ROBINIA PSEUDACACIA
At Winchester
On the sandy soil of parts of Surrey, especially about St. George's Hill, the locust thrives well, reproducing itself freely from self-sown seed, and forming very lovely objects when covered with fragrant white blossoms in June. Even in such parts of England where it does best, it is not profitable to let it stand longer than, say, twenty or thirty years, when it makes admirable fencing and gate-posts, which are almost imperishable. At a greater age the trunk becomes coarse and deeply furrowed, often becoming rotten towards the centre. Elwes mentions a locust tree at Frogmore, near Windsor, as the largest in Britain, which he found in 1908 to be 88 feet high by 14 feet 7 inches in girth. One about the same height at Bowood, Lord Lansdowne's place in Wiltshire, was slightly taller, but girthed only 8½ feet.
In France and Italy the locusts thrive as vigorously as in their native continent, and are exceedingly beautiful during the flowering season. They also make very effective hedges, being regularly cut over, when they send up long and strong shoots armed with murderous thorns.
Few trees stand the drought, heat, and smoke of London as well as the Robinia, which carries its verdure unchanged long after the limes and elms have become seared and unsightly. Many a time, when Parliament continued sitting through and after the dog days, have I refreshed my eyes by gazing upon a fine Robinia which stood at the corner of the late Lord Sefton's house in Belgrave Square. But that tree is no more, for, when the house changed hands after its former owner's death, and was put into the hands of builders and decorators, they felled my friendly Robinia.
There are three species of Robinia seldom planted in this country—namely, R. hispida, R. neo-mexicana, and R. viscosa, all with beautiful pink or rose-coloured flowers. Of these, the first-named, a native of Carolina, is the most desirable, but it is even more brittle than the locust or false acacia. Its blossoms are so exquisite as to entitle the tree to the advantage of being trained on a wall.
There are two other trees of the peaflower order which one would fain see more frequently planted in the sunnier districts of Great Britain, namely the Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum) and the white-flowered Sophora (S. japonica). I happen to be writing within a couple of hundred yards of the finest Judas tree known to me—at Twyford Lodge, near Winchester. It is 35 feet high, and in these early days of May presents a sight which cannot easily be forgotten. The branches, still leafless, are thickly set with blossom; flowers even break out from the old bark on the stem, and the effect of the whole is a dome of soft vieux rose (see [Frontispiece]). It is a native of southern Europe, but agrees perfectly with the climate of England, except in northerly districts which are scant of sun, where it should receive the protection of a wall to encourage the formation of flower buds. The Judas tree (so named from the fond belief that the false Apostle hanged himself thereon) is seldom to be seen in our pleasure-grounds, though it has often been planted there; the reason for this being that it is of slow growth in its early stages, and gets smothered with ranker things, often of less merit.
FLOWER OF ROBINIA PSEUDACACIA
The Pagoda tree (Sophora japonica) is a native of China, where from immemorial time it has been used in medicine, its flowers, seeds and bark being powerfully purgative. Its blossoms appear in August and September, varying in hue from white to yellow, with a tinge of purple. Those which I have seen bear cream-coloured flowers in long, loose panicles, contrasting finely with the dark, pinnate foliage. The tallest specimens I have seen are at Syon House, about 70 feet high. There is also a very large one within the Tilt Yard of Arundel Castle, and Elwes measured one at Cobham Park, Kent, which was 85 feet high in 1905. At [page 144] is shown a fine Pagoda tree in the Botanic Garden at Oxford. I do not remember to have seen any specimens in Scotland. Probably the late flowering habit of the tree would not suit the northern kingdom.