TO PRINCIPAL TIMBER TREES, ETC. 71 
Festuca purpurea, F. v. Mueller. ( Uralepis purpurea , Nutt., 
Tricuspis purpurea, A. Gray). 
South East coast of North America. A tufty sand grass, but 
annual. 
Festuea silvatica, Villars. 
Middle and South Europe. A notable forest-grass. F. drymeia 
(Mert. and Koch), a grass with long creeping roots, is closely 
allied. Both deserve here test culture. 
Ficus columnaris, Moore and Mueller. 
The Banyan tree of Lord Howe’s Island, therefore extratropical. 
One of the most magnificent productions in the whole empire of 
plants. Mr. Fitzgerald, a visitor to the island, remarks that the 
pendulous air-roots, when they touch the ground, gradually 
swell into columns of the same dimensions as the older ones, 
which already become converted into stems, so that it is not 
apparent which was the parent trunk ; there may be a hundred 
of stems to the tree on which the huge dome of dark evergreen 
foliage rests, but these stems are all alike, and thus it is impos- 
sible to say whence the tree comes or whither it goes. The allied 
fig trees of continental East Australia have great buttresses, but 
only now and then a pendulous root, approaching in similarity 
the stems of Ficus columnaris. The Lord Howe s Island fig-tree 
is more like F. macrophylla than F. rubiginosa; but F. columnaris 
is more rufous than either. In humid, warm sheltered tracts of 
Victoria, this grand vegetable living structure may be raised as 
an enormous bower for shade and for scenic ornament. The 
nature of the sap, whether available for caoutchouc or other 
industrial material, requires yet to be tested. 
Ficus Cunninghami, Miquel. 
Queensland, in the Eastern dense forest regions. Mr. O’Shanesy 
designates this as a tree of [sometimes monstrous growth, the 
large spreading branches sending down roots which take firm 
hold of the ground. One tree measured was 38 feet in circum- 
ference at two feet from the ground, the roots forming wall-like 
abutments, some of which extended 20 feet from the tree. Several 
persons could conceal themselves in the large crevices of the 
trunk, while the main branches stretched across a space of about 
100 feet. A kind of caoutchouc can be obtained from this 
tree. A still more gigantic fig tree of Queensland is F. colossea 
(F. v. M.), but it may not be equally hardy, not advancing 
naturally to extratropic latitudes. This reminds of the great 
council-tree, F. altissima. 
