Sequoia 705 



One of the best accounts of the Wellingtonias and their surroundings is in Muir's 

 Mountains of California. He states that the young trees have slender branches 

 growing with great regularity down to the ground, as we see them on an English 

 lawn ; but when the tree attains 500 or 600 years old, the spiry, feathery, juvenile 

 habit merges into the firm rounded dome-like habit of middle age, which in its turn 

 takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. The foliage of the saplings is 

 dark bluish-green, while that of the older trees ripens to a warm brownish-yellow 

 tint like that of Libocedrus. The bark is rich cinnamon brown, purplish in 

 young trees and in shaded portions of the old ones. In winter the trees break out 

 into bloom, myriads of small four-sided staminate flowers crowding the ends of the 

 smaller sprays, colouring the whole tree, and when ripe dusting the air and the 

 ground with golden pollen. The fertile cones are bright grass green, about 2 inches 

 long hy i\ inch wide, and are composed of about forty firm scales densely packed, 

 with three to eight seeds at the base of each, a single cone thus containing 200 to 

 300 seeds, which are about \ inch long by -^ inch wide, with a thin flat margin. The 

 cones are very freely produced ; and on two branches, i^ to 2 feet in diameter, 

 Mr. Muir counted no less than 480. But of the millions of seeds produced, very 

 few germinate ; and of these not one in ten thousand lives through the vicissitudes 

 of storm, drought, fire, and crushing by snow, to which they are exposed in youth. 



Natural reproduction in the groves, when they have been protected from fire 

 and grazing, is said to be at a standstill, owing to the dry humus beneath the trees 

 forming an unsuitable seed bed ; and it is only in the forests on the south fork of 

 the Kaweah, and on the Tule river, where young trees of all ages can be found in 

 abundance. 



The damage, waste, and loss which has occurred in those groves which have 

 been partially cut for timber is said to be enormous. When a large tree is felled 

 its immense weight breaks a great part of the top into useless fragments, and 

 crushes many other trees in its fall ; whilst the usual means adopted to break up 

 the logs into pieces which can be handled is by blasting ; and this destroys another 

 large part of the timber. When the best is removed, a mass of broken branches, 

 timber, and bark, often 5 or 6 feet in depth, is left on the ground, which is later 

 destroyed by fire ; leaving complete devastation in place of the most beautiful 

 forest ; and it is said that owing to various causes, the lumbering of these forests 

 has often been quite unprofitable to their owners. 



Mayr^ estimates the age of the largest tree which he measured, TiZ ^^^^ '" 

 diameter at 13 feet above the ground, to be 4250 years. Sir Joseph Hooker^ told 

 Bunbury that, as the Wellingtonia makes repeated growths in the year, it is more 

 difficult than is the case in other conifers to distinguish the shoot of one year from 

 that of the preceding year ; and he suspected that more than one ring of growth is 

 formed in each year, and that in consequence the estimates of enormous age of this 

 species are probably fallacious. 



> Waldungen Nerdanurika, 343 (1890). 2 Lyell, Life of Sir C.J. F. Bunbury, ii. 227 (1906). 



