



ESSAY UPON REDWOOD. IOI 



THE MAMMOTH TREE. 



Sequoia Endlicher, Redwood Mammoth Cedar, the 

 botanical name of the genus of the largest coniferous ever- 

 green trees known, consisting of only two living species, both 

 of the Pacific Coast of California, named by Endlicher in 

 honor of the Cherokee Indian Chief Sequoiah, or George 

 Guess (see Guess), inventor of the Syllabic Alphabet of his 

 tribe a graduate of Cambridge University ; Mass. 



The first species, discovered by Menzies in 1796, was 

 the Redwood, and from imperfect specimens referred to, Taxo- 

 dium of Don, the genus of our great deciduous Swamp Cy- 

 press, mainly of the southeast Atlantic Coast. Endlicher, 

 however, found that it did not belong to this subsection of 

 the cypress kin, but that its affinities were with pines, and 

 especially cedars ; hence the origin of this genus. 



They are generically distinguished by the male and female 

 floral aments on the same tree, on the tips of twigs, or 

 axillary on young shoots ; their scales spirally arranged ; 

 the tiny male flowers globoid, three to six anthers under each 

 sub-shield-like scale, pollen grains simple. Fertile ones ob- 

 long, erect, with three to seven inverted ovules at the base of 

 the scale ; cone maturing the second year, egg form ; the 

 scale at right angles from the axis, thick ; the inner, conceal- 

 ed part broadly wedge-shaped, and strongly attached to a 

 woody center ; the diamond disc roughly puckered ; these ra- 

 diating wrinkles indrawn by the quilted, navel-like center- 

 point, laterally transverse-ridged, like many close-coned pines ; 

 seeds, three to five (rarely seven) to each scale, flattened, sub- 



