232 THE PLANT WORLD 



A REDWOOD SPORT. 

 By W. A. Cannon. 



In a study published a few years since Dr. Peirce* re- 

 ports the occurrence of white redwood in the Santa Cruz 

 mountains, not far from Stanford University. Peirce's 

 description of the redwood and the conditions under which 

 it was growing, are in part as follows : "The tallest redwood 

 tree in view marks the spot where the white ones grow. 

 This tall tree is one of a number which are several decades 

 old. They, and other smaller young trees of various ages, 

 have come from the stump and roots of a much older tree 

 which must have been very large when it was felled. * * * * 

 There is little left of the old stump above the general ground 

 level. * * * All of these second growth trees are perfectly 

 normal, as far as I could see. One buttress of the old parent 

 tree, instead of sending up a few more or less scattered 

 sprouts which grow up fairly rapidly and, within a season 

 or two take on the characters of young trees in bark, foliage 

 and manner of branching, produces branches or bunches of 

 scrubby, thickly set, short and slender sprouts or suckers. 

 These are perfectly white as to leaves. The youngest parts 

 of the stems are of the same ghostly color as the leaves. 

 These white suckers may attain a height of thirty (30) centi- 

 meters in the course of one season." The writer then goes 

 on to say that the suckers grow until the killing autumn frost 

 which they are never able to endure. The white sprouts 

 are in fact annual. Dr. Peirce relates that white redwoods 

 are not especially rare, but that he had not seen another 

 example in the field, although he had, at the time, specimens 

 of such a redwood from near Gilroy. 



With the main facts of Peirce's paper in mind, I was 

 much interested, while on a recent botanical trip, to discover 

 a white redwood and to make what field observations on it 

 I was able, since in certain particulars the redwood was differ- 



*Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci. 3rd Ser., Botany, vol. 11, 1891. 



