700 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 
and spreading from beyond the middle, rigid, ending in sharp cartilaginous points ; 
lower surface green, rounded or keeled; upper surface with green midrib and two 
inconspicuous bands of stomata. 
: ; : é 
Staminate flowers, } to $ inch long, with acute or acuminate connective 
Pistillate flowers with twenty-five to forty pale yellow bracts gradually narrowed 
into long slender points. Cones ripening in the second year, ovoid-oblong, 2 to 3 
inches long by 1} to 2 inches wide, brownish; scales gradually thickening from the 
base to the dilated disc, which is # to 1 inch broad, and often bears a reflexed spine 
in the centre of the transverse depression. Seeds, $ to + inch long, light-brown, 
apiculate at the apex, surrounded by laterally united, often unequal wings, which are 
broader than the body of the seed. Proliferous cones have been observed.’ 
Wellingtonia produces cones freely in many parts of the British Isles, but these 
are smaller in size as a rule than those of the wild tree and rarely contain mature 
seed. Mr. Richards informed me that he had sown a large quantity of seed, 
produced by a tree growing at Penrhyn on the lawn in an isolated sunny position, 
and only obtained eight seedlings. Barnes” raised young plants from seeds 
produced by a tree at Bicton. At Orton Longueville, Mr. Harding * succeeded in 
raising six seedlings out of 100 seeds. The tree cones well at Dropmore, but has 
seldom if ever produced fertile seed there. 
Wellingtonia differs markedly from the redwood, in not reproducing itself 
either by suckers from the root or by coppice shoots. In its native forests, seed 
ts produced in great abundance, and numerous seedlings occur everywhere in the 
southern part of the area of distribution of the species; but in the northern groves 
seedlings are said to be totally wanting. 
VARIETIES 
None have been noticed in the wild state. Several have appeared in cultivation 
in Europe. 
1. Var. pendula. Branches bent downwards at the base, and hanging for their 
whole length close to the stem, forming in young plants a slender pyramid and in 
older examples a tall narrow column. This remarkable variety was obtained out of 
the seed-bed by Lalande of Nantes in 1863, and was put upon the market in 1873 by 
Paillet of Chatenay-les-Sceaux, near Paris. The best tree‘ of this kind is growing 
at M. Allard’s arboretum at Angers, in France, and when measured by Elwes in 1907 
was 44 feet high by 3 feet in girth, but only 13 feet round the branches. At Bicton,® 
this variety is represented by a tree which in 1902 was 33 feet high by 26 inches in 
girth at 2 feet from the ground. At Brettargh Holt,’ Kendal, the residence of Charles 
Walker, Esq., a weeping Wellingtonia was reported to be 22 feet high in the same 
year. Another example, aged 26 years, growing at Dalkeith Palace and reported 
to be 19% feet high in 1902, was figured in the Gardeners’ Chronicle® A specimen 
1 Carritre, Rev. Hort. 1887, ii 
Hl ; ; p- 509, f. 103. Cf. Gard. Chron. ii. 649 (1887). 
2 Gard. Chron, 1868, p. 872. 3 oe dei 55 (1901). 
7 : Paar 
isa and figured by Rehder in Moller’s Deutsche Gartner Zeitung, March 22, 1902. 
Gard, Chron, xxxi. p. 388, fig. 136, and p. 435; and xxxii. Pp. 23 (1902). 
