APPENDIX 1

THE TREE SPECIES OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND NAMED IN RECORDS OF THE FRENCH PERIOD (1534-1758)

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this Appendix is to collect together all of the mentions of named tree species in the contemporary records of the French period for Prince Edward Island (1534—1758), and to analyse this information to see what it can tell us about the forest composition of the island and the relative importance of the various tree species in the first centuries of European exploration and settlement.

Examination of the sixty-nine documents included in this ‘sourcebook’ has yielded a total of 102 specific tree records spread across nineteen documents (less than a third of the total) written by sixteen different recorders. (For information on the background of each of these recorders, including the extent of their experience of the island, see Table 1 of the main introduction.) With a few exceptions, this naming is only to the level of the genus with no attempt being made to specify the species (e.g. pin ‘pine’ is the norm, rather than pin rouge ’red pine’) — though where only one species in a genus occms on the island the identification is automatically to the level of species.

This tree data has been summarised in the form of two tables. The first (Table 1-2) presents the tree species occurring in lists made by those recorders whose intention it was to provide a list of tree species occurring on the island. Eight such lists have been found, all but two of which appear to have been intended to be applicable to the whole island — though in fact most of the list-makers would have known only a part of the island.

The second table contains a tally of all of the records for each named tree species, including their occurrences in the lists (Table 1—3). All of these tree references that are geographically- locatable have been plotted as accurately as possible on maps: Figure 1—1 maps this information in the original French, while Figure 1-2 shows it in English translation.

In analysing the two tables I shall, beginning with the conifers, consider each tree genus in turn,

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commenting firstly on any problems that the early French recorders might have had in identifying each of the genera they observed on the island — as Europeans, many were encountering the trees of the New World for the first time. Then I shall consider any additional problems they had in giving a name to what they considered to be a distinct tree type. For anyone at the beginning of the twenty-first century who may read the surviving records, there is then the additional problem of working out what tree type is meant by a particular name — with the added difficulty for anyone whose first language is not French of interpreting the meanings of names in another language.

However in this respect I have been greatly helped by a study carried out in the 19403 by a linguist from France, Genevieve Massignon,1 into the French names used in the Maritime provinces for the different tree species, which forms a small part of an in-depth study into the Acadian-French language. Massignon also made extensive comparison of the tree names used in Acadia with those used in France and in Canada2 — both those in use in the 19403 and those recorded in historical documents.3 The tree names from Massignon are included in Table 1-1.4

1 Massignon (1962) Les Pariers Francais d'Acadie.

2 I shall frequently use the words ‘Canada’ and ‘Acadia’ in their eighteenth century historical sense: ‘Canada‘ and Canadian- French (or canadien) referring to the French settlement and the language in use along the Saint Lawrence River and its hinterlands; ‘Acadia‘ and Acadian-French (or acadien) to the area and form of the language in the present Maritime provinces. This latter area was governed by the French mostly from Port—Royal until 1713, and after thatfrom Louisbourg, though henceforth, apart from He Saint-Jean and lie Royale (Prince Edward Island and Cape

Breton Island), most of the rest of Acadia was under British rule as Nova Scotia.

3 Unfortunately Massignon‘s work seems not to have come to the attention of English language researchers concerned with the natural history of the Maritime provinces (e.g. Fortier 1983, p. 336; Schmeisser 2000, p. 23) who have continued to mis-interpret or be puzzled by the French names of trees that Massignon had definitively explained.

4 See the Endnote for the results of a survey of the Acadian- French tree names in current use on Prince Edward Island.