Court in Gloucestershire, Munches in Kirkcudbright, and Hafodunos in Denbighshire, places which we have visited ; but none of these trees can now be found.
There are several trees in Cornwall. Specimens with cones were sent to Kew in 1899 from Trevince, near Redruth, the residence of Mr. E.B. Beauchamp. There is also a tree! in Mr. Boscawen’s garden at Lamorran, which produced cones in 1890.” There is asmall tree at Mr. Rashleigh’s garden, Menabilly, which was figured in the Gardeners’ Chronicle;1 and at Tregothnan, the seat of Viscount Falmouth, there is a large tree which Elwes measured in 1905 as 56 feet by 6½ feet. Though bearing cones, this tree did not seem healthy, and its top was broken by the wind.
A tree at Castle Kennedy is fairly large in size; but it was blown down some years ago, and then replaced in position. It is in consequence very irregular in shape. It produces cones freely, but the seeds are never fertile.
There were formerly two trees at Fota, which differed somewhat in colour of the foliage and hardihood ; one® has since been blown down. The surviving tree (Plate 226) is a handsome one, though its trunk was broken at about thirty-six feet up, and it has now four leaders: when measured by Elwes, in 1908, it was 66 feet high by 7 feet 3 inches in girth. It is branched to the ground, one very large branch coming off near the base. The foliage is variable in colour, being bluish- green towards the ends of the branchlets, and elsewhere of a light or dark green colour, so that there are three tints visible on the tree. It was bearing in August 1904 numerous cones and male flowers, scattered all over the tree. The cones exude a white resin ; and are peculiar, as the scales do not all fall at the same time, some remaining at the base and apex of the axis for two or three years.
The tree does remarkably well on the shores of the Italian Lakes.‘ Carriére says it is killed by frost at Paris; but at Cherbourg5 there was a tree 30 feet high in 1867. It seems, however, to be very rare if at all existing in France. (A.H.)
1 Gard, Chron. ix. 304, figs. 69, 70 (1891).
2 This tree was the first in Britain to produce cones, which were exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society in 1876.
3 This tree was much more tender than the other, and had the top and some lateral branches killed by frost in the winter of 1880-1881. See Osborne, in Gard. Chron. xxiii. 56 (1885).
4 Sargent, Silva N. Amer. xii. 97, adnot. (1898). But Elwes saw none that he could identify in the neighbourhood of Pallanza.
5 Hickel and Pardé, in Bull. Soc. Dendr. France, 1908, pp. 206, 224, state that the trees of this species in the neighbourhood of Cherbourg died in the severe winter of 1879–1880 ; and believe that there are now no living specimens in France.
