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VI. — A rare instance of coninrj. — By John Jope Rogers. 



IN Marcli 1876 I sent to the Horticultural Society in London 

 two coned sprigs of the Picea Eeligiosa, the sacred fir of 

 Mexico, grown at Penrose. Mr. Andrew Murray, the secretary 

 of the Arboricultural committee of that Society, believes it to be 

 the first recorded instance of the fructification of this graceful 

 and delicate conifer in England, and he has published a notice of 

 it in the '' Gardeners' Chronicle " of April 29, 1876, illustrated 

 by a very accurate woodcut of one of my coned sprigs. 



The fact may therefore deserve a record in our Journal. I have 

 only two specimens of the Picea Heligiosa ; one is a seedling 

 raised here from a cone which was brought me from Mexico, 

 planted out in 1859, and now about 20 feet high. The other, 

 which produced these cones, was bought by my father in 1847, 

 and transplanted by me in 1857, into a sheltered spot in the rich 

 soil of an ancient rookery ; here it died back after removal, was 

 cut down to a promising shoot, survived the severe winter of 

 1860-61, lost its head again in a gale in 1867, was pruned again^ 

 and though not now, as might be expected after such treatment, 

 a very shapely tree, is fairly vigorous, about 25 feet high, and 

 two feet ten inches in girth at 30 inches from the ground. 



In the autumn of 1875, I observed some fifty cones had formed 

 upon it ; in December, I picked a few, which then had the purple 

 tint of those of the P. Webbiana, but somewhat smaller. The 

 finest cones, when I gathered the remainder in March, were 4^ 

 inches long. Loudon represents them as only 1^ inches in 

 Mexico : but I have observed a similar increase in the size of 

 cones under favourable treatment of the parent tree in England, 

 in the case of other varieties. The specimen cones have been 

 deposited in the Museum of the Royal Botanic Gardens, at Kew. 



