Volume 9 - Electric Scotland

SEED DISPERSAL OF PINUS SYLVESTKIS & BETULA ALBA 43
ON THE SEED DISPERSAL OF
PINUS SYLVESTRIS AND BETULA ALBA.
By ROBERT SMITH, B.Sc., University College,
Dundee.
ALTHOUGH much has been written on the subject of the
adaptations of plants for the dispersal of their seeds, there
is still a lack of precise information with regard to the
distance to which the seeds of even common species may
be carried by these means. Fliche, who may be regarded
as the chief contributor to this subject, has given
x
a series
of measurements which he made of the distances between
certain seedlings and their parent trees. His figures are
remarkably small ;
thus the greatest distance to which the
seeds of Pinus sylvestris were carried was only 115 metres,
of Fagus sylvatica 500-600 metres, of Pyrus Aucuparia
1400-2100 metres.
The importance of such measurements, with regard
to the determination of the time required for the migrations
of plants across a region, or to the study of the
comparative effectiveness of the various adaptations for
dispersal, will be sufficiently evident to any student of
these subjects. It is plain, however, that many more
examples from different regions would require
to be studied
before the data could be safely utilised in forming any
generalisations. The scarcity of recorded examples may
probably be ascribed to the great difficulty experienced in
finding cases where seedlings can be with certainty traced
to their parent plants.
A particularly favourable example has come under my
notice in the north-eastern part of the county of Fife, on
that stretch of fixed dunes known as Tentsmuir, between
Tayport
and the mouth of the river Eden. The moor is
1
Fliche, 'Un Reboisement' "
(
Annales de la science agronomique," i., 1888).
Detailed accounts of the distances to which seeds may be expelled from those
plants provided with mechanical devices for the purpose are given in works by
Lubbock, Kerner, etc. ; but, so far as I am aware, very few besides Fliche
have sought to ascertain the distances to which seeds are carried by other
than mechanical devices. Clement Reid, in his recently published work on
the " Origin of the British Flora" (1899), p. 28, describes an interesting case
of the dispersal of acorns by means of rooks, where the seedlings were found
more than a mile from the parent plants.