Araucaria 5 1 



account of Araucaria imbricata, which does not add anything of great importance 

 for English arboriculturists to what I have already stated. He says that there are 

 two types of Araucaria forest, one of which is characteristic of the rainy coast 

 mountain range of Nahuelbuta and the west side of the Andes on the Cordillera of 

 Pemehue ; and the other, which is peculiar to the drier plateaux of the Argentine 

 territory, on the east side of the watershed. He refers to Reiche's account of the 

 Nahuelbuta forest in Englers Bot. Jahrbuch, xxii. no, which gives a good account 

 of the flora. He does not confirm the statement that the male trees are smaller in 

 size than the female, and speaks of trees occurring in deep valleys 40-50 metres high, 

 and 2-2| metres in diameter at about 3 feet, but does not give any exact measure- 

 ments, so that this height is probably an estimate by the eye. He says that the 

 seeds do not ripen until May in the year after flowering, but I found them ripe in 

 February and fit to eat in January. He gives some excellent illustrations of Arau- 

 caria forests on Nahuelbuta, one of which shows a wider and more unbroken extent 

 than any that I saw ; another shows the ability of the tree to take root and grow in 

 the crevices of bare rock. Another shows a forest at the foot of the great volcanic 

 peak of Lanin, where some of the trees have been almost buried by sand and still 

 retain their upright position. Lastly, he gives a small map of the distribution which, 

 however, is not sufficiently detailed to be very accurate ; this makes Antuco the 

 most northerly point, and a point somewhere north of lat. 40, the southerly range of 

 the tree. He says that in the museum of Santiago there are geological evidences of 

 the existence at a former period of Araucaria as far north as the Puna of Atacama. 



Remarkable Trees 



The finest tree which until recently existed in England was at Dropmore, which, 

 however, began to die about four years ago, and was dead when the photograph 

 (Plate 19) was taken in June 1903. It is said' to have been purchased at a sale in 

 the Royal Horticultural Gardens at Chiswick in 1829, and in 1893 to have been 

 69 feet high. When felled in 1905 Mr. Page found it to be 78 feet 6 inches high, 

 and the butt was 2']\ inches in diameter at the base under the bark, which was about 

 2 inches thick, the measurable timber in it being about 65 cubic feet. 



There are many fine specimens at Beauport, Sussex, the seat of Sir Archibald 

 Lamb, Bart., where a plantation was made about forty years ago, which gives a better 

 idea of the Araucaria at home than any I have seen in England. It contains 27 

 trees on an area 102 paces round, and the inside trees are clearing themselves from 

 branches naturally. Twenty of them Sir A. Lamb says are over 50 feet high, and in 

 1905 I estimated them to contain an average of 25 cubic feet (Plate 20). The 

 largest tree at Beauport, as measured by Henry in 1904, was 74 feet high and 7 feet 

 9 inches in girth. The trees produce seeds freely, and a seedling growing in a chink 

 of the garden steps was 4 feet high in 1903, and in 1905 had grown at least 2 feet 

 more. 



At Strathfieldsaye, Berks, the seat of the Duke of Wellington, the Araucaria has 

 produced self-sown seedlings, a group of which is shown in Plate \ 5 e. 



' Card. Chron. 1893, i. 232 ; also I.e. 1872, p. 1324. 



