Abstract
THE Arve or Arolla pine is the most beautiful of Alpine conifers. The glossy green of its acicular tufted leaves, the curving cone of its outline, the combined strength and grace of its growth, make it yet more attractive in colour and in form than the darker and sturdier spruce. It ranges, though rather fitful and sporadic in distribution, throughout the Alpine chain, passing on to the Carpathians, where, however, it does not grow nearly so high above the sea-level, but it is most abundant in north-eastern Asia, which is apparently its birthplace. There it extends northward to the tree-limit, eastward to the Altai, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the north of Japan, and westward even so far as the Lower Dwina. Between the occupants of these two provinces some marked differences exist, so that Dr. Rikli recognises an Arctic and an Alpine subspecies, to the latter of which his memoir is restricted. The Arve is a lover of the mountains, and on these it has a rather wide vertical range. When growing wild it is seldom met with below the 1350-metre contour-line. Dr. Rikli mentions as the lowest instance one at about 1200, near Raron, in the Upper Rhone valley. Its upper limit is about 2400 metres, the highest occurrence on record being 2585 metres, on the Plattje, near Saas Fee. Such cases, however, are exceptional, where the tree obviously has had a hard struggle for existence, and it cannot be said to nourish above 2300 metres. On the Northern range of the Alps, the vertical limits within which it grows freely are narrower than in the Central—or Pennine and Lepontine—range, the difference between them, in Canton Valais, being 1385 metres, and in Canton St. Gall only 270 metres.
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B., T. The Arolla Pine 1 . Nature 82, 399–400 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/082399c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/082399c0