Sequoia 689 



large trees ; while in the case of trees growing at high altitudes they are sometimes 

 spread over the whole of the branches. 



Male flowers, ^V i^i^h long, with rounded connectives. Female flowers with 

 about twenty broadly ovate bracts, tipped usually with short points. Cones 

 ellipsoidal, f to i inch long, ^ inch broad ; scales with slender stalks, which enlarge 

 abruptly into discs ^ inch in breadth. Seeds light brown, -^ inch long; wings 

 narrower than in S. gigantea. 



The cones ripen at the end of the first season, and are freely produced in most 

 parts of the South of England and in Ireland, the first recorded^ being in 1862 

 on a tree at Barton, Suffolk, which had been planted in 1847. Fertile seed, 

 however, is very rare, the only instance known to us being on a large tree at 

 Huntley Manor, Gloucestershire, from which Prof. Somerville raised seedlings 

 in 1904. Proliferous cones ^ occur occasionally; and a cone* with the upper part 

 ovulate and the lower part staminate has been observed. 



The tree suckers from the root,* and sends up, when cut, nufnerous shoots' 

 from the stool. Fasciation " has been observed in the suckers in the redwood forest 

 in California. Dr. Masters " described and figured the peculiar woody excrescences, 

 which are sometimes formed at the base of the stem of young trees, which have 

 been raised from cuttings. 



Varieties 



In the wild state there is some variation, as noticed above, in the occasional 

 occurrence of lateral branches with foliage like that of the leading shoots. Several 

 varieties have been obtained in cultivation : 



1 . Var. albospica (var. adpressa). Tips of young shoots creamy white in colour. 

 Leaves small and dense upon the twigs, resembling those of Taxus baccata adpressa. 



2. Var. glauca. Leaves linear, acute, \ inch long, glaucous, loosely imbricated, 

 appressed or spreading. 



3. Var. taxifolia. Leaves broader than in the type. 

 A tree, pendulous in habit, is growing at Dropmore. 



Distribution 



The redwood occurs on the western slopes, valleys, and alluvial flats of the 

 coast range, from the Chetco river in Oregon to Salmon Creek Caiion, twelve miles 

 south of Punta Gorda in Monterey county, California, and ascends from sea-level 

 to 2000 or rarely 3000 feet. It occupies a narrow strip of country along the sea 

 coast, about 500 miles in length from north to south, and is not found inland beyond 



> Bunbury, Arboretum Notes, l66 (1889). ' Proc. Calif. Acad. Sc. v. 170, t. 16, f. 3 (1895). 



' Bot. Gazette, xxxviii. 2 (1904). 



* Two suckers are growing beside a tree, 60 feet high, at Shiplalce House, near Henley. 



'" In/ourn. Roy. Hort. Sac. xix. 432 (1896), it is stated that redwood coppice shoots are believed to have been used 

 for producing hop-poles in Kent ; but this must have been an experiment on a small scale, and without any practical value. 

 At Arley, shoots from the stool of a tree, which was felled, made a growth of 4 feet in their first year. 



Pierce, in Proc. Calif. Acad. Sc. ii. 83 (1901), who also gives an account of peculiar white-coloured suckers, which 

 are often seen in California. ^ Card. Chron. xi. 372, fig. 53 (1879). 



