MY FOURTH EXPEDITION TO CHINA 163 



The next day we go over and investigate some Davidia trees 

 and the forest generally, crossing a narrow neck a wood-cutter's 

 circuitous path leads us down to a narrow defile through a fine 

 shady wood. Ascending a precipice with difficulty, we soon 

 reach the Davidia trees. There are over a score of them growing 

 on a steep rocky declivity; they vary from thirty-five to sixty feet 

 in height and the largest is six feet in girth. Being in a dense 

 wood they are bare of branches for half their height but their 

 presence is readily detected by the numerous white bracts which 

 have fallen and lie strewn over the ground. The tree starts up 

 from below when felled, indeed it naturally throws up small stems 

 after it gets old. The bark is dark and scales off in small irregular 

 flakes. By climbing a large Tetracentron tree growing on the 

 edge of a cliff and chopping off some branches to make a clear 

 space I managed to take some snapshots of the upper part of the 

 Davidia tree in full flower. The task was difficult and highly 

 dangerous. Three of us got up the tree to different heights and 

 the axe and camera were hauled up from one to another by means 

 of a rope. The wood of Tetracentron is brittle and I felt ill at 

 ease astride a branch about four inches thick with a sheer drop of a 

 couple of hundred feet beneath me. The beauty of the Davidia is 

 in the two snow-white connate bracts which subtend the flower 

 proper. These are always unequal in size; the largest is usu- 

 ally six inches long by three inches broad and the smaller three 

 and a half inches by two and a half inches; they range up to eight 

 inches by four inches and five inches by three inches. At first 

 green they become pure white as the flower matures, and change 

 to brown with age. The flowers and their attendant bracts are 

 pendulous on fairly long stalks and when stirred by the slightest 

 breeze they resemble huge butterflies hovering amongst the trees. 

 The bracts are somewhat boat-shaped and flimsy in texture, and 

 the leaves often hide them considerably, but so freely are they 

 borne that the tree looks from a distance as if flecked with snow. 

 On dull days and in early morning and evening the bracts are 

 most conspicuous, and often in this light trees resemble pyramids 

 thickly covered with huge snowflakes. The fruit resembles a small 

 walnut, but the inner shell is absolutely unbreakable. To my 

 mind this is at once the most interesting and beautiful of all trees 

 of the north temperate flora. 



