Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/92

246 At Southampton, in the Red Lodge nursery belonging to Mr. W. H. Rogers, there was a tree twenty-five years old in 1884, about 20 feet high, which bore cones in profusion. At Kew a specimen planted in a sheltered position lived for many years, but ultimately succumbed. Sir Joseph Hooker knew of no good specimen nearer London than one on a south slope near Leith Hill in a very sheltered and well-watered valley.

At Fota, in the S.W. of Ireland, the seat of Lord Barrymore, Henry measured a tree about 4o feet by 4 feet 10 inches in 1904; and there are trees at Kilmacurragh and Powerscourt, in Co. Wicklow, which are about 30 feet high, all of very branching bushy habit, and with several main stems.

Sargent has never seen a specimen in the United States.

A tree attaining in Japan about 100 feet in height and 12 feet in girth, forming in England a small tree with a short bole and a dense crown of foliage, with numerous branches and pendulous branchlets.

Young shoots greyish in colour and quite glabrous. Leaves pectinately arranged, variable in size, the smaller on the upper side of the shoot, some of these being directed outwards at right angles to the general plane of the foliage. They are oblong, uniform in width, ¼ to 1 inch long, shining and dark green above with a median furrow continued to the rounded and emarginate apex; lower surface with green midrib and two narrow well-defined white bands of stomata; margin quite entire. Buds reddish, ovoid, slightly acute at the apex: scales glabrous on the surface, ciliate in margin.

Cones elongated ovoid, on a stalk about ¼ inch long, pendulous or deflected, composed of five series of orbicular scales, which are rounded at the apex and at the base and have a slightly bevelled margin. Bract included, very short and bifid. Seed with a long wing decurrent half-way along its outer side.

This tree has been much confused with the other Japanese species, from which it is very distinct in botanical characters. Koehne's proposed name, Tsuga Araragi, is not adopted by us, the name Sieboldii being the first one under the correct genus Tsuga.