The Hermitage

The lack of tree cover was a repeated complaint of the early travellers to Scotland. The old Caledonian pine forest had retreated to a few isolated pockets, driven from the hilltops by climate change and from the straths by mankind. The woodland that now clothes the hillsides north of Dunkeld was first planted by the 4th duke of Atholl at the end of the eighteenth century. The larch was brought to Scotland by William Menzies of Culdares, near Fortingall, in 1742. He presented a few seedlings to the duke who passed them on to a gardener to try in the extensive hot houses at Dunkeld House. Prince Charles Edward Stuart sampled his first pineapple in September 1745 grown in these same gardens.

The larches languished until they were turfed outdoors as being unworthy of further consideration. Whereupon they waxed mighty. When sometime later some Japanese larches were planted nearby, an observant forester noticed that some of the seedlings round about were crosses between the Japanese and European varieties. This hybrid became one of the most important commercial softwood timber trees. It has an unfortunate habit of growing like a corkscrew on good land but in the thin, acid soil of much of the Highlands it develops very well.

The climate and soil of Perthshire produce superb trees, both deciduous and coniferous, At the National Trust's Hermitage there are record specimens of both larch and Douglas Fir, named after one of Perthshire's sons who first collected it. The larches are offspring of the parent larches, those original seedlings released into the wild. The last of these still survives behind Dunkeld cathedral.