216 FOREST CULTURE AND 
of the stem of fifty-five feet. The wood is reddish, 
close-veined, but light and brittle. One of the most 
colossal trees of the globe. 
Sequoia Wellingtonia, Seem. (Wellingtonia gigan- 
tea, Lindl.)—Mammoth tree. California, up to five 
thousand feet above the sea. This, the biggest of all 
trees, attains a stem of three hundred and twenty 
feet in length, and one hundred and twelve feet in 
circumference, the oldest trees being estimated at one 
thousand one hundred years; the total height of a 
tree will occasionally be four hundred and fifty feet ; 
a stem broken at three hundred and fifty feet had a 
diameter of eighteen feet. The wood is soft and 
white when felled, afterward it turns red. 
Taxodium distichum, Rich.—Virginia Swamp, or 
Bald Cypress. In swampy places of North America. 
A large and valuable tree, one hundred feet high, 
with a stem circumference of sometimes forty feet, of 
rapid growth, with deciduous foliage, like that of the 
Larch and Ginkgo ; it is found fossil in the miocene 
formation of many partsof Europe. The wood is fine- 
grained, hard and durable; it yields an essential oil, 
and a superior kind of turpentine. Useful for ave- 
nues on swampy margins of lakes or river-banks, 
Taxdium mucronatum, Ten.—The famed Montezu- 
ma Cypress of Mexico, one hundred and twenty feet 
high, with a trunk forty-four feet in circumference ; 
it forms extensive forests between Chapultepec and 
Testuco. 
Taxus baccata, L.—Yew. Middle and South Eu- 
rope and Asia, at one thousand to four thousand feet 
elevation. Generally a shrub, sometimes a tree forty 
feet high, which furnishes a yellow or brown wood, 
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