1 178 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



This cypress which occurs in Guatemala, where it was collected * by Donnell- 

 Smith at 5000 ft. altitude, does not differ from var. Benthami in botanical characters, 

 but is perhaps more tender in cultivation. The late Lord Annesley raised some 

 plants from seeds imported from Guatemala, one of which succumbed at Castle- 

 wellan to the frost of April 1908. Another plant given to Canon Ellacombe in 

 1897, ' s however, thriving at Bitton and has attained 14 ft. in height. 



4. Var. glauca. Specimens with very bluish glaucous foliage from Monserrat 

 in Portugal may provisionally be distinguished by this varietal name. The leaves 

 show usually the dorsal resin-gland, which is characteristic of C. arizonica, and afford 

 evidence that the latter species is only a geographical form of C. lusitanica. 



Distribution 



This species is widely distributed in Mexico, 2 and extends into the high 

 mountains of Guatemala. According to Pringle it is found at altitudes between 

 4000 and 10,000 ft., usually growing in the neighbourhood of mountain streams, and 

 on moist slopes. It rarely forms a forest to the exclusion of other species, and even 

 when crowded generally branches from near the ground. Pringle speaks, however, 

 of a small wood straggling along brooks for a mile or more on the mountains over- 

 looking the valley of Mexico on the south, the trees showing great variation in 

 foliage and mode of branching. This species attains its largest size, 2 to 4 ft. in 

 diameter, in damp volcanic soil on the plains at the base of the mountains, as near the 

 city of Mexico. It is also generally planted in the towns of the southern table- 

 lands. (A. H.) 



The only place where I remember to have seen this beautiful tree in Mexico 

 was in a grove of planted trees in the so-called " Sacro monte " at Amecameca, a 

 village on the lower slopes of the great volcano of Popocatepetl, at an elevation of 

 nearly 8000 ft. Here it was a picturesque tree with buttressed trunks 5 or 6 feet in 

 diameter, and clothed with pendulous branches, which in many places were covered 

 with Tillandsia and other epiphytes. Many of the trees were dying at the tops and 

 seemed of great age. A good illustration of these trees is given under the name 

 C. Benthami by Karsten and Schenck. 8 The vegetation and climate of this region 

 is subtropical, and, though very dry at the season when I was there, has a long rainy 

 season, and, as far as I could learn, little frost or snow. 



History 



So far as I know, no account has been written in English of the forest of 

 Bussaco, in Portugal, which is celebrated as the home of the tree called Cupressus 

 lusitanica, Miller, by botanists, and popularly known as the cypress or cedar of 

 Goa. An attempt to decide the origin of this tree was made by the late Dr. 



1 Heyde and Lux also gathered specimens of C. lusitanica in the Santa Rosa department of Guatemala at 4000 feet 

 altitude in 1892. 



* Hartweg collected lx>th the typical form and var. Benthami in Mexico in 1839. 



* Vtgetationsbilder, ii. t. 16 (1905). 





