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176 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland
actual girth at 5 feet from the ground, following all sinuosities, was 146 feet, the
longest diameter being 42 feet. The cypress of Montezuma, which is the largest of
the great trees in the gardens of Chapultepec, near Mexico, is about 48 feet in
girth, according to Elwes, who saw it in 1888. Its height is about 170
feet. 1
Taxodium mucro-natum was first described 2 from a specimen growing in the
Botanic Garden at Naples, said to have been introduced into Europe in 1838.
Elwes saw this tree in April 1903, when the old leaves were partly persistent. A
tree at Palermo has borne fruit. There are specimens at Kew labelled " Hort.
Cusinati," collected by J. Ball, which bear very large cones, i^ inches long by an
inch in breadth.
Two seedlings were raised by Elwes from seeds brought by Mr. Marlborough
Pryor from Oaxaca in 1904, one of which is to be planted out in a sheltered clell
at Tregothnan in Cornwall, the other in the Temperate House at Kew. The
larger of these, which grew slowly in a greenhouse through the winter of 1904-5,
was about 18 inches high at one year old.
The typical form is the one commonly cultivated in England. In summer the
foliage is decidedly ornamental, being of a delicate green colour. In autumn the
leaves, before they fall, become reddish brown in colour.
Sub-varieties.—About a dozen sub - varieties are enumerated by Beissner.s
pyramidal, pendulous, fastigiate, dwarf forms, etc. The tree is very variable
in habit.
Taxodium distichum rarely produces flowers or fruit in England. It first bore
fruit about the year 1752. A tree 4 at Ryton-on-Dunsmore, which was forty years
old, produced flowers, apparently all males and in great abundance, in 1868.
Fruiting specimens were sent to Dr. Masters 5 from Menabilly in Cornwall in 1893 >
the cones were smaller than native-grown ones. One of these was proliferous,
the cone terminating in a branch bearing leaves and male flowers; and from the
sides of the cone leaf-bearing branches also emerged, which on examination
proved to form no part of either bract or scale, but were separate outgrowths
from the axis of the cone. On a tree at Gwydyr Castle, North Wales, fruit is
borne about every third year, but Mr. Macintyre informed me that it never was
fully matured, and no seedlings were ever raised. According to Webster,6
this tree was profusely covered with cones in 1884, but had none when Elwes
saw it in 1906. Bunbury 7 states that at Abergwynant, in Wales, a tree produced
oval cones.
Gay 8 says that though often cultivated in wet places in several old parks at
Paris, he has only seen fruit at the Trianon on a tree growing in very dry ground.
1 Garden and Forest, 1 890, p. 150, fig. 28. 2 Carriere, Traitf Conif. 1 47 (1855).
3 Nadelhohkunde, 1 52 (1891). 4 Card. Chron. 1 868, p. 1016.
5 Ibid. 1893, x'v- 659, fig. 105, showing fruiting branch, scales, and seeds. In the same journal, 1886, xxvi. 148,
fig. 28, are represented abnormal flowers of this species, from a tree growing in England ; also, in Card. Chron. 1 888, iii.
56$> fig. 77> "s depicted a remarkable gnaui on a Taxodinm.
6 Woods and Forests, 1 885, p. 25. 7 Arboretum Notes, 1 61. 8 Note in Kew Herbarium.
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Taxodium 177
Seedling.—There are 5 or 6 cotyledons, borne in a whorl at the summit of a
purplish brown caulicle, about 2 inches long, ending in a tiny curved rootlet, which
subsequently develops a few lateral fibres. The cotyledons are linear, i to i^ inch
long, £Q inch broad, sessile on a broad base, gradually diminishing to an acute apex,
upper surface dark green, bearing stomata in lines with a raised midrib ; lower surface
pale green and uniform. On the stem above the cotyledons are borne about 3 false
whorls of leaves, \ inch long, those below resembling the cotyledons, but bearing
stomata on both surfaces ; those above having decurrent bases. In the axils of the
uppermost leaves lateral branchlets are given off, bearing needles in two rows and
forming short shoots, which fall off in autumn.
The preceding description is taken from seedlings raised at Colesborne from
cones gathered by Elwes in September 1904 at Mt. Carmel, Illinois. (A. H.)
DISTRIBUTION
This remarkable tree occurs in North America from southern Delaware, where,
according to Sargent, it formerly attained almost its largest size, all along the coast
region as far as the Devil's River in Texas, and up the Mississippi valley as far as
southern Illinois and south-western Indiana. In these regions it inhabits river
bottoms usually submerged during several months, and swampy places. On the
Edwards Plateau of Texas, 1 several hundred miles west of the great cypress swamps
of eastern Texas, it occurs at 1000 to 1750 feet above sea-level, and attains an enormous
size at the edges of the deeper holes near the heads of the permanent water of the
Pedernales and other streams. This highland form in certain respects resembles the
Mexican variety. In some parts of Louisiana, Texas, and the Gulf States, it occurs
as pure forest, and in places so continuously flooded that the seed cannot germinate.
I have passed on the railway, built on trestles for miles, through cypress swamps
where the soil was submerged to a depth of 5 or 6 feet, and where few other trees
could live. In drier places, such as the Wabash valley in southern Indiana, near
Mount Carmel, where the cypress is evidently not so happy, it was associated with
ash, liquidambar, and maple. In this locality also, although the trees were covered
with fruit, I could find no seedlings; and as the accessible trees are in most
places being rapidly cut for their timber, they seem likely to become scarcer
unless protected. As far as I know it does not grow from the stool or from
suckers. 2
In Arkansas and Missouri there are swamps 8 in which both Taxodium and
Nys&a uniflora grow together, the latter with a peculiar dome - shaped base,
1 Ann. Report U.S. Geol. Survey, xviii. 210, 211 (1898). There are specimens from this locality at Kew.
3 R. Ridgway describes this locality as being in 1873 heavily timbered with cypress over an area of about 20,000 acres,
in which the best trees had even then been cut and floated out into the river. The largest stump he measured was 38 feet in
girth at the ground and 22 feet at 8 feet high. The largest standing tree measured was 27 feet in girth above the swollen base,
and the tallest 146 and I47feet high. Their average height, however, was not above loo feet, and even the finest of them would
not compare for symmetry and length with the sweet gums (liquidambar) and ashes (Fraxinus americana) with which they
were associated. Free. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1 882, p. 87. An excellent photograph taken here is published in Garden and Forest,
iii. p. 7> and shows the knees remarkably well.
3 Coulter, Missouri Bat. Garden Report, 1 903, p. 58.
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