196 A MANUAL OF THE CONIFER2E. 



presents a very columnar appearance."* The young plants have a 

 formal but pleasing habit, the branches being frondose, and densely 

 clothed with short awl-shaped imbricated leaves. It is a native of 

 New Caledonia, where it was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774, 

 after whom it is named, and whose companions " thought at first that 

 they beheld a tall column of basalt or some other volcanic product 

 standing aloft in solitary grandeur." 



AraUCaria Ounninghami,t in its maturity, is a tall tree of 100 

 feet high and upwards, the trunk being generally divested of branches 

 to the greater part of its height, and with the foliage clustered at 

 the extremities of the branches. The leaves on the sterile branches 

 are needle-like, obscurely four-angled, straight, rigid, and sharply 

 pointed ; on the fertile branches they are shorter, stouter, and closely 

 appressed. The young plants cultivated in England have a pyramidal 

 habit, less formal than the other Araucarias j the upper branches are 

 ascending, those below horizontal, and the foliage bright green. It is 

 a native of eastern Australia, in the neighbourhood of the coast, from 

 Moreton Bay northwards, where it covers large tracts of country. It 

 is one of the most useful timber trees in Queensland. 



Araucaria Cunninghami glauca is a beautiful variety of the 

 preceding, with silvery glaucous foliage. It is a very handsome con- 

 servatory plant. 



Araucaria excelsa is a majestic tree growing to the height of 

 150 feet, with a circumference sometimes upwards of 20 feet. Its 

 trunk rises erect, and is furnished with branches from within 10 or 

 12 feet of the ground. The branches are horizontal, and, owing to 

 the persistency of the leaves, are always clothed with bright verdant 

 foliage, but which in old trees has a tendency to become tufted at 

 the extremities. In Norfolk Island, its native home, A. excelsa 

 generally stands singly and is dotted over the land like the specimen 

 trees in an English park ; it is only on the, hills that the trees are 

 congregated in clumps. The young plants ctntivate'd fn^Ertrb^i for the 

 decoration of conservatories are symmetrical trees with frondose, deltoid, 

 horizontal, or slightly drooping branches densely clothed with bright green 

 foliage ; the leaves are awl-shaped, curved, and sharply pointed. J 



* R. Abbay in the Gardeners' Chronicle of 1877, p. 88. 



t Named after Allan Cunningham, favourably known to Science and to Horticulture by bis 

 valuable contributions tothe Botany of Australia, and by the many fine plants with which he 

 enriched the conservatories and greenhouses of Great Britain. 



J Dr. Lindley (English Cyclop., p. 290) remarks :— " It is a highly important fact that a 

 plant very nearly the same as Araucaria excelsa certainly once grew in Great Britain. 

 Remains of it have been found in the Lias of Dorsetshire, and have been figured in the fossil 

 flora under the name of Araucaria primoeva." See also Sir Charles Lyell's "Elements of 

 Geology, p. 407, where the figure of a fossil cone of an Araucaria found at Bruton, in Somerset- 

 shire, is given. The cone itself is preserved in the British Museum. 



