Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol03B.djvu/422

696

Among the great number of large redwoods I have seen at various places in England, I think the finest is one at Claremont, growing near the borders of the lake in a very sheltered position (Plate 194), which in 1903 measured 95 feet by 12 feet and in 1907 98 feet by 12 feet 9 inches. At Melbury there is a tree not so tall but thicker, which in 1906 was 85 feet by 15 feet 1 inch. At Fonthill Abbey there is a remarkable twin tree which grows in a damp hollow, dividing at the ground into two trunks which are 98 to 100 feet high by 10 feet and 9 feet 3 inches in girth respectively. At Boconnoc in Cornwall there is a tree which in 1851 was already 16 feet high, and in 1891 was reported as measuring 75 feet by 13 feet, but when I measured it in 1905 it had lost its top, and was then only 68 feet by 144 feet. At Dropmore, Buckinghamshire, a tree,’ remarkable for its pendulous branches and branchlets, is 94 feet high and 11 feet in girth, Three years ago, according to Mr. Page, the gardener, it was 10 feet 6 inches in girth, so that it is still making rapid growth. This tree was planted in 1845, when it was a foot high, having been bought for five guineas at Knight and Perry’s nursery. It is bearing this year an immense number of cones; but no attempt has ever been made to raise seedlings.

In a sheltered dell known as the Wilderness, at Cuffnells, near Lyndhurst, the seat of R. Hargreaves, Esq., are three splendid redwoods, which were planted about the year 1855 by his father. These measure 102 feet by 10 feet 8 inches, 98 feet by 15 feet, and 105 feet by 10 feet 10 inches respectively, the last being equal or superior to the one at Claremont, and growing close to a magnificent tree of Pinus insignis, which will be figured in our next volume.

At Beauport, Sussex, there is a tree with very pendulous branches bearing cones on the ends of the twigs, 73 feet by 9 feet 6 inches, and a larger one of the ordinary form, 85 feet by 11 feet 5 inches; and at Hemstead in Kent there is a tree not quite so tall as the Cryptomeria growing by its side (see Plate 42), and of about the same age. In the eastern counties the best we have seen are at Hardwicke House, Suffolk, where a tree in 1905 was 74 feet by 11 feet 10 inches, and at Barton, where in an exposed situation on the lawn there is one of 71 feet by 8 feet. This seems to be the only survivor of four which Sir Charles J.F. Bunbury ”

1 Erroneously reported to have been 114 feet in height in 1903 in Journ. Board of Agriculture, x. 345 (1904).

2 Arboretum Notes, 166 (1889).