GROUND-PINE, the popular name of the lyc,opodium elavatum, an evergreen vine sometimes three yards long. It is of the genus ajuga. Another species is the club moss, a handsome little plant of tree-like form about 8 in. high.
in the law of England, is the rent which a person, who intends to build upon a piece of ground, pays to the landlord for the use of the ground for a certain specified term, usually 99 years. The usual arrangement between the owner of the freehold of land and a speculating builder, is of this kind. The builder pays a certain annual sum by way of rent to the owner, who is thereafter called the ground-landlord, and then commences to build upon the land. The builder then lets the houses, and in doing so he of course includes in the rent which he puts upon each house a proportion ate part of this ground-rent, which he himself is bound to pay to the ground-landlord, so that practically the tenant pays both the rent and the ground-rent, the latter being so called because it issues out of the ground, independently of what is built upon it. Ground-rents often form a safe investment for capital, because the security is good. This security consists in the ground-landlord being able, whenever his ground-rent is in arrear, to distrain all the goods and chattels he finds on the premises, to whomsoever they may and as the ground-rent is generally a small sum, compared with the furniture of the tenant, he is always sure to recover its full amount. This power of
distress exists whether the tenant has paid his rent to his own landlord or not; but if at any time the tenant has been obliged to pay the ground-landlord the ground-rent, which it is the duty of his own landlord in general to pay, he may deduct such sum from the next rent he pays, or, as it is called, may set off the one against the other so far as it will go. Strictly speaking, there are thus two landlords. The ground-landlord is the over-landlord, and has the paramount security; the other landlord is landlord to the tenant who actually occupies, but is himself tenant to the ground-landlord, for he merely holds a lease. lie is what is called a mesne landlord. At the end of the 99 years, or whatever other term is fixed upon, the whole of the building becomes the property of the ground-landlord, for the interest of the builder or his assignees then expires by efiluxion of time; and as the building is a fixture, and cannot be carried away, it thus falls in to the landlord, and often thereby creates a great accession of wealth.
Ground-rent corresponds to feu in Scotland, with this difference, that the feu-rent in the latter case lasts forever, there being no definite term fixed for its ceasing.