Select Plants for Industrial Culture and 



Selinum Rffonnieri, Limn'. 



Eastern Asia, preferring moist places. An annual herb, praised 

 by the Chinese as valuable for medicinal purposes. 



Sequoia sempervirens, Endlicher.* (Taxodium sempervirens, Lambert.) 



Red Wood or Bastard-Cedar of North-Western America, chiefly 

 California. One of the most colossal trees of the globe, exception- 

 ally becoming 360 feet high, occasionally with a stem-diameter of 

 55 feet at the base. Likes humidity of soil, particularly in its 

 early youth [Prof. Meehan]. The wood is reddish, soft, easily 

 split, very durable, but light and brittle. The timber of mission- 

 buildings one hundred years old is still quite sound. The growth 

 of this tree is about 32 feet in sixteen years. The tree is often 

 found on metamorphic sandstone. Particularly fit also for cal- 

 careous soil [Dr. Masters]. It luxuriates in the cool dampness of 

 sea-fogs. Shinii describes these Sequoias as rugged shafts, rising 

 like huge monolithic columns, crowned with downward curving 

 branches- of shining green. Dr. Gibbons writes, that this tree 

 forms forests along the coast-range for a distance of about 200 

 miles in a belt 20 miles wide. The wood is suitable for external 

 as well as internal finish. It constitutes almost the sole material 

 for weather-boarding along the Californian coast; and for fence- 

 posts, foundations of buildings and railway-sleepers it is almost 

 the only material used there. Is also susceptible of a splendid 

 polish for furniture ; is largely sawn into boards and shingles, 

 furnishing in California the cheapest lumber. Stem bare for 100 

 feet or more ; when cut, sending suckers from the root for renova- 

 tion. Dr. Gibbons records as the stoutest stems some of 33 feet 

 diameter at 3 feet from the ground. The foliage of this Sequoia is 

 much like that of a Fir or Abies, while the foliage of the following 

 species is more resembling that of a Spruce or Picea. 



Sequoia Welling-tonia, Seemann.* (Wellingtonia gigantea, Lindley; 

 Sequoia gigantea, Decaisne, not Endlicher.) 



Mammoth-tree. California, up to 8,000 feet above the sea. This, 

 the biggest of all trees, attains a stem-length of 320 feet and a cir- 

 cumference of 112 feet, the age of the oldest trees being estimated 

 at 1,100 years. The total height of a tree has been recorded as 

 occasionally 450 feet, but such heights have never been confirmed 

 by actual clinometric measurements of trees existing now. Tradi- 

 tional accounts seem to have over-rated the height of the Mammoth- 

 tree. In the Calaveras-grove, two of the largest trees, which may 

 have been the tallest of all, were destroyed ; the two highest now 

 existing there are respectively 325 and 319 feet high, with a cir- 

 cumference of 45 feet and 40 feet at 6 feet from the ground. At 

 the Mariposa-grove, the highest really measured trees are 272, 270 

 and 260 feet high ; but one of these has the enormous circum- 

 ference of 67 feet at 6 feet from the ground, while another, the 



