2 
PINETUM BRITANNICUM. 
Fig. i; 
Natural Size, 
feathery. Leaves arranged distichously [fig. i], as in the Silver Fir, but not attached as in it and the other 
Abietinese. Although apparently attached by a footstalk, an examination of a pinna in its young state 
shews that the attachment is not by a footstalk, but by a pulvinus, of which the base clasps 
the stem of the branchlet as the leaves of other Cypresses do, then 
becomes constricted and twisted as it expands, forming the leaf 
[fig. 2]. The leaf is to inch in length, and about J2 a 
line in breadth, linear, narrowing a little towards the apex, 
slightly curved, convex side in front, flat, with a well-marked mid-rib 
running up the middle, as in dicotyledonous plants, apparently 
glabrous and without stomata on either side; in reality, when 
examined under a microscope, clothed with a fine coating of velvet 
down, which breaks transversely, and under it the whole leaf is seen 
to be finely striated, the striation more easily observed on the 
under than the upper side. The under side is also more 
dull than the upper ; margins entire. When young and freshly excluded, the leaves are of a bright 
yellowish pea-green ; when older, a little darker and not so yellow, but always light. In autumn they 
change to a dull red. It blossoms in Carolina about the 1st of February, in England in June. Male 
catkins small oblong ovate, on short footstalks, usually a number near each other hanging in flexible 
pendulous clusters (fig. 3), with two or three rounded stamens. Crest sub-triangular. 
Female catkins (fig. 4) larger and thicker than the male; scale in the young state 
elongate triangular. They ripen in October. When 
mature, the cone (figs. 5 and 6) varies in size from a hazel 
nut to a small walnut. The scales, when ripe, have the 
upper half (the apophysis) marked with a series of longi- 
when young, these are bright green and leaf-shaped, and 
look like a circlet of leaves surrounding what is homologically a widened and 
overgrown mid-rib. We know that the whole of the pinnated tuft of leaflets is 
only one leaf; and here in the scale we have the repetition of the leaflet, and the circlet of leaf-like nodules 
is merely the pinnules of the leaflet all amalgamated together and developed into the scale of the cone, 
strengthening the view that the scale is the petal of the flower. The scale is irregularly rounded, margined 
with a breadth of these nodules, with a narrow transverse line and a short mucro in the middle. The seeds 
are small, ligneous, of irregular angular (usually triangular) shape, and each seed vessel contains a small 
round kernel. 
This species reaches an enormous diameter, exceeding in that respect even the Sequoia Wellingtonia, 
although far beneath it in height. Michaux mentions that stems are met with in Florida and in Southern 
Louisiana 40 feet in circumference above the enlarged base, and the buttressed base itself is three or four 
times that size. The well-known tree of the Mexican variety, still flourishing in the garden of Chapultepec, 
called Montezuma’s tree, is 41 feet in circumference. Lyell, in his “ Second Visit to the United States,” 
speaks of Mr Hamilton Cooper, a geological friend, coming down the river Alabama to meet him in a long 
canoe hollowed out of the trunk of a single Cypress, and rowed by six negroes ; and M. Bossu, in his 
“ Travels in Louisiana ” (1781), says that about 25 leagues above Mobile there were Cedar trees of so 
prodigious a size that ten men can scarcely clasp them; but such individuals dwindle to nothing before the 
gigantic trunk of the tree in Oaxaca above alluded to, near Santa Maria del Tule, which was first mentioned 
by Exeter, who found its circumference to be 117.10 French feet. De Candolle doubted this, and thought 
there must be some mistake in the measurement, such as including in it the dilated base ; but Zuccarini 
removed his doubts, and satisfied him that the measurement was taken above the dilated base, for that if that 
had been included, the girth would have been no less than 200 feet. In height, however, there is no 
comparison 
Fig. 4. 
tudinal nodulations 
Fig. 5- 
Natural size 
Fig. 6. 
Magnified. 
