CONIFERS GROWN IN SUBURBAN GARDENS. 167 
and when the leading shoot is injured its branches often show 
a tendency to form straight upright shoots ; “ if only a small 
branch is left on a felled stump, numerous shoots grow up, which 
almost have the appearance of coppice shoots ” (Brandis, “ Forest 
Flora of N.W. and C. India ). Many beautiful young Deodars 
are grown in suburban gardens. One on our lawn at Leytonstone, 
sketched by my father in 1865, is probably 70 years old and is 
now about 50 feet high. 
Cedrus atlantica, from the Atlas mountains in North Africa, 
with its silvery foliage, I have not noticed in this neighbour¬ 
hood. 
The northern genus Larix is closely allied to Cedrus, but 
has deciduous leaves ; in other words, it has solved the problem 
of checking undue evaporation in the cold season by shedding 
all its leaves in autumn and pushing forth a glorious garment 
of fresh emerald green foliage in spring. The cones, instead of 
taking two or three years to mature, as in the Cedars, ripen in 
one year, although they remain on the branches for a much 
longer time. The “ rosy plumelets,” as the female cones of the 
European larch have been aptly called, appear on the same 
branchlets as do the cushion-shaped male flowers, and may 
be seen abundantly near Wanstead Park and elsewhere in our 
neighbourhood in spring-time. Larches thrive in comparatively 
poor land ; the wood is far more durable than that of Scotch-fir 
for all outside w r ork. 
The Mammoth Tree, Sequoia gigantea, and the Red-wood, 
S. sempervirens, both now confined to a small area in California, 
are the only survivors of a genus that once probably extended 
throughout the North Temperate region. Undoubted remains 
of Sequoia have been found in Lower Cretaceous beds, in the 
Tertiary beds at Bournemouth, in the Isle of Wight, and in 
Antrim ; while, in the Bovey Tracey beds, w r ell preserved stems 
and cones have been found associated with fragments of a vine, 
of Magnolia, and of the Swamp Cypress, Taxodium, now grow¬ 
ing only in the southern United States. Remains of Sequoia have 
also been found in Greenland and Spitzbergen, showing (as Prof. 
Seward points out) “ the existence in these ice-covered lands of 
plants which clearly denote a mild climate.” Both of the 
Californian Sequoias were introduced into England about the 
middle of the last century, and have been much cultivated. 
