growth is retarded in the following year, its cnergfe being employed in making up the loss which its
stamina sustained, instead of adding to its size.
Disasts. — Soon after its introduction, complaints were frequent of its being subject to various
diseases: one very common one was its shoots becoming sickly, and dying off, as is often the case with
Crypto„uria. Japonic«, and Dacrydium. This was due principally, if not entirely, to the plants being
over-coddled, kept under glass when they should have been in the open air, and retained in pots when
they should have been planted out in the open ground. And although occasional sickly shoots do still
now and then appear, the general complaint has ceased since the plants have become more common, and
less attention is bestowed upon them.
Pot-cramping must be peculiarly prejudicial to such a plant as this. The larger a tree is to be, the
more space and freedom for its roots should be given ; and we know that, if the roots of a plant once
acquire the spiral conglomeration which is the result of being packed in too small a pot, it ts almost
impossible to get them out of the set. There is a congeries of roots coiled up, which direCts the line
of growth of future roots, and the plant never thrives. It is impossible to speak too strongly of the evil
done to forest trees by pot-cramping. One has often to submit to it, and the only alleviation (it ts not
always a remedy) is to see that the roots are carefully uncoiled, and spread out and laid down in a proper
position and so rammed or wadded into the right attitude, that they will not by-and-by gradually recoil back
into their old posture. To quote the words of an intelligent praffical horticulturist. Mr William Baxter,
the gardener of Sir W. Gibson-Craig of Riccarton: ' In purchasing plants in pots in nurseries,
it invariably happens that the roots are much matted : to plant them in this state 1 have found to be
an injudicious step; rather than this, shake every particle of soil from the roots, and spread them
regularly out when planting. This causes the roots to spread wide, and consequently enables the trees
to withstand a high wind. It is also a good practice to place a few rather heavy stones round the
necks of the plants, which does away with staking." There is a tree growing in the Royal Horticultural
Society's Garden at Chiswick, which well illustrates the advantage of this treatment. It arrived in
a pot and on being taken out of it, its roots were found to be thoroughly pot-cramped. The present
intelligent superintendent of the Society's Chiswick Garden, Mr Barron, carefully uncoiled and spread
out every one of the roots, much to the surprise of some of his men, who predicted that it would not
survive such rough treatment i for it may reasonably be supposed that there is no uncoiling of a conglomerated
mass of intertwined roots without some damage being done to them. The result, however,
has justified his procedure. For two or three years it made little progress, but at last it started. Last
year (1S66) it grew 3 feet, and this year it promises to do as much. It was planted in 1861, and is already
between 9 and 10 feet in height, and is as fine and handsome a well-proportioned plant as any one could
wish to see: not unlike fig. 38 (page 24). which is a very charafleristic representation of a well-grown
seedling. .
Another disease which we saw at first, but which we have not noticed for some years, was a thickening
of some of the branches at the base of the year's shoots, enlarging it and the neighbouring branches
into an unsightly, swollen, diseased-looking mass. We never ascertained the true history of this complaint.
At first we were inclined to refer it to an insect; and even yet that still strikes us as the most plausible
explanation - but on examination of the place we failed to detect any inscct, either outside or inside the
diseased part. The complaint, too, seemed to extend generally over all the WMmglonias in the same
distria. It did not last long, however, and had no permanent bad effecft upon the trees.
This has of late years been the favourite tree selefled to be planted as a memorial by the Queen, and
those whom the nation delights to honour. It has been so selefled, of course, from the feeling that its
great size and long life will make it a prominent and enduring monument; and equally, of course, it has
been chiefly in the neighbourhood of great cities that these memorial trees have been planted, these
being the places where memorials are desired. Two young Wcllmgtonias were planted in 1861, the one
by
by the Queen, and the other by Prince Albert, in the Royal Horticultural Society's Garden at South
Kensington. One has been lately planted by her Majesty at Oxford, and others at various other cities.-
But a worse choice could scarcely have been made. As a rule, Conifers have a special antipathy to
smoke, and an absolute necessity for pure air, the stifling atmosphere of the crowded city being death to
them. The Wellingtonias are no exception to the general rule. In a very few years not one of the muchprized
Victoria- and Albert-planted Wellingtonias will remain. The two at the Royal Horticultural
Society's Garden, at South Kensington, are rapidly deteriorating; the foliage has become thin, and the
trees unhealthy-looking. There are only two years' leaves upon them, and as each year's growth has not
exceeded half-a-foot, the reader can imagine how bare the trees have become. How many years may have
to elapse before they expire, we cannot tell, but shall be agreeably surprised if it exceed half-a-dozen. The
soot of the London atmosphere has deprived them of the freshness of their green. They are as black as the
funereal Yew; and this is not wholly due to the dust and soot deposited on them. The soot seems to
impart (as it does to the grass around.) some of its own colour intrinsically to the foliage, making it darker
and blacker, and in summer forming a harsh and disagreeable contrast with the fresh pea-green of the
young shoots.
Cultivation.—The seeds, as already said, are like small scales, the cotyledons lying longitudinally in
the middle. It requires some skill to know at a glance whether they are really ripe or not, but this can
soon be found out by chewing them ; the want of substance in the unripe cotyledons then shewing itself.
They germinate in about three weeks, when they are placed in a hot-house, or in frames where there is
some heat. The young plants, on pushing their way up out of the earth, have their young bark of a brickred
or violaceous colour, and this continues during the whole of the first year.
The young plants are very apt to damp off, unless allowed plenty of light and air ; and their young
shoots and branches are also more liable than those of other Conifers to do so in close, moist weather,
especially when deprived of a free circulation of air. This tendency continues even after they are picked
out and planted in the open ground. Mr Westland, the gardener at Kingston Hall, Nottinghamshire,
says, " I saw a large plant of Wellingtonia killed at Thrumpton Hall, near here, which they stated was
injured by the frost. Now, I doubted that, as I have seen hundreds of plants, from i foot to 18 inches
high, go off in nurseries without apparently any cause; but I always considered that it was pot cultivation
that caused it, and at that time they kept them in frames and under glass to forward their growth."
Young plants are reared with great ease and readiness from cuttings; and, what is most important, in
the great majority of cases, they grow erect and readily form leaders. Indeed, to any but a nurseryman's
eye, it would often be difficult to distinguish between a seedling and a plant from a cutting of the same
size. Should any of our readers wish to be knowing on the subject, we would recommend them to compare
the spread of the lower branches in the one with that in the other. It is not the cutting which
usually has them broadest; but even this is a fallible test, depending greatly upon the kind of slip out of
which the young plant has been made.
No stronger illustration of its willow-like readiness to grow can be given than the fact, which we have
ourselves observed, of a young cone which had been plucked, and hung upside down in a. phial of water
(for the purpose of macerating and rotting off the chlorophyll, so as to make a skeleton of the ligneous
core), actually sending out a rootlet from the axis at the apex of the cone. A seed or a plant put in the
ground upside down, will push its shoot round so as to make its way back again above ground; it is its
leaves and buds, however, which so make their way through the earth to upper air; but here it was not a
shoot, a bud, or a leaf, which was pushed forward from the axis of the cone, but actually a rootlet We
never saw any similar case, nor do we remember ever to have met with an account of one.
The tenacity of life of the Wellingtonia is not more remarkable than its readiness to propagate by
cuttings. The two are doubtless different phases of the same quality. The " Mother of the Forest,"
already mentioned as having been stripped of its bark to the height of 116 feet, is still flourishing. Beside
[ 20 ] M her