ON THE REARING AND PLANTING OF HEDGES.
The rearing of plants for hedges is a matter of so much importance that one can well understand how it has come to be a business of itself; and as it is better that it should be so, both landlords and tenants will do rightly to encourage its being done well. If, then, we take it for granted that the whitethorn is the best hedge-plant, it will be best to inquire—as a contribution to the science of the subject—whether there are not some important varieties of this plant; if so, we should determine which is the best, and encourage its cultivation. As the case at present stands, nurserymen take no pains in the matter; they usually employ children to collect the “haws”—the name by which the fruits are known—and it is a matter of perfect indifference where or how they obtain them.
Now, as regards the common hawthorn, experience has taught us that seeds obtained from trees in cold, wild, stony places, such as have established themselves about old quarries on the Cotteswold-hills, more quickly make good plants than those from the pampered hedge-row in the deep vale-lands.
But, in addition to this, having some years ago observed that certain whitethorn-trees came into flower a full fortnight before others, and this on the cold forest-marble clays in the exposed country of North Wilts and south of Cirencester, we were induced to examine this tree more closely; and the result of the inquiry was to induce a belief that this is a much hardier, quicker, and more certain growing plant for hedge-rows than the commoner form.
With these views established in our mind, we were not a little pleased to find that in the beautiful new edition of “English Botany,” by the accomplished editor, J. T. Syme, Esq., F.L.S., &c., figures and descriptions are given of the two forms; and we here reproduce in opposite columns the descriptions referred to with a figure of the early form we have mentioned, that our readers may compare it with the common whitethorn:—
| Cratægus oxyacantha. | |||
| Cratægus oxyacanthoides (Glabrous Whitethorn). | Cratægus monogyna (Common Whitethorn). | ||
| Plate CCCCLXXIX. (E.B.) | Plate CCCCLXXX. (E.B.) | ||
| Leaves obovate or rhomboid-obovate, with 3 to 5 lobes, margins slightly convex from the base to the apex of the first lobe, usually serrated; lobes scarcely longer than broad, generally rounded. Peduncles commonly glabrous. Calyx-tube glabrous; segments glabrous, ovate-deltoid, acuminate, spreading-reflexed, with recurved points. Styles usually 2 or 3. Fruit with 2 or 3 stones. | Leaves rhomboidal or rhomboidal-ovate, with 3 to 5 lobes, margins straight or concave from the base to the apex of the first lobe, usually entire, except at the tips of the lobes; lobes longer than broad, and acute at the apex. Peduncles generally downy. Calyx-tube more or less downy; segments slightly downy, ovate-triangular, acuminate, suddenly reflexed. Style 1. Fruit with 1 stone. (See [plate].) | ||
That the glabrous whitethorn would make the best hedge-row form we have no doubt, as its free growth and early leafing particularly recommend it; and besides, though not the commonest, we cannot help thinking it to be the hardiest variety, and one that would be likely to succeed in soils where the ordinary one would be very slow in growth.
We have occasionally met with it in nursery-plantations, as well as in hedge-rows, where it is distinguished at a glance by its more freely growing twigs and brighter coloured, quite smooth leaves; so also, but more rarely, we have met with the Glastonbury thorn in the hedge-row, which we look upon as a variety of the glabrous thorn, a specimen of which is now before us (January, 1865), with both leaves and flowers well in bud, in the midst of a deep snow and a severe frost.
This variety is fabled to have sprung from Joseph of Arimathæa’s staff, which he is supposed to have planted in the soil at Glastonbury, on Christmas-day, prior to the foundation of the abbey at that interesting place; and we have found some natives, both here and in Herefordshire—whither perhaps the thorn had spread with sorts of apples,—who adduce the budding of this thorn, which is usually after our present Christmas-tide, as an evidence that Old Christmas is the right day.
But we must not be too far led away by the legendary lore, much less the poetry connected with the whitethorn.