Cupressus ^ 1 79 



Masters in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, xvii. i-ii (1894); but I 

 cannot accept his conclusion that C. sempervirens, C. torulosa, and C. lusitanica may 

 have all arisen from a common stock, and at a relatively not very remote period. 

 All the trees that I have seen of C. sempervirens in England, Portugal, and other 

 countries are of a very different habit, at all stages and under all conditions of 

 growth. The same applies to C. torulosa. 



Dr. Goeze's statement in his letter to Dr. Masters that the old monks' chronicles 

 gave the Azores ^ as the native country of the tree is not supported by any historical 

 or botanical evidence. I prefer to believe that it is of Mexican origin, as a careful 

 comparison of numerous Portuguese and Irish specimens with native specimens 

 of Cupressus Lindleyi from Mexico shows that Carriere and Koch ^ were correct in 

 identifying C. lusitanica with that species. The tree may as easily have been intro- 

 duced by Spanish friars ^ from Mexico as by Portuguese monks from Goa,* though 

 we cannot now discover by whom and when ; and as the real origin seems lost in 

 antiquity, and the tree has for at least three centuries been naturalised in Portugal, 

 the name of C. lusitanica ® is not inappropriate. 



I visited Portugal in April 1909, mainly with the object of studying on the 

 spot the cypress and the oaks of Portugal, which are extremely variable and inter- 

 esting. Professor Henriques, of Coimbra, was good enough to accompany me to 

 Bussaco, which is reached by a short railway journey from Coimbra to Luzo ; 

 whence a drive of two miles brings one through the village to the entrance of 

 the Royal domain, which was formerly the property of a Trappist monastery ; on 

 the site of which a large and beautiful hotel has been erected. The forest is sur- 

 rounded by a wall about three miles long, and appears to be a virgin forest in which 

 have been planted at various times, but mainly forty to fifty years ago by Rodrigo 

 de Moraes Suares, an immense variety of exotic trees. The old monks appear to 

 have planted the cypresses at first round the monastery, and later at many points 



1 In the Azores large logs of a coniferous timber are frequently found deeply buried under volcanic debris. A block of 

 this wood, presented to the Kew Museum by Dr. Goeze, and supposed by Dr. Masters to be Cupressus sempervirens or 

 C. lusitanica, has recently been examined at the Jodrell laboratory by Mr. Boodle, and proves to be that of a juniper, and is 

 probably Juniperus brevifolia, Parlatore, a tree still common on the Azores. There are not any grounds for supposing 

 that C. lusitanica ever inhabited the Azores. Cf. Card. Chron. 1867, p. 929; Kent, Veitch's jl/a«. Conif. 180(1900); 

 and Trelease, Missouri Bot. Card. Rep. viii. 169 (1897). — (A. H.) 



2 Koch, Dendrologie, ii. pt. 2, p. 155 (1873), who describes the Mexican native species under the name C. Coulteri, 

 Forbes, and C. lusitanica under the name C. pendula, L'H&itier, states that the former is probably the wild form of the 

 latter, and adds that it is often impossible to distinguish one from the other. — (A. H.) 



s C. lusitanica is common in cultivation in southern Spain, and there is a specimen at Kew labelled Los Martyres 

 Monastery, Granada City. According to Willkomm and Lange, Prod. Fl. Hispan. i. 21 (1861), Guira found it apparently 

 wild in Torre de Guil, at the base of the Sierra de Carrascoy, in Murcia. — (A. H.) 



^ The tree is unknown at Goa, and there is not a single specimen from any part of India in the Kew herbarium. 

 Dalzell and Gibson, Bombay Flora, Suppl. S3 (1861), say: "Now common in gardens, native and European, does not 

 succeed below the Ghauts, and above only where the soil is deep and rich. The healthiest appears to be those planted in 

 front of Sir Jamsetjee's bungalow in Poona, but they are young and have their trials to go through." Gammie wrote from 

 Poena, 17th July 1903 : "Said never to fruit in the Bombay Presidency. This is the result of repeated inquiries on my 

 part. It is by no means common in Poona now, as many plants were killed in the drought of 1899- 1900." Brandis, Forest 

 Flora, 534, and Hooker, Fl. Brit. India, v. 645, are apparently in error in stating that the tree is extensively cultivated in 

 the western Ghats. No one, in any case, has ever seen old trees in India. 



Hutchins, in Card. Chron. xxxvi. 275 (1904) and xxxvii. 219 (1905), reports that he cultivated C. lusitanica, 

 C. sinensis, and C. torulosa, so-called, at Tokai, near Cape Town, and concluded that the two former were cultivated 

 varieties of C. torulosa. Hutchins kindly sent us copious specimens of the three forms, which he had in cultivation, and they 

 are all C. lusitanica. He had not obtained true plants of C. torulosa. — (A. H.) 



' C. lusitanica is the oldest name of the species, and is adopted by us on that account.— (A. H.) 



