TREES 39 



dye; and the Deciduous Cypress, Taxodium distichum. 

 These two trees grow in striking contrast to left and right of 

 the middle path to the Fountain. The latter is an example of 

 a cone-bearing plant which sheds its leaves in winter. It was 

 planted about 1840 and is now 5 ft. 8 in. in girth; but in 

 Mexico, its native land, it attains to a girth of trunk of 

 90 ft. and to a great age : " the identical tree at Chapultipec 

 under which Montezuma was accustomed to sit previously 

 to the conquest of Mexico is yet living, and known as the 

 Cypress of Montezuma." 



The Oxford Sophora, with its girth of 13 ft., surpasses by 

 a foot the taller specimen at Cambridge. It was planted by 

 the elder Baxter about 1817, and it is still growing rapidly. 



Immediately within the Danby Gate on the left, in a warm 

 corner of the wall, is Christ's Thorn, Paliurus aculeatus^ a 

 native of the Mediterranean region. It was checked by the 

 severe winter of 1837-8, when the thermometer sank to 

 i Fahrenheit, but it recovered. It attracts especial attention 

 because it is considered to be the plant from which the Crown 

 of Thorns was made. It is certainly spinous enough, and is 

 a common hedge-plant in the Holy Land, where, however, a 

 large proportion of the flora also bear spines. It is covered 

 in autumn with a profusion of small yellow flowers. Another 

 claimant to the honour of the Crown is the Glastonbury Thorn. 



Turning to the left, the visitor will find, in the north- 

 eastern corner, the Wild Black Cherry Bark, Prunus scrotina, 

 a medicinal tree of N. America, a Medlar, Pyrus germanica, 

 arid two Levantine Thorns; while against the East Wall grow 

 specimens of Kerria japonica^ of Smilax sarsaparilla from 

 Florida, misnamed because it does not yield the drug after 

 which Linnaeus named it, and of the Dutchman's Pipe, 

 Aristolochia sipko, remarkable for its singularly formed flowers, 

 which reach a larger size in a tropical species grown under 

 glass on the other side of the wall. At intervals are planted 

 Roses and Ivies (unnamed). In the bed are species of Ribes. 



