502 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



forest trees, but only attains its full size and perfection in deep rich swamps and river 

 bottoms. I have seen it of immense size in the Lower Wabash Valley in Southern 

 Illinois, where Ridgway measured a tree no less than 164 feet high by 17 feet 

 in girth with a clear stem 80 feet long, and another 137 feet high by 11^ feet in 

 girth, which was 94 feet to the first branch. Plate 144 a, taken from a photograph 

 for which I am indebted to the U.S. Bureau of Forestry, represents the tree 

 (Example M) mentioned in Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. v. 67, by Ridgway, which was 

 \2\ feet in girth at the base, 78 feet to the first limb, and contained 7888 feet 

 board measure. It grew two miles from Mount Carmel on land now cleared. Such 

 trees, however, are now hardly to be found except in very inaccessible places. On 

 the coast region of North Carolina, Ashe and Pinchot give its dimensions as 100 

 feet high and 5 or 6 feet in diameter. 



The largest that I saw in the Eastern States was a tree in the Clifton Park, 

 near Baltimore, which was 71 feet by 5 feet 9 inches. In New England, near 

 Boston, Sargent says that it suffers from frost in severe winters, and I saw none in 

 cultivation so large as those in England. I found it in a very different and more 

 beautiful form in the mountains near Jalapa, Mexico, at about 4000 feet elevation, 

 where in the month of March in open forests its leaves were conspicuous by their 

 scarlet colour, but the trees were not of extraordinary dimensions. In America 

 it grows mixed with Nyssa, Liriodendron, maples, and oaks. Ashe says that it 

 fruits annually or every other year, but that much of the seed is abortive, and that 

 it springs up commonly on damp hillsides and bottom lands, and also shoots from 

 the stool after the trees have been felled. 



History and Cultivation 



According to Loudon, this tree was first mentioned by Francis Hernandez, a 

 Spanish naturalist, who published a work on the natural history of Mexico in 1651 

 at Rome. In 1681 it was sent home by Banister to Bishop Compton, who planted 

 it in the Palace Gardens at Fulham. It had become common in cultivation in 

 Michaux's time, but he says that even in France it had never produced seed. In 

 Northern Italy it grows well, and I found a good-sized tree on the Isola Madre in 

 Lake Maggiore, which bore seed, from which I have raised plants. 



Though this tree will grow to considerable size in the warmest parts of 

 England, and on account of its beautiful autumnal tints is highly ornamental, yet it 

 requires a much greater degree of heat and moisture than our climate affords to 

 bring it to perfection, and has been somewhat neglected by nurserymen on account 

 of its tenderness when young. I have raised it from imported seeds, which do not 

 keep well when extracted from the fruits, but the seedlings grow so slowly that 

 the more common way of raising it is from layers. It does not transplant well, 

 and requires a good deal of moisture in the soil and a warm, sheltered situation. Its 

 branches are easily broken by the wind, and though it does not come early into leaf, 

 is often injured by late frosts. 



