164 feet wide, 12¾ feet long, and 5 inches thick. The tree from which this extraordinary plank was cut was felled in Humboldt County, and was said to be 300 feet in height by 35 feet in diameter. Planks of 5 feet in width are imported, and I have myself purchased boards 4 feet in width absolutely free from knots and defects. In England this wood is chiefly used for the inside linings of furniture, and it is said to be one of the finest woods in the world for large signboards, as it maintains a remarkable consistency of shape under the most trying conditions of climate and exposure. The value in Liverpool in 1907 was from 2s. 2d. to 2s. 6d. per cubic foot, a price which cannot be said to encourage shipments that have to pay the cost of so long a sea carriage. The wood is usually of slow growth, and the annual rings are from thirty to fifty to the inch. The cells are so large that they can be seen by unaided vision. Resin ducts are almost entirely absent in both species of Sequoia but have been found by Jeffrey[1] in the flowering shoot and in the first annual ring of vigorous branches of adult S. gigantea, and in the wood of the shoot and root of redwood as the result of injury. (H.J.E.)
SEQUOIA GIGANTEA, Wellingtonia, Big Tree
- Sequoia gigantea,[2] Decaisne, Bull. Bot. Soc. France, i. 70 (1854), and Rev. Hort. 1855, p. 9, f. 1 (not Endlicher); Masters, Gard. Chron. xix. 556, f. 85 (1896); Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xliv. 226 (1907).
- Sequoia Wellingtonia, Seemann, Bonplandia, iii. 27 (1855); Lawson, Pinet. Brit. iii. 299, tt. 37, 51, 53 (1884); Sargent, Silva N. Amer. x. 145, t. 536 (1896), and Trees N. Amer. 69 (1905); Kent, Veitch's Man. Coniferæ, 274 (1900).
- Sequoia Washingtoniana, Sudworth, Check List Forest Trees, U.S. 28 (1898).
- Wellingtonia gigantea, Lindley, Gard. Chron. 1853, pp. 820, 823; W. J. Hooker, Bot. Mag. 4777; 4778 (1854).
- Taxodium Washingtonianum, Winslow, Calif. Farmer, 1854, ex Hooker, Kew Journ. vii. 29 (1855).
- Taxodium giganteum, Kellogg and Behr, Proc. Cal. Acad. i. 151 (1855).
- Washingtonia Californica, Winslow, loc. cit.
A tree attaining 320 feet in height, with a tapering stem, occasionally go feet in girth above the much enlarged and buttressed base. Young trees narrowly pyramidal. Old trees free of branches to 100 or 150 feet, with an irregular crown of short thickened branches. Trunk fluted with broad, low, rounded ridges; bark 1 to 2 feet thick divided into lobes 4 to 5 feet wide, corresponding to those of the trunk, separating into loose reddish fibrous scales, which expose the spongy middle bark. Branchlets pendulous, not distichously arranged but in dense masses, green in the first year, afterwards gradually becoming brownish with a thin scaly bark. Buds minute, without scales.
Leaves persistent for four years, arranged on the branchlets in approximately three ranks; on the main axes ovate acuminate, up to ½ inch long; on the lateral axes lanceolate, acute, ⅛ to ¼ inch long; appressed and decurrent at the base, free
- ↑ Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. v. 441 (1903).
- ↑ The tree was first described by Lindley, who called it Wellingtonia gigantea. Wellingtonia cannot be maintained as a distinct genus. Sequoia gigantea is the correct name, according to the rules of botanical nomenclature promulgated by the Vienna Congress of 1905, and is now adopted by Sargent.
