the borders of swamps; but in the south grows also on high wooded mountain slopes. It is very variable in form, sometimes branching close to the ground; but oftener has a stout straight trunk, covered with light brown deeply furrowed bark, which is often curiously divided into hexagonal scales. Plate 144 b shows the trunk of a tree in America. The upper branches are twiggy and usually crooked. The glossy green leaves are rarely disfigured by fungi or insects, and turn to deep red in autumn. An excellent illustration of a group of trees growing near a pond in Massachusetts is given in Garden and Forest, ii. 491, which resemble in habit the Siberian or Japanese larch; and this is the form which the trees often assume in low swampy ground in New England. Another figure in the same journal, vii. 275, fig. 46, shows the habit of a tree growing in drier ground in Pennsylvania.
Cultivation
Nyssa sylvatica was in cultivation at Whitton, near Hounslow, in 1750. It is, when well grown, a very distinct and beautiful tree, the brilliant scarlet assumed by its leaves in autumn rendering it a very desirable ornament for the park or pleasure ground.
Sargent says that one reason why this tree is not more generally planted is that its long roots with few rootlets make it difficult to transplant, and that it must be either planted out when quite young or frequently transplanted in the nursery. Those which I have raised from seed grew slowly the first year, but seemed to ripen their young wood better than many American trees. When pricked out singly into pots in the following spring they all died.
We have seen very few specimens in this country, the only one of great size being the tree[1] at Strathfieldsaye, which measured in 1897 74 feet high by 5 feet 5 inches in girth. It grows on rather heavy soil. This tree was reported by Loudon to be about 30 feet high in 1838, and is probably over 100 years old (Plate 145). It produced seed in 1906 which appeared to be mature.
There is a tree at Munden, near Watford, the seat of the Hon. A. Holland Hibbert, which has a short bole of 4½ feet long with a girth of 3 feet 3 inches, dividing into two stems, the branches of which are very spreading, forming a crown of foliage 38 feet in diameter; the total height is only 20 feet. Mr. Daniel Hill of Watford, who kindly sent these measurements, says that the fork has been leaded over; and it is possible that the tree lost its leader early from some accident, and in consequence subsequently assumed its present peculiar habit.
At White Knights, near Reading, there was a large tree of this species which was cut down some years ago; and there are now many suckers arising from the roots.[2] There is another tree at Bicton about 35 feet high by 3½ feet, which in August 1906 had full-sized fruit upon it which seemed likely to ripen.
- ↑ The girth of this tree given in Gard. Chron. xxvi. 162 (1899), is evidently erroneous, 14 feet 10½ inches being a misprint for 4 feet 10½ inches.
- ↑ Schenck, in Biltmore Lectures on Sylviculture, 56 (1905), says that in the forest old trees are often surrounded by an abundance of seedlings; but on abandoned fields it seems to come up from sprouts and not from seeds.
