286 CONTRIBUTION TO THE FLORA OF GAZALAND. 
A medium-sized or, occasionally, large tree ; it seldom appears to reach a 
really large size except in very sheltered glens or on the edges of forest 
patches. The bark is light reddish brown, soft and dry externally and 
resinous, The tree begins to fruit at а very early age. The cones usually 
grow in heavy and conspicuous clusters on the young leader or near the ends 
of the smaller side-twigs; they vary in size and robustness, the larger 
averaging 3 in. in length by 3 in. broad, while the smaller do not exceed 
i in. in length. It is by far the best local timber—light, handsome, easily 
worked, scented, and very durable. 
Mr. Swynnerton’s observations are of special interest as bearing on the 
colour of the young leaves by which the Rhodesia specimens have been 
distinguished from the Milanji cedar, the foliage in the young state being of 
a dull dark green without the bluish-green hue so remarkable in young 
specimens of the Milanji cedar (see Masters, l. с., and Rendle in Journ. Bot. 
xliv. (1906) 193). Mr. Swynnerton says :— During my visit to Northern 
Melsetter and the Chimanimani Mountains in 1906, I had the opportunity of 
examining a very large number of the trees, both old and young, in the wild 
state, and can assert that though the bluish tinge mentioned by Mr. Mahon 
is sometimes absent in the latter, it is very frequently present, and some- 
times in a very marked degree. Out of 55 young trees planted by myself 
three years before from Melsetter seed, all in flourishing condition, not one 
lacked it, and even now, 24 years later, the majority still show it more or 
less conspicuously. These are on a very poor washed-out slope. Оп 
the other hand, out of a dozen or more trees of the same age planted on 
richer soil by one of my neighbours, at roughly the same elevation and in an 
equally flourishing condition, only two possessed it, the remainder being 
of the dark green hue described by Mr. Mahon. In the wild state I have 
noticed both types, but am unable to say which is the more frequent ; I 
think, on the Chimanimani at any rate, the bluish, and these were, I should 
say, on distinetly poor soil (apart from such benefit from humus as the trees 
might derive from standing on the outskirts of forest patches—their most 
usual situation). It is therefore probable that the presence or absence of the 
bluish tinge is dependent simply on soil. 
“Comparatively few ‘cedars’ are found inside the forests, though in one 
such spot, beside a stream, I noted a fairly compact group of thirteen good, 
straight, single-stemmed specimens (as well as many younger), the largest 
number I have seen growing together in one place. Groups of three or four 
are not infrequent, and large numbers of seedlings may sometimes be seen 
growing together in a densely-packed mass—to he thinned out later, pre- 
sumably, by fires. [t is probably due to these annual grass-fires that the 
habitat of the species is so restricted. Even in Southern Melsetter (3000— 
4000 ft.) it flourishes exceedingly wherever planted, and 13 doubtless 
excluded trom this district in its wild state solely by the far ranker growth 
