three of the recorders refer to its nuts, implying

that they were collected by the inhabitants“?

THE WILLOWS (Salix species)

Though there are six species of willow native to Prince Edward Island“, all of them small shrubs, only eleven of the early recorders make reference to willows (Tables 1-1 and 1-7). Stewart (1806) seems to assume that there was only one species on the island, which he calls the ”swamp willow". He describes it as "a useless tree that never grows to any size” and noted that its twigs were brittle and of no value”. Hill (1839) included willows among those minor trees that he said were not numerous on the island, while Bain (1890) noted willows as a component of the original forest vegetation on swampy clay soils. Finally, about 1904 Watson constructed a comprehensive list of the island’s willow species according to the botanical classification of the day.

INDIAN PEAR (Amelanchier species)

Five different species of Ame/anch/er, a genus of small trees and shrubs, occur on Prince Edward Island”. There are only three mentions of the genus in island records (Table 1-7): Cambridge (1796?) and MacGregor (1828) both list ”Indian pear” among the edible ”wild fruits of the island", while Bain (1882) called it a ”handsome flowering shrub".

A GENERAL COMPARISON OF THE FREQUENCY OF THE TREES.

As is evident from the preceding discussions for each species, there are many useful contemporary

5‘3 MacGregor 1828; Sutherland 1861; Bain 1390. 5“ Erskine 1960. Sutherland (1861) noted that there were also willow species on the island that had been introduced, presumably from Europe, but he does not name them. In 1866 Alexander Anderson, the surveyor for Prince County, who lived near Sea Cow Head, recorded in one of his field notebooks (PARO: RG15/9/62) the girth of four willow trees at an unspecified location, that ranged between 7 feet 1 inch and 10 feet 1 inch (ie. diameters of 2' 2" to 3' 2"). The species must have been either the white willow (Sa/ix alba) or the crack willow (S, fragilis) both of which can grow into large trees of 25 metres in height (Press & Hosking 1992). Both were introduced from Europe, and were recorded on the island in the 19505 (Erskine 1960), and probably occurred long before.

5‘5 He was making a comparison, without saying so, with British species of willow, the branches of which are pliable and used especially in basket-making.

5‘6 Erskine 1960.

Number of lists

221

comments on the relative abundance of the various trees in the forests of the island. However, we can extract further information on the relative abundance of the trees by comparing quantitatively the number of records for each tree species in the tree lists and the tree tally. In my earlier report | used the limited records of the French period in this way, and I shall now do the same for the British period records, treating the broad-leaved and conifer trees separately.

The broad-leaved trees — Table 1-9A, which ranks the various tree genera according to their frequency in the thirty-seven tree lists, shows a wide variation in the frequency with which the various trees were ’listed' by the early recorders — as is shown graphically in Figure 1-12. Three broad-leaved tree genera are clear leaders (beech, birch and maple), occurring in virtually every list, and even ranking ahead of all of the conifer species. Lagging much further behind is a group of middle-ranking trees (oak, poplar, ash and elm), and even further behind these, are seven genera occurring in eight or fewer of the lists (alder, cherry, willow, hazel, Indian pear, mountain ash and ironwood).

FIGURE 1-1 2.

The frequency of the principal broad- leaved genera in the 37 lists of the island's trees made by British period recorders.

If this were all the information to survive on the composition of the island’s forests before European settlement, then we should already have useful information on the relative importance of the various broad-leaved trees in the island’s forests. However, when we add to this, the frequency of these same trees in the total tally (Table 1-9B, Figure 1-13), we are able to refine our picture of the relative abundance of these trees: beech, birch and maple now shoot so far ahead of all of the others, that we can only conclude that these other trees only entered the record