# The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland/Volume 3/Cunninghamia

The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland was a multi-volume work, privately published between 1906 and 1913. The third volume was published 1908. The plates of this volume are inserted in the volume
CUNNINGHAMIA
    Cunninghamia, R. Brown, in Richard, Conif. 80, t. 18 (1826); Bentham et Hooker, Gen. Pl. iii. 435 (1880); Masters, Journ. Linn. Soc. (Bot) xxvii. 304, fig. 18 (1889), and xxx. 25 (1892).
    Belis, Salisbury, Trans. Linn. Soc. viii. 315 (1807).
    Jacularia, Rafinesque, in Loudon, Gard. Mag. viii. 247 (18 32).
    Raxopitys, Nelson (Senilis), Pinaceæ, 97 (1866).
A genus, belonging to the Coniferæ, with only one known living species, and doubtfully represented in the fossil state.
Cunninghamia is considered by Bentham and Hooker, and by Masters, to be a member of the family Araucariez; but it is placed by Eichler in Taxodineæ. Seward and Ford, who have lately published an exhaustive monograph of Araucaria and its allied genus Agathis, agree with Eichler that it has no close relationship with those genera. It appears, however, to be a connecting link between the Araucariez and the Taxodineæ; and mainly differs from Araucaria, some species of which it closely resembles, in foliage, in having three ovules on the bract, and not one only, as in that genus.
The generic characters are given in the following detailed account of the species:—
CUNNINGHAMIA SINENSIS
    Cunninghamia sinensis, R. Brown, loc. cit. (1826); Lambert, Genus Pinus, ed. 2, t. 53 (1832); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iv. 2445 (1838); Murray, Pines and Firs of Japan, 116, figs. 216–224 (1863); Kent, Veitch's Man. Coniferæ, 292 (1900); Shirasawa, Icon. Ess. Forest. Japon, text 23, t. 9, ff. 1–24 (1900).
    Cunninghamia lanceolata, W.J. Hooker, Bot. Mag. t. 2743 (1827).
    Pinus lanceolata, Lambert, Genus Pinus, ed. i, t. 34 (1803).
    Belis jaculifolia, Salisbury, loc. cit. 316 (1807).
    Belis lanceolata, Sweet, Hort. Brit. 475 (1830).
Staminate flowers, five to ten in an umbel at the apex of a branchlet; the umbel surrounded at its base by numerous triangular imbricated serrulate bracts; each flower a spike-like cylindrical column of spirally crowded stamens; each stamen consisting of a slender stalk with an ovate serrulate connective, from which hang three longitudinally-dehiscing anther-cells. Female flowers, single or three or four together at the apex of a branchlet; erect ovoid cones, composed of numerous spirally imbricated lanceolate mucronate bracts in a continuous series with the leaves; lower bracts sterile, resembling leaves but with thickened bases; ovular scale on the upper fertile bracts visible only as a slight projection; ovules three on the base of each bract, reversed.
Fruit, an ovoid-globose brownish cone, about 1½ inch long, composed of thin woody scales, which are the bracts of the flowers increased in size and hardened, but otherwise little altered; loosely imbricated, serrate in margin, broadly ovate or reniform, with a cusped apex often reflected outwards. Seed-scale visible only as a transverse narrow membranous fimbriated projection on the inner surface of the woody bract, below its centre and above the seeds. Seeds three on each bract, about ¼ inch long, brown, oblong compressed, surrounded by a membranous narrow wing. Cotyledons two. The cones persist for a year or more on the branchlets after the escape of the seed; and are occasionally proliferous, the elongated shoot above the cone producing leaves and growing to be several inches in length.
Seedling.—Seedlings sown at Colesborne in spring were about 3 inches high in August, and had a short flexuose tap-root, provided with a few lateral fibres. Caulicle brownish, terete, glabrous, 1 inch long. Cotyledons two, about ½ inch long, coriaceous, entire, linear, with a median groove beneath. Young stem glabrous, ridged by the decurrent bases of the leaves. Leaves numerous, spirally arranged on the stem, ½ to 1½ inch long, soft in texture, linear, curved, broad at the base, whence they taper gradually to a fine bristle-pointed apex, serrulate in margin, green above, marked beneath with two narrow white stomatic bands.
In Cunninghamia, as in Araucaria, root-suckers are often produced, which grow ​into young trees, close to the parent stem. Coppice shoots are also produced freely from the stools in China, when the trees are felled.
Cunninghamia was discovered in 1701 by J. Cunningham in the island of Chusan; and his specimens, preserved in the British Museum, were early described by Plukenet. The first accurately scientific description, however, is due to Lambert, and was based on specimens brought home by Sir G. Staunton, who accompanied Lord Macartney's embassy to China in 1793.
The tree has been known to the Chinese from the most ancient times, being mentioned in their earliest classical writings. It is called sha, a name, however, which is often applied also to Cryptomeria and other conifers yielding valuable timber, It was introduced by William Kerr from Canton into Kew Gardens in 1804; but no trees of that date now exist there. Probably most of the existing trees in England were raised from seed collected by Fortune about 1844.
Cunninghamia is widely spread throughout the central, western, and southern provinces of China, extending southwards from Szechwan, Hupeh, Kiangsi, and Kiangsu to Yunnan and Kwangtung. It is usually a tree of mountain valleys, requiring a hot summer and considerable humidity to thrive; and ranges in altitude from sea-level to 5000 feet, occurring in Central China below the zone, which, in the high mountains, is covered by silver fir and spruce. There appear to be large forests of it in the interior of Hunan and Fokien, judging from the vast quantities of its timber which are exported from there. In Fortune's time it was abundant on the islands of Chusan and Pootoo, but was rare in Hongkong, where the only wild trees of this species grew as isolated specimens in the Happy Valley. Fortune, in 1849, passed through fine forests of Cunninghamia in the mountains of Northern Fokien, many of the trees being 80 feet in height, and perfectly straight; and he noticed variations in the tint of the foliage. He met with dense woods in the Snowy Valley and other parts of Chekiang, but the trees were usually young, and not remarkable for size.
Plate 143.
CUNNINGHAMIA SINENSIS AT BAGSHOT PARK
The wood, according to Mayr, is extraordinarily light, with a broad sap-wood and a dark yellow heart-wood. It is used extensively in the coast ports of China for making tea-chests.
Cunninghamia appears to be confined as a wild tree to China; but it is occasionally planted in Japan, the Loochoo Islands, and Formosa. M. Hickel has lately received seeds from Tongking, but these may have been gathered from cultivated trees. (A.H.)
Remarkable Trees
The growth of this tree in England depends mainly on the amount of heat in summer, which in most places is evidently insufficient; and though it endures severe winter frosts without much injury on well-drained soil, it suffers much from wind and frost in spring. It rarely ripens seed in this country, the only case I know of being a tree at Penrhyn Castle which is now dead, but from whose seed some young trees were raised. The best of these, when I saw them in 1906, was about 10 feet high.
The tallest trees of this species that we know are at Killerton, where, in 1904, there were two which measured 62 and 60 feet in height by 4 feet in girth. One of these has since been cut down, its branches having become ragged, and a section sent to the Kew Museum shows the age to be at least 63 years. Another, at Bicton, was, in 1906, 56 feet by 4 feet 10 inches, also rather ragged in its branches. There is a tree at Highnam, in Gloucestershire, about 25 feet high.
At Heanton Satchville, the seat of Lord Clinton, in North Devon, there is a slender but healthy-looking tree 50 feet by 3 feet, and another one which has thrown up a shoot from the stool. At Escot in South Devon, the seat of Sir John Kennaway, Miss Woolward measured one in 1905, 45 feet high. At Pencarrow in Cornwall Mr. Bartlett showed me a tree, planted by Sir W. Molesworth in 1850, which was in 1905 40 feet by 4 feet 8 inches, and one of the healthiest that I have seen; and there is a smaller tree, 30 feet by 4 feet, at Coldrinick, in the same county.
Coming farther east there is a splendid tree at Bagshot Park, the seat of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, which, when I saw it in May 1907, was no less than 47 feet high by 7 feet in girth, and 48 yards in the circumference of its branches, Being on very well drained soil, and well sheltered by other trees, it has suffered ​little from frost and wind, and is the handsomest and best-shaped tree I have seen (Plate 143).
At Beechlands, near Lewes, the seat of Captain Rose, I am told by Mr. Chisholm that there is a Cunninghamia 50 feet high by 5 feet 1 inch in girth, forked near the top. It bears many cones, which, however, do not produce fertile seeds.
At Grayswood, Haslemere, a tree planted in 1882 is 30 feet high by 2 feet 7 inches in girth, but has not a very thriving appearance. Another at Redleaf, near Penshurst, Kent, the seat of Mrs. E. Hills, though forked near the ground, has one good trunk 47 feet by 5 feet 4 inches, and healthy foliage. At Langley Park, near Norwich, the seat of Sir Reginald Beauchamp, there is a tree 35 feet by 3 feet, which though healthy looking has grown but little for many years. At Tittenhurst, near Sunninghill, there is a fine healthy tree over 20 feet in height. At Bayfordbury, Herts, Cunninghamia, though planted several times, has never succeeded, being much injured by spring frosts, and only one specimen, a few feet high, survives.
The most northern point at which I have seen the tree growing in England is in the sheltered Duchess' garden at Belvoir Castle. This, I was told by Mr. Divers, was planted in 1844, and in 1907 measured 39 feet by 3 feet 2 inches; but Mr. Fenner informs me that there is one 32 feet high at Holker Hall, Lancashire.
In Scotland, as might be expected, there are no trees of any great size. At Brodick Castle, in the Isle of Arran, a tree, which was planted about the year 1858, had only attained, according to the Rev. Dr. Landsborough, 10 feet high in 1895, and never throve. There was formerly a tree at Smeaton-Hepburn, East Lothian, which died about five or six years ago after a drought.
In Ireland, Cunninghamia is a very rare tree. There is one in Mr. Walpole's garden at Mount Usher in Co. Wicklow, which was in 1903 31 feet high by 2 feet 2 inches in girth. It was supposed to be then about 28 years old. In Mr. Acton's arboretum at Kilmacurragh, in the same county, there is a thriving specimen, which Henry measured in 1903 as 25 feet high by 1½ feet in girth.
Around Paris the tree always looks suffering, the leaves turning yellowish and assuming a burnt aspect; but it grows well at Les Barres, and fructifies annually. In North Italy the climate evidently suits the tree much better, as I saw, in the grounds of the Villa Ceriana near Intra, a tree 76 feet by 7 feet 4 inches, producing cones freely in 1906, from which I have raised healthy seedlings. At Locarno, on the northern end of Lake Maggiore, a tree planted fifteen years is 23 feet in height. (H.J.E.)
* ↑ This name, though the earliest, is not adopted on account of its close resemblance to the genus Bellis, used for the daisies.
* ↑ While the above was passing through the press, there has been received at Kew a specimen of a new species of Cunninghamia, lately discovered in the mountains of Formosa at 7000 feet altitude. This species, which will shortly be published by Mr. Hayata, differs from C. sinensis in having shorter leaves, acute and not acuminate at the apex. Mr. Hemsley is inclined to think that a specimen, preserved in the Herbarium, which was collected on Mt. Omei, in Western China, by Faber, is possibly a third distinct species.
* ↑ Engler u. Prantl, Natur. Pflanzenfamil. ii. 85 (1889). Cunninghamites, an allied fossil genus, has been found in the Keuper and Chalk deposits in Saxony, Bohemia, Westphalia, Southern France, and Greenland. Cf. Schimper a. Schenck, Palæontologie, 283 (1890).
* ↑ The Araucarieæ: Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., vol. cviii. p. 308 (1906).
* ↑ Cf. Woods and Forests, 1884, p. 593, and Garden, xxix. 173 (1886).
* ↑ In a note in King's Survey of the Coasts of Australia, ii, 564 (1826), R. Brown states that he requested Richard to change the name Belis, given by Salisbury, into Cunninghamia, in honour of both J. Cunningham, the discoverer of the tree, and of the collector Allan Cunningham.
* ↑ Amaltheum Botanicum, i. t. 351, f 2. (1705).
* ↑ Aiton, Hortus Kewensis, v. 320 (1813).
* ↑ Wanderings in China, 379 (1847); Tea Countries, ii. 178, 212 (1853); Residence among the Chinese, 189, 277 (1857).
* ↑ Fremdländ. Wald. u. Parkbäume, 285 (1906).
* ↑ Cf. Hayata, in Tokyo Bot. Mag. xix. 50 (1905).
* ↑ John Smith, in Records of Kew Gardens, 290 (1880), states that a Cunninghamia, possibly the same tree as the one mentioned above, bore cones at Bagshot in 1838.
* ↑ Gard. Chron. xxxvi. 284 (1904).
* ↑ Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. 1896, xx. 527.
* ↑ Mouillefert, Traité des Arbres, ii, 1336 (1898).
* ↑ Pardé, Arb. Nat. des Barres, 57 (1906).
* ↑ Christ, Flore de la Suisse, 77 (1907).