November 17, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



45 < 



small group of these trees, stunted in growth and forlorn in 

 appearance, has lived for years at Rochester, New York, 

 and there are a few unhappy specimens in the neighbor- 

 hood of New York. The largest which I have heard of in 

 the east is near West Chester, Pennsylvania. A few years 

 ago a negro cut off the top for a Christmas-tree and ruined 

 its symmetry. In favorable positions, therefore, in the 

 middle, and possibly in the northern states, this Sequoia 

 can sometimes be kept alive for many years, although it is 

 only too evident that there will never be seen on this side 

 of the continent the massive stems and dome-like heads of 

 this crowning glory of the American forests. 



Cryptomeria is another monotypic Japanese genus and is 

 distinguished by spirally arranged heteromorphous leaves, 

 terminal monoecious flowers and small globose cones 

 ripening in one season, with bracts free and recurved above, 

 and wedge-shaped obovate scales more or less deeply 

 divided at the apex into sharply pointed lobes, each scale 

 bearing from three to five erect, narrow-winged seeds. 



Japan owes much of the beauty of its temple gardens to 

 the Cryptomeria. Nowhere is there a more solemn and 

 impressive grove of planted trees than that which surrounds 

 the temples and tombs at Nikko and which is almost entirely 

 composed of the Cryptomeria, and nowhere is there a 

 nobler avenue of conifers than that which leads to this last 

 resting-place of the greatest of the Shoguns (see Garden 

 and Forest, vol. vi., f. 66). The Sugi, as Cryptomeria 

 Japonica is called in its native country, is the most gen- 

 erally planted timber-tree of the Empire and its wood is 

 more generally used than that of any other conifer. It is 

 one of the commonest trees in all temple gardens and in 

 many roadside plantations, and sometimes rises to the 

 height of one hundred and twenty-five feet, with a tall 

 trunk tapering abruptly from a broad base, covered with 

 bright cinnamon-red bark and crowned with an irregular 

 conical dark green head ; and in beauty and majesty of 

 port has no rival except in the Sequoias of California. The 

 wood of the Sugi is coarse-grained, with thick layers of 

 annual growth, dark red heartwood and thick pale sap- 

 wood. Easily worked and strong and durable, it is em- 

 ployed in all sorts of construction. The bark, which is 

 always carefully preserved when the trees are cut, is used 

 to cover the roofs of houses. A bunch of the branchlets 

 hung over a door indicates that Sake is sold within. 



Cryptomeria Japonica does not really thrive in Europe 

 or in the United States, and although it was first sent to 

 Europe more than fifty years ago I have never seen a 

 promising specimen of this tree outside of Japan. It is 

 fairly hardy even in the neighborhood of Boston in sheltered 

 and well-protected positions, but never looks truly happy 

 in regions which might be supposed to be much better 

 suited to it than eastern Massachusetts, like thesouth Atlantic 

 states, southern England, and the Italian lakes, a district 

 where nearly all conifers grow more freely probably than 

 in any other part of Europe. 



There are a number of forms of Cryptomeria Japonica of 

 Japanese origin in cultivation. The most distinct of these 

 (var. elegans) is a form with scattered spreading leaves 

 which during the spring and summer are bright green and 

 in the autumn become red-bronze color. It is a small 

 compact tree furnished with short horizontal branches and 

 pendulous branchlets, and is less hardy here than the ordi- 

 nary form. Cryptomeria Japonica Lobbi is rather more 

 compact in habit than the ordinary Cryptomeria Japonica ; 

 the branches are less pendulous and the foliage rather 

 darker green. It is said to have reached Europe from the 

 Botanic Garden at Buitenzorg, to which it had been sent 

 by Siebold from Japan. Cryptomeria Japonica nana is a 

 small bushy shrub rarely exceeding two feet in height, and 

 in Cryptomeria Japonica spiralis the leaves are closely 

 appressed against the branches. There is a form (var. 

 argentea) in which the young growth is silvery white. 



Taxodium, the Bald Cypress, which was once common 

 and widely distributed in the Arctic Circle, and during 

 Miocene and Pliocene times was spread over the interior 



of this continent, and over Europe and north-eastern Si- 

 beria, has now become reduced to one or possibly two 

 species confined to the southern United States and Mexico. 

 The genus is distinguished by its panicled male flowers ; 

 by the form of the spirally disposed cone-scales, which are 

 abruptly dilated from slender stipes into irregular four- 

 sided thin discs conspicuously marked when half-grown 

 with the reflexed tips of the flower-scales, and at maturity 

 are often mucronulate ; by its three-winged seeds, decidu- 

 ous, dimorphous foliage, and by the remarkably woody 

 projections, the so-called Cypress knees, which rise from 

 the roots to above the surface of the shallow water in which 

 this tree grows to its greatest perfection. 



The pride of our southern coast forests, and one of the 

 largest and most valuable timber-trees in the world, Taxo- 

 dium distichum, in spite of its semiaquatic habit and 

 southern home, has proved a first-rate park and garden 

 tree, showing the vigor of its constitution in its ability to 

 flourish when transplanted to dry ground in climates of 

 severe winter cold and summer drought, like that of eastern 

 Massachusetts, where several specimens have been growing 

 for seventy or eighty years. Up to the present time, how- 

 ever, the Bald Cypress has retained in cultivation its rather 

 formal pyramidal habit, and I have never seen a cultivated 

 tree which showed any indication of assuming the mature 

 form with low, broad, flat crown of wide-spreading branches 

 which distinguishes this tree in its native river swamps, 

 and which, raised high above dark waters on its stately 

 buttressed trunk, makes it one ot the most majestic and 

 impressive trees of our forests. There is a form of the Bald 

 Cypress in gardens with pendulous branches (var. pendula) 

 which is a distinct and handsome plant, and European 

 nurserymen propagate dwarf forms and others of more or 

 less abnormal habit. 



The tree which in the United States and Europe is almost 

 universally called Glyptostrobus pendulus, is really a juve- 

 nile form of the Taxodium of the southern states, Glypto- 

 strobus, being a south China genus with a single species, 

 which has possibly never been brought to the United 

 States, and which would not be hardy in this part of the 

 country. In this form the slender branchlets, which are 

 pendulous or erect, are often six or seven inches in length, 

 and are covered with closely appressed acicular leaves, and 

 no one unfamiliar with the fact that normal branchlets with 

 distichous leaves sometimes appear would imagine that it 

 was a form of the Bald Cypress. This acerose form is not 

 uncommon in South Carolina, in northern Florida and in 

 the neighborhood of Mobile, Alabama. It is a compara- 

 tively small tree in its native swamps, and, in spite of its 

 southern home, is hardy in New England, where it is one 

 of the most distinct and beautiful of the pyramidal conifers. 

 The proper name for this tree is Taxodium distichum, var. 

 imbricarium. 



The Mexican Bald Cypress, Taxodium mucronulatum, 

 which was first distinguished from the tree of the southern 

 states by an Italian botanist who studied a cultivated plant 

 in the Botanic Garden at Naples, is possibly a distinct spe- 

 cies, although when more thoroughly known it may prove 

 to be a mere geographical form of our tree. It is chiefly 

 known from a few very large arid venerable individuals 

 which have filled travelers in Mexico with admiration since 

 the time of the Spanish conquest. The largest of these trees 

 of which authentic measurements are recorded stands in 

 the town of Tule, on the road from Ozaca to Guatemala. 

 A portrait of this tree was published on page 125 of the 

 current volume of Garden and Forest (fig. 15); in the third 

 volume (fig. 28) is a portrait of the Cypress of Montezuma, 

 which is the largest of the Cypress-trees in the gardens of 

 Chepultepec. This was a noted tree four centuries ago, 

 and is 170 feet high, with a trunk from forty to nearly fifty 

 feet in circumference. It is believed to be at least 700 

 years old. 



The Abietinea? as garden plants, beginning in the next 

 issue with Pinus, will be discussed in the remaining num- 

 bers of these notes. C. S. S. 



