56 FAMILIAR TREES 
invaluable as underwood, relieving the monotony of 
the bare stems of timber trees. When so grown 
it requires to be periodically cut back or pegged 
down, or its stems become naked below. A Laurel- 
bush may frequently be seen from twenty to thirty 
feet high, and with stems considerably over a foot 
in diameter; but perhaps the largest in the world 
are those described by Loudon in 1835, at Minward, 
in Argyllshire, and at Shelton Abbey. Of these, 
the former was then thirty-one feet high, six feet 
nine inches in the diameter of the trunk, and 176 
feet in the circumference of the head, whilst the 
latter, then ninety years old, was forty-five feet high, 
six feet in the diameter of its trunk, and nearly 
320 feet in the circumference of its head! 
The allied Portugal Laurel is probably, as its name 
indicates, a native of Portugal, and of Madeira, where 
it reaches from forty to sixty feet in height, with a 
trunk sometimes two feet in diameter. Its leaves 
‘are narrower than those of the Cherry Laurel, and 
a much darker shade of green, free from the yellow 
tint of the allied species. Its buds and twigs also 
are purplish-red instead of green. In our gardens it 
generally forms merely a rounded bush. 
