MAMMOTH TREE OF CALIFORNIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5142, 15 September 1877, Page 5 (Supplement)

MAMMOTH TREE OF CALIFORNIA.

WELLINGTONIA GIGANIEA. ' TO THE EDITOB OP THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES.’ Sin, —I have sent you a short account of the “ Big Trees,” believing that it will interest some of your readers, the (more so as there ia good reason to believe that their descendants will occupy a prominent position in the future forests of New Zealand, where they seem to have found a home congenial to their nature. —I am, &c., E. Donald.

There are specimens of this tree which, if not the most ancient, are unquestionably the largest vegetable forms ever discovered, and, in all probability, the most stupendous creations in the organic world fossil or recent. The tree was discovered ia California by Mr. Lobb, and introduced into this country only so recently as 1853. It was first described,' in the same year, in the Gardeners' Chronicle, by Dr. Lindley, who gave it the name of Wellingtonia. The Americans, on the other hand, have made strenuous efforts to change the name to Washingtonia ; but its first designation is • permanently established in virtue of priority oi British publication and description, although it is admitted that the great trees had been observed by a Mr. Wooster in 1850, and were of course familiar to the aborigines of California. The tree was first found at a spot called the Calaveras Grove, near the head waters of the Stanislaus and San Antonia rivers, in long. 120° 10" W., lat. 38° N., and about 4590 feet above the sea level. Like others of the trees of North Western America the Wellingtonia occurs in isolated patches. In the Calaveras (now known as the mammoth tree grove), the number of the trees still standing is ninety-two. The Mariposa Grove contains about four hundred, and the Fresno Grove about six hundred. It is said to exist also in various other parts of the Sierra Nevada. As one of the Conifera, the Wellingtonia has an affinity to Seqnoj, from which, however, it differs in some essential particulars. It has the imbricated soale-lilce leaves of some junipers, but they are alternate, not opposite. The cones are from one to two inches long, by upwards of one inch broad, scales wedge shaped and woody. The tree is hardy and evergreen, and is deservedly in great favor, where it is becoming extensively diffused. On its first introduction, Lindley observed—- “ In a horticultural point of view, it is impossible to over-estimate the value to Great Britain of such a tree, perfectly hardy as it is, fast growing when young and of a most imperial aspect.” Writing thirteen years after, the author of “Pinacea” says—“ Young trees of it farm the most beautiful, symmetrical, and conical pyramids the eye can look upon ; while the pleasure is much enhanced by the ample spray and foliage, so harmonious in all the shades and tints of pale blue, yellow, and bright green-color.” The age of some of the Californian trees is estimated at 3000 years, and for others a still higher antiquity is claimed. There is no dubiety as to their enormous magnitude.. Lord Eichard Grosvenor, in 1860, confirmed a statement which had often been repeated, that one specimen was 450 feet in height and 116 in circumference. It is therefore higher than St. Peter’s at Borne ; little short of the height of the Pyi’amids ; only sixteen feet lower than the spire of Stx-asburg Cathedral, the loftiss in the world ; and to come nearer home, exactly the height of the great stalk at the chemical works at St. Eollox, in Glasgow. At a penny per square foot of inch deal, the value of the timber in such a tree would be £6250. Most of tbe specimens now standing in the mammoth tree grove, according to a statement by the proprietor in the “ ICew Miscellany,” are of the average height of 300 feet. One of them, known as the “ Mother of .the Forest,” measured 327 feet in height and 90 in circumference. It was this tree which was stripped of its hark to the height of 116 feet for the purpose of being publicly exhibited. The bark was about eighteen inches thick. For tea years it was shown in the north transept of tha Crystal Palace at Sydenham—a truly wonderful sight—and was destroyed by the fire which consumed a considerable portion of the structure at the close of 1866. Another tree, the “ Father of the Forest,” has long since bowed his lofty head, and lies prone on the earth. He measures 112 feet in circumference at the base, and in length can be traced 300 feet to where the trunk was broken by falling against another tree ; at this point it measures eighteen feet in diameter, and, according to the average taper of the trees, this giant must have reached a height of 450 feet. A hollow tunnel has been burned through the trunk for 200 feet, capacious enough for a person to ride into it on horseback. Some of the trees have been destroyed from mere wautonness, others from cupidity. In the progress of their execrable vandalism, the felling of one tree, we are boastingly told, employed five men for twentytwo days, not in chopping it down, but in boring it off with pump augers. It was then only displaced by means of wedges driven ia with butts of trees like battering rams. This noble tree was 302 feet high and 96 in circumference at the ground. Upon the stump, on the 4th of July, thirty-two persons were engaged in dancing four sets of cotillons at one time without suffering any inconvenience ; and besides these, adds the account, there were musicians and lookers on ! “ The Three Graces,” growing on one root, are 92 feet in united circumference, and 290 feet in height. “ The Old Bachelor” (for they have nearly all received names suggested by peculiarities in., their appearance) is described as a forlorn individual, with many rents in his bark, and altogether the most disreputable denizen of the forest; nevertheless presenting a height of 300 feet and a circumference of 60. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” exceeds this in girth and equals it in height. The trees in Mariposa Grove are said to be more varied as regards age, but many of them equal in dimensions those of the Calaveras Grove. Unhappily not a few of them have been more or less burned by the Indians. In tlie sketch of “The Twins” we are left to infer the prodigious magnitude of the trunks from the dwarfed .appearance of the figures introduced by way of contrast. Another specimen is thus described by the writer of “ Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California, 1865.” “ We measured one sturdy, gnarled old fellow, which, although badly burned, and the bark almost gone, so that a large portion of its original: size was lost, is nevertheless still 90 feet in circumference, and which we took the liberty of naming “ The Grizzly Giant. Due precautions are now taken in California against the destruction of the trees.