The Earl of Ducie informs me that in 1854, and for several years afterwards, he planted many deodars at Tortworth, both on the old red sandstone and on the mountain limestone. Many of these have perished after thirty to forty years' growth, without any apparent reason, except that in one case where only six out of about ninety remain, it is probable that they were infected with disease by the dead roots of beech trees which previously occupied the ground. Very few deodars at this place seem likely to attain a great age, and contrast unfavourably with the Cedar of Lebanon. But at Miserden Park, in the same county, on a dry oolite limestone, at an elevation of at least 600 feet, a line of deodars about sixty years old have remained healthy, though their growth here is much slower than at Tortworth.
At Poltimore, near Exeter, there is a fine avenue of deodars which were planted in 1851–52, and have grown to an average height of 70 to 80 feet in 1906, most of them being extremely vigorous, but there are several blanks in this avenue.
The cause of these deaths is explained by Mr. R.L. Anderson in a note published in the Quarterly Journal of Forestry, i. 216, who states that the fungus now known as Armillaria mellea, Vahl., was present on the roots of one of these deodars; and as the best means of checking its spread to other healthy trees, recommends trenching the ground round the affected tree, digging up and burning its roots, and scattering gas lime over the ground where they have been.
At Castle Menzies, in Perthshire, of a number of deodars, which were planted by the late Sir R. Menzies about 1852 to commemorate the birth of his son, on soil which was too wet to suit them, though Tsuga albertiana and Picea sitchensis have succeeded very well close by, several are dead, and all are more or less stunted, though one of these trees measuring 7½ feet in girth was successfully transplanted in February 1907, and had not lost a leaf when I saw it in the following July.
I have not myself gathered any ripe seed of the deodar in England, but there is a tree growing in Kew Gardens between the main gate and the Director's office which measures 37 feet by 4 feet 8 inches, and was raised from seed produced in 1861 or 1862 by a tree at Killerton, and sent by the late Sir Thomas Acland to Kew in February 1868. Mr. Smith, the then Curator of Kew, was so much impressed by the good quality of the soil from the top of Killerton Hill in which this tree was raised, that two truck loads of it were sent to Kew.
The earliest record[1] of the deodar producing fruit in England is of a tree at Bury Hill, near Dorking, which produced cones in 1852, when it was 28 feet high. Cones have also been borne on trees at Dropmore,[2] Sunninghill,[2] Bishopsteignton[2]near Teignmouth, Enys[2] in Cornwall, and Fota[2] in Ireland. Seedlings have been raised from home-grown seed at Rozel Bay' in Jersey and at Bicton.[3]
A deodar in Kew Gardens produced cones in 1887, according to a note in Gardeners' Chronicle, ii. 248 (1887), where it is stated that the production of cones on this species in this country has hitherto been a rare occurrence. At The Coppice, Henley, the seat of Sir Walter Phillimore, Bart., and at Shiplake House, the
