It is a remarkable fact, that there is no tree in any part of the world which is truly aquatic; that is, which will spring up from the bottom of a pond or river. Had there been such trees created, there could then have been neither rivers nor lakes, and the whole of the terrestrial globe must necessarily have been either in a state of marsh or mountain.