13S 
PARK AND 
CEMETERY. 
Some Ancient and Historic Big Trees 
Large trees have from time immemorial 
excited the interest and admiration of man. 
In Europe many trees of extraordinary 
size have been objects of curiosity to trav- 
elers, while in this country the great size 
and age of the giant redwoods of Califor- 
nia have been the subject of frequent in- 
vestigations and descriptions, notably by 
Aluir, Dudley, and Huntington. 
It is not so generally known, however, 
that trees belonging to a closely allied 
species, the bald cypress, attain an age 
equal to, and in one case certainly sur- 
Alaria del Tide, •22 km. east of the capital 
of Oaxaca, between Santa Lucia and 
Tlacochiguaya, there is an enormous 
trunk of a Cupressus disticha-(sabino), 
which has a circumference of 36 metres. 
This old tree is accordingly very much 
thicker than the cypress of Atlixco, to 
which 1 have already made reference, and 
thicker than the dragon trees of the Canary 
Islands and all of the baobab (Adanso- 
niae) in Africa. Mr. Anza, in making a 
detailed investigation of this trunk, found 
that it was not a single trunk, but is made 
interesting comments by the younger De 
Candolle, appeared in the ‘Bibliotheque 
Universelle' for 1831. According to Mr. 
Exter's measurement, the trunk is 46 
varas — one hundred and twenty-two Eng- 
lish feet — in circumference: which is 
nearly in accordance with Humboldt’s ac- 
count. In neither case is the height at 
which the trunk was measured expressly 
mentioned. But this point has been duly 
attended to by a recent scientific observer, 
M. Galeotti, who visited this celebrated 
tree in 1839 and in 1840, and whose care- 
THE LANCASTER ELM. 
BALL CYPRESS AT SANTA MARIA DEL TULE, MEXICO. 
passing, that of any known redwood. The 
redwood and the bald cypress flourished 
during the same prehistoric periods, and 
were widely distributed not only in this 
country, but in Europe. At the present 
time, however, each is restricted to a lim- 
ited area in the United States — the two 
species of redwood, to California, and the 
bald cypress, to narrow strips along the 
Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, ex- 
tending a short distance up the Mississippi 
Valley. A third related genus, Glyptostro- 
bus, is now confined to a narrow region 
in southeast China. Although many of the 
cypress trees now growing in our southern 
swamps are very old, there are probably 
very few that even approach the age of 
the giant redwoods of California, and we 
must go to Mexico to find what is prob- 
ably the oldest living tree in the world, 
says a recent bulletin of the Missouri 
Botanical Garden, from which the accom- 
panying illustration is obtained. There 
are a number of extraordinary specimens 
of the cypress tree in southern Mexico, 
some of which have attracted the attention 
of travelers and have been referred to in 
their writings. It is one of these which 
is the subject of this sketch. 
In 1803, Alexander von Humboldt, dur- 
ing his travels through southern Mexico, 
came across an enormous cypress tree. 
He sa 3 's of it : “In the village of Santa 
up of three united trunks.’’ At the time 
of his visit Humboldt inserted a square 
board into the side of the trunk, about 
12 feet above the ground, cutting a shal- 
low hole in the outer part of the tree for 
that purpose. This board bore a Spanish 
inscription, a copy of which does not seem 
to have been recorded. 
Dr. Gray in his charming essay on “The 
Longevity of Trees,’’ refers to this tree 
as follows: “We possess three independ- 
ent measurements of this enormous trunk. 
The first is that given by Humboldt, who 
states, prolrably on the authority of his 
informant, M. Anza, that the trunk is 30 
metres (118 English feet) in circumfer- 
ence. In the year 1827, Mr. Poinsett, then 
our minister at the court of Mexico, 
transmitted to the American Philosophical 
Society at Philadelphia a cord which rep- 
resented the exact circumference of this 
tree. Its extraordinary length naturally 
excited some doubts as to the correctness 
of the measurement : and immediate appli- 
cation was made to Mr. Poinsett for fur- 
ther particulars. He accordingly trans- 
mitted a communication from Mr. Exter, 
an English traveler who had just returned 
from Oaxaca, and who had carefully ex- 
amined the tree in question. Mr. Exter’s 
letter was afterwards published in Lou- 
don’s ‘Magazine of Natural History’; and 
a French translation, accompanied by some 
fill measurement gives to the trunk the 
circumference of 105 French (equal to 
112 English) feet at the height of four feet 
above the surface of the soil. The previ- 
ous measurements, therefore, were taken 
somewhat nearer the base. The tree as 
yet shows no signs of decay, although it 
bears less foliage in proportion to its size 
than its younger fellows. But we find no 
authority for Mr. Exter’s statement, that 
this tree was mentioned by Cortes, and 
that its shade once afforded shelter to his 
whole European army. Perhaps he had 
in some way confounded it in his memory 
with a cypress which the Conquistador 
passed on the march to Mexico, and which 
is still traditionally associated with his 
name.’’ 
In 1963, Dr. Hermann von Schrenk, 
pathologist to the Missouri Botanical Gar- 
den, visited this famous tree. At this time 
measurements were made of the trunk and 
photographs taken, one of which is here- 
with reproduced. This plate, taken from 
the roof of one of the buildings across the 
square of the small churchyard, where the 
cypress stands, gives a good idea of the 
general shape of the tree. The crown is 
almost round, and the tree has little resem- 
blance to young cypress trees growing in 
dry localities or older ones growing in the 
swamps, but looks more like a large oak. 
