176 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



actual girth at 5 feet from the ground, following all sinuosities, was 146 feet, the 

 longest diameter being 42 feet. The cypress of Montezuma, which is the largest of 

 the great trees in the gardens of Chapultepec, near Mexico, is about 48 feet in 

 girth, according to Elwes, who saw it in 1888. Its height is about 170 

 feet.' 



Taxodium mucronatum was first described" from a specimen growing in the 

 Botanic Garden at Naples, said to have been introduced into Europe in 1838. 

 Elwes saw this tree in April 1903, when the old leaves were partly persistent. A 

 tree at Palermo has borne fruit. There are specimens at Kew labelled " Hort, 

 Cusinati," collected by J. Ball, which bear very large cones, i^ inches long by an 

 inch in breadth. 



Two seedlings were raised by Elwes from seeds brought by Mr. Marlborough 

 Pryor from Oaxaca in 1904, one of which is to be planted out in a sheltered dell 

 at Tregothnan in Cornwall, the other in the Temperate House at Kew. The 

 larger of these, which grew slowly in a greenhouse through the winter of 1904-5, 

 was about 18 inches high at one year old. 



The typical form is the one commonly cultivated in England. In summer the 

 foliage is decidedly ornamental, being of a delicate green colour. In autumn the 

 leaves, before they fall, become reddish brown in colour. 



Sub -varieties. About a dozen sub - varieties are enumerated by Beissner, 

 pyramidal, pendulous, fastigiate, dwarf forms, etc. The tree is very variable 

 in habit. 



Taxodium distichum rarely produces flowers or fruit in England. It first bore 

 fruit about the year 1752. A tree* at Ryton-on-Dunsmore, which was forty years 

 old, produced flowers, apparently all males and in great abundance, in 1868. 

 Fruiting specimens were sent to Dr. Masters^ from Menabilly in Cornwall in 1893 J 

 the cones were smaller than native-grown ones. One of these was proliferous, 

 the cone terminating in a branch bearing leaves and male flowers ; and from the 

 sides of the cone leaf-bearing branches also emerged, which on examination 

 proved to form no part of either bract or scale, but were separate outgrowths 

 from the axis of the cone. On a tree at Gwydyr Castle, North Wales, fruit is 

 borne about every third year, but Mr. Macintyre informed me that it never was 

 fully matured, and no seedlings were ever raised. According to Webster,* 

 this tree was profusely covered with cones in 1884, but had none when Elwes 

 saw it in 1906. Bunbury^ states that at Abergwynant, in Wales, a tree produced 

 oval cones. 



Gay* says that though often cultivated in wet places in several old parks at 

 Paris, he has only seen fruit at the Trianon on a tree growing in very dry ground. 



' Garden and Forest, 1890, p. 150, fig. 28. ' Carriere, Traiti Conif. 147 (1855). 



' Nadethohkunde, 152 (1891). Card. Chron. 1868, p. 1016. 



' Ibid. 1893, xiv. 659, fig. 105, showing fruiting branch, scales, and seeds. In the same journal, 1886, xxvi. 148, 

 fig. 28, are represented abnormal flowers of this species, from a tree growing in England ; also, in Card. Chron. 1888, iii. 

 565, fig. 77, is depicted a remarkable gnaur on a Taxodium. 



Woods and Forests, 1885, p. 25. ' Arboretum Notes, 161. Note in Kew Herbarium. 



