ee Se ee Oe 
i 
Tas. 4777, 4778. 
WELLINGTONIA GiGcanTEA. 
Gigantic Wellingtoma. 
Nat. Ord. ConrrFer#.—Diecia MoNADELPHIA. 
Gen. Char. Flores dicici?—-Mascunt ...? Foaminer: Strobl oblongi, 
lignei; squamis numerosis, cuneatis, truncatis, per apophysin transverse (ob brae- 
team equilongam omnino adnatam) sulcatis, mucrone in medio. Semina 7 cuique 
squame, supra medium pendula, compressa, utrinque alata——Arbor vasa, tricenti- 
pedalia, Californica, foliis parvis alternis. 
WELLINGTONIA gigantea. 
Wetinetonta gigantea. Lindl. in Gardeners’ Chronicle for December, 1853, 
No. 52, p. 820,and 823. Veitch, lithographic plate, large folio, 1854; 
drawn from nature by J. M. Lapham. 
Of late the curiosity of the public, as well as of the botanist, 
has been excited by a discovery of Mr. William Lobb, of a coni- 
ferous tree in the interior of California, of a most gigantic size, 
measuring 300 feet and more in height, and from 10 to 20 feet 
in the diameter (30 to 60 feet in circumference) of its trunk. 
Douglas’s Pinus Lambertiana, of the Oregon, measured two- 
thirds of that height, with a trunk nearly equal in girth to that 
just mentioned, and the same intrepid traveller has described a 
Californian tree in the following language*: “ But the great 
beauty of Californian vegetation is a species of Zavodium, which 
gives the mountains a most peculiar, I was almost going to say, 
awful appearance, something which plainly tells us we are no! 
in Europe. I have repeatedly measured specimens of this tree 
270 feet long, and 32 feet round, at three feet above the ground. 
Some few I saw upwards of 300 feet high, but none in which 
the thickness was greater than those’ I have instanced.” —No — 
seeds or specimens indicated as belonging to this tree were ever — 
transmitted by him to Europe. Still I was disposed to refer — 
barren branchlets of a Conifera, sent home by Douglas, to this — 
* See Douglas’s Letters, in Memoir of Douglas, published in ‘ Hooker’s Com- a 
panion to the Botanical Magazine,’ vol. ii. p. 150. ee 
APRIL Ist, 1854. 
