Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol03B.djvu/182

This page needs to be proofread.
552
The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland

a consignment from his son, who was attached as botanist to the Antarctic expedition of the Erebus and Terror.(A.H.)

The largest and finest specimen which I have seen in cultivation is at Bicton (Plate 155). It measured in 1906 about 50 feet in height and 6% feet in girth; but bore no fruit on two occasions when I saw it. At Pencarrow, Cornwall, a tree reported by Mr. Bartlett to have been obtained from Messrs. Veitch in 1847, was 36 feet by 4 feet 3 inches in 1903. One at Coldrinick in the same county was measured in 1905 by Mr. Bartlett, who gives its dimensions as 45 feet by 5 feet 5 inches. There is another specimen,’ about sixty years old, growing on Sir John Llewellyn’s property at Caswell Bay, near Swansea, which he tells me measured 25 feet by 3 feet 2 inches in 1907. It is close to the sea and in con- sequence has been shorn off by the sea wind to the same height as the Portugal laurels and poplars which grow beside it.

At Grayswood, Haslemere, at 600 feet elevation, a tree, said by Mr. B.C. Chambers to have been planted in 1882, measured 34 feet by 2 feet 3 inches in 1906. At Hafodunos, Denbighshire, a tree, reported by Col. Sandbach to have been planted in 1855, was in 1904 36 feet high by 5 feet 2 inches in girth at 3 feet from the ground, dividing at 5 feet up into two stems. There is no tree growing now at Kew, one, a healthy specimen, having been killed’ by frost in January 1867. There is also a tree growing at Ashridge Park, Herts, which is about 30 feet by 3 feet, on which Miss Woolward has observed fruit, and a smaller one is in the Knap Hill Nursery, near Woking. A tree at Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow, was, in 1906, 33 feet high by 2 feet 10 inches in girth.

I have a sample board from a tree of this species, which grew on the rockery at Lucombe and Pince’s Nursery, Exeter. This was cut down when the nursery was cleared for building in March 1903. In 1886, it was 35 feet high and 2 feet 8 inches in girth at 3 feet from the ground,* and had not grown much in the succeeding years, The timber was of poor quality, and had begun to decay.

NOTHOFAGUS OBLIQUA

Nothofagus obliqua, Blume, Mus. Bot. Lugd. Bat. i. 307 (1850); Reiche, Chil. Buch. 8 (1897); Wildeman, Voy. Belgica, 75 (1905).
Fagus obligqua, Mirbel, Mém. Mus. Paris, xiv. 465, t. 23 (1827); Hooker, Journ. Bot. ii. 153 (1840).
Fagus glauca, Philippi, Linnea, xxix. 43 (1857).
Lophozonia heterocarpa, Turczaninow, Bull, Soc. Imp. Nat. Mosc. xxxi. 396 (1858).

A deciduous tree, attaining in Chile a height of over 100 feet. Bark, according to Reiche, dark in colour and fissured. Young branchlets glabrous ; buds small,


1 Figured in Gard, Chron. xxxiii. 10, f. 5 (1903), where it is erroneously stated to have been introduced from New Zealand.

2 Figured in Gard. Chron. 1872, p. 466, f. 136, and 1886, xxv. 104, f. 18.

3 J. Smith, Records of Kew Gardens, 277 (1880).

4 Gard. Chron. xxv. 104 (1886).