CONIFERS GROWN IN SUBURBAN GARDENS. 167
and when the leading shoot is injured its branches often show
a tendency to form straight upright shoots; "if only a small
branch is left on a felled stump, numerous shoots grow up, which
almost have the appearance of coppice shoots" (Brandis, "Forest
Flora of N.W. and C. India). Many beautiful young Deodars
are grown in suburban gardens. One on our lawn at Leytonstone,
sketched by my father in 1865, is probably 70 years old and is
now about 50 feet high.
Cedrus atlantica, from the Atlas mountains in North Africa,
with its silvery foliage, I have not noticed in this neighbour-
hood.
The northern genus Larix is closely allied to Cedrus, but
has deciduous leaves; in other words, it has solved the problem
of checking undue evaporation in the cold season by shedding
all its leaves in autumn and pushing forth a glorious garment
of fresh emerald green foliage in spring. The cones, instead of
taking two or three years to mature, as in the Cedars, ripen in
one year, although they remain on the branches for a much
longer time. The "rosy plumelets," as the female cones of the
European larch have been aptly called, appear on the same
branchlets as do the cushion-shaped male flowers, and may
be seen abundantly near Wanstead Park and elsewhere in our
neighbourhood in spring-time. Larches thrive in comparatively
poor land; the wood is far more durable than that of Scotch-fir
for all outside work.
The Mammoth Tree, Sequoia gigantea, and the Red-wood,
S. sempervirens, both now confined to a small area in California,
are the only survivors of a genus that once probably extended
throughout the North Temperate region. Undoubted remains
of Sequoia have been found in Lower Cretaceous beds, in the
Tertiary beds at Bournemouth, in the Isle of Wight, and in
Antrim; while, in the Bovey Tracey beds, well preserved stems
and cones have been found associated with fragments of a vine,
of Magnolia, and of the Swamp Cypress, Taxodium, now grow-
ing only in the southern United States. Remains of Sequoia have
also been found in Greenland and Spitzbergen, showing (as Prof.
Seward points out) "the existence in these ice-covered lands of
plants which clearly denote a mild climate." Both of the
Californian Sequoias were introduced into England about the
middle of the last century, and have been much cultivated.