little from frost and wind, and is the handsomest and best-shaped tree[1] I have seen (Plate 143).
At Beechlands, near Lewes, the seat of Captain Rose, I am told by Mr. Chisholm that there is a Cunninghamia 50 feet high by 5 feet 1 inch in girth, forked near the top. It bears many cones, which, however, do not produce fertile seeds.
At Grayswood, Haslemere, a tree planted in 1882 is 30 feet high by 2 feet 7 inches in girth, but has not a very thriving appearance. Another at Redleaf, near Penshurst, Kent, the seat of Mrs. E. Hills, though forked near the ground, has one good trunk 47 feet by 5 feet 4 inches, and healthy foliage. At Langley Park, near Norwich, the seat of Sir Reginald Beauchamp, there is a tree 35 feet by 3 feet, which though healthy looking has grown but little for many years. At Tittenhurst,[2] near Sunninghill, there is a fine healthy tree over 20 feet in height. At Bayfordbury, Herts, Cunninghamia, though planted several times, has never succeeded, being much injured by spring frosts, and only one specimen, a few feet high, survives.
The most northern point at which I have seen the tree growing in England is in the sheltered Duchess' garden at Belvoir Castle. This, I was told by Mr. Divers, was planted in 1844, and in 1907 measured 39 feet by 3 feet 2 inches; but Mr. Fenner informs me that there is one 32 feet high at Holker Hall, Lancashire.
In Scotland, as might be expected, there are no trees of any great size. At Brodick Castle, in the Isle of Arran, a tree, which was planted about the year 1858, had only attained, according to the Rev. Dr. Landsborough,[3] 10 feet high in 1895, and never throve. There was formerly a tree at Smeaton-Hepburn, East Lothian, which died about five or six years ago after a drought.
In Ireland, Cunninghamia is a very rare tree. There is one in Mr. Walpole's garden at Mount Usher in Co. Wicklow, which was in 1903 31 feet high by 2 feet 2 inches in girth. It was supposed to be then about 28 years old. In Mr. Acton's arboretum at Kilmacurragh, in the same county, there is a thriving specimen, which Henry measured in 1903 as 25 feet high by 1½ feet in girth.
Around Paris[4] the tree always looks suffering, the leaves turning yellowish and assuming a burnt aspect; but it grows well at Les Barres,[5] and fructifies annually. In North Italy the climate evidently suits the tree much better, as I saw, in the grounds of the Villa Ceriana near Intra, a tree 76 feet by 7 feet 4 inches, producing cones freely in 1906, from which I have raised healthy seedlings. At Locarno,[6] on the northern end of Lake Maggiore, a tree planted fifteen years is 23 feet in height. (H.J.E.)
- ↑ John Smith, in Records of Kew Gardens, 290 (1880), states that a Cunninghamia, possibly the same tree as the one mentioned above, bore cones at Bagshot in 1838.
- ↑ Gard. Chron. xxxvi. 284 (1904).
- ↑ Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. 1896, xx. 527.
- ↑ Mouillefert, Traité des Arbres, ii, 1336 (1898).
- ↑ Pardé, Arb. Nat. des Barres, 57 (1906).
- ↑ Christ, Flore de la Suisse, 77 (1907).
