“The above is my candid opinion on the subject, as far as my practice has enabled me to speak. I am, &c.
The best stoves for combining the culture of the Pine and Vine in Scotland, have been constructed by Mr. Hay, of which fine examples occur at Lord Duncan’s, Lundie-house, near Dundee, and the Earl of Roseberry’s, at Dulmeny-park (_fig. 23._), near Edinburgh.
As substitutes for tan, leaves are the common resource, but any vegetable matter of slow putrefaction may be employed, as chopped spray of hedges or copse, wood-shavings, saw-dust, &c. and in Scotland, it has been found that flax-dressers’ refuse keeps up a moderate heat for a longer period than any other material.
The mode of employing the vigour remaining in the old stock or plant after the fruit is cut, to nourish, for a certain time, the sucker or suckers which may be growing on it, was practised by Speechly; but scarcely to the extent which it has been carried lately. This, we think, a considerable improvement, if kept within certain limits; but, if carried too far, what might be gained by the sucker coming earlier into fruit, would be lost by the retardation of the plant’s own suckers.
On Nov. 3. 1818. “A Queen Pine, grown by Peter Marsland, Esq. of Woodbank, near Stockport, was exhibited to the Horticultural Society. It weighed three pounds fourteen ounces, measured seventeen inches in circumference, and was peculiarly well-flavoured. The singularity of this Pine was its being the produce of a sucker which had been removed from the parent-root only six months previous to the time the fruit was cut. The plant on which the sucker grew had produced a fruit, which was cut in October, 1817; the old stem, with the sucker attached, was allowed to remain in the Pine-pit till May, 1818; at that time the sucker was broken off, potted, and plunged into a fresh pit; it soon after showed fruit, which, in the course of four months, attained to the weight and size above stated. Mr. Marsland is in the practice of producing Pines in this way with equal success and expedition. His houses are all heated by steam.” _Hort. Trans._ iv. 52.
On the 17th of Oct. 1819, specimens of the New Providence, globe, black Antigua, and Enville, were exhibited, all which were produced in a similar manner to the above. P. Marsland considers, that “though not of the largest description, yet as far as beauty of form and richness of flavour are concerned, they would not yield to fruit of more protracted growth.” The success which has attended this gentleman’s mode of “treating the Pine, so as to insure the production of fruit within twelve months from the cutting of their previous produce, has been perfectly satisfactory;” and the following is his account of it. “In November, 1819, as soon as the fruit had been cut from the Pine plants, which were then two years old, all the leaves were stripped off the old stocks, nothing being left but a single sucker on each, and that the strongest on the plant; they were then placed in a house where the heat was about sixty degrees, and they remained till March, 1820. At this period the suckers were broken off from the old stocks, and planted in pots from eight to twelve inches in diameter, varying according to the size of the sucker. It may be proper, however, to observe, that the length of time which the young sucker is allowed to remain attached to the mother plant, depends in some degree upon the kind of Pine; the tardy fruiters, such as the black Antigua, and others, require to be left longer than the Queen, and those which fruit readily.