36 



NEW PLANTS RECENTLY INTRODUCED INTO GARDENS. 



The young branches of this tree, when they are visible, are 

 compressed, obovate between the nodes, and bright green, with 

 glaucous furrows ; they are, however, for the most part, hidden by 

 the leaves. The latter, which are compressed, blunt, and keeled, 

 are glaucous at the sides, but bright green at the back and edges ; 

 they stand in two pairs crosswise, the lower pair being much 

 larger than the upper pair, which resembles two tubercles. 

 These leaves evidently represent the type of the cones, which 

 are drooping, short-stalked, about half an inch long, and consist 

 of four woody scales, also standing crosswise, in two very un- 

 equal pairs. These scales are applied face to face, and have a 

 sharp tubercle on the outside below the point. The two larger 

 scales have each two seeds at their base ; the two smaller are 

 seedless. The four seeds stand erect in the cones, with unequal- 

 sided wings, as is well represented by Sir William Hooker in 

 the work above quoted. 



There is no doubt that this is a fine evergreen tree. Mr. 

 Bridges, who sent home the seeds, writes that it is from 65 to 80 

 feet high. Sir W. Hooker (Journal of Botany, ii. 199) says 

 it is a tree from 30 to 40 feet high, of great beauty, and well 

 worthy of being introduced into our gardens. Poppig (Nov. 

 Gen. iii. 17) relates that it resembles the American Arbor Vi(ae, 

 but is less robust, sometimes branching from the base, and gaining 

 the habit of a Cypress, but in other cases forming a conical head. 

 " The trunk," he adds, " of this last variety is simple as high 

 as the middle, straight, taper, clothed with a rough cracked bark 

 of a brownish ash-colour, knotty, scarcely more than a foot 

 thick, with a yellowish, resinous, hard, strong-scented (olente) 

 wood." 



Whether it will bear the climate of Great Britain without 

 protection is at present uncertain. A plant has existed for some 

 years at Elvaston Castle, the seat of the Earl of Harrington, 

 in Derbyshire ; but I learn from Mr. Barron, his Lordship's 

 gardener, that it has hitherto been sheltered in winter. Sir 

 William Hooker has expressed a favourable opinion of it as to 

 this important quality. " There can be little doubt," he ob- 

 serves, " from its native regions, whether the Andes of Chile 

 or the southern provinces of Antuco and Valdivia, that it would 

 thrive well in the open ground." If it be one of the trees called 

 " Alerse," inhabiting the same elevations on the mountains as 

 the Araucaria and Libocedrus tetragonus, this is highly probable, 

 but we are at present without sufficiently precise information on 

 this point. All that I can find on positive record is the state- 

 ment of Dr. Gillies and Mr. Lobb, that it inhabits the valleys 

 of the Andes of Chile ; and of Poppig, that it is found " in the 

 colder valleys of the southern Andes of Chile, near Castillo de 



