472 TSUGA SIEBOLDIL 



Tsuya Mertensiana is one of the handsomest of coniferous trees of 

 small or medium dimensions for the decoration of the lawn where the 

 larger trees are unsuitable. It grows fairly well in most soils that are 

 well drained, the growth of the leader shoot rarely exceeding six to nine 

 inches annually; to secure good specimens a space with a radius of 

 not less than fifteen feet should be allowed for them. The species 

 keeps in memory the name of one of the most energetic of botanical 

 explorers of the early part of the nineteenth century. 



KARL HEINRICH MERTEXS (1796 1830) was the son of Dr. Franz Karl Mertens 

 who was the head of an Institution in Bremen, and the author of several botanical 

 papers, and who is commemorated by the genus Mertensia (Boraginere). Karl 

 Heinrich was born in Bremen where he received his early education and acquired 

 a fondness for natural history, especially Botany which he studied later in Paris 

 with Jussieu, Desfontaines, Lamarck and Mirbel, and where he made the acquaintance 

 of Dawson Turner by whom he was invited to London and introduced to Dr. Robert 

 Brown, Sir Joseph Banks and the elder Hooker Returning to Germany in 1817, 

 he commenced the study of medicine in Gottingen and then in Halle where he 

 took the Doctor's degree in 1820 and began to practise his profession in Berlin, 

 which, however, he soon left to make his home in his native city. An intense 

 love of natural history and a desire for travel, made the prospect of a quiet 

 professional life in Bremen unbearable, and Mertens went to St. Petersburg in the 

 hope of being appointed naturalist to the expedition which was fitted out there 

 under the command of Kotzebue. Failing to obtain this position, he remained two 

 years in Russia practising his profession, and finally in the spring of 1826 was 

 appointed naturalist and -physician to the expedition which sailed that year under 

 Captain Lutki to make a scientific voyage of exploration round the world. During 

 the next four years Mertens visited England, Teneriffe, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Horn, 

 Valparaiso, the coast of Alaska. Kamtschatka, the Caroline Islands, Manila, the 

 Cape of Good Hope and St Helena. Returning to St. Petersburg, he presented to 

 the Academy of Sciences of that city a number of papers chiefly devoted to the 

 Invertebrate collected during the voyage He was still engaged in studying his 

 collection when he joined, in 1830, his old commander Lutki on a cruise along 

 the coast of France and Ireland, during which he contracted a nervous fever from 

 which he died shortly after his return to Russia.* 



Tsuga Sieboldii. 



A stately tree, attaining at its greatest development a height of 

 80 90 feet, at its highest vertical range considerably less, everywhere 

 much resembling the type species, Tsuga canadensis, in habit and aspect. 

 Branchlets slender with cinereous-brown striated bark, much ramified 

 distichously ; the youngest shoots glabrous, pale yellowish brown, marked 

 longitudinally by cortical ridges, terminating at the base of the leaves 

 in a relatively prominent red pulvinus or cushion. Buds small, globose, 

 enclosed in numerous minute, chestnut-brown perulae. Leaves persistent 

 three four years, petiolate, the petiole nearly parallel with the axis of 

 the shoot, linear, obtuse or emarginate, 0'25 1 inch long, the shorter 

 leaves produced from the upper, the longer ones from the lower side of 

 the shoot, dark lustrous green and distinctly channelled above, with 

 two greyish, stomatiferous bands beneath. Staminate flowers globose- 

 cylindric, stipitate with a stiff, slender stalk surrounded at the base by 

 numerous small, ovate, involucral bracts. Cones sub-globose, about an 

 inch in diameter, composed of four five series of spirally arranged, 

 imbricated, orbicular scales, striated on the exposed side. Seed-wing 

 roundish oblong, about three-fourths as long as the scale. 



* From the Silva of North America, Vol. XII. p. 80. 



