La Trobe, Tyre’s and Thomson’s Rivers, and in a few places in the cooler and moister parts of Gipp’s Land. The wood! apparently varies: one kind, “red myrtle,” being of a bright pink colour, with a grain like that of the English beech, and con- sidered to be suitable for cabinetwork ; another kind, “white myrtle,” brownish- grey in tint, is not so attractive in appearance.
N. Cunninghami is very rare in cultivation. The finest tree (Plate 154), said by Lord Barrymore to have been planted about fifty years ago, is growing at Fota, Co. Cork, and measured, in 1904, 48 feet high by 3 feet 3 inches in girth. This tree has numerous branches, many of them ascending from near the base of the trunk. A tree at Kilmacurragh, Co. Wicklow, with branches ascending and curving at the tips, was 4o feet high by 3 feet 4 inches in1906. This tree has excrescences on the trunk, similar to the so-called ‘ wood-balls,” which are often seen on the common beech. It flowered in 1906. At Osborne, Isle of Wight, there is a tree, 30 feet by 2 feet 2 inches, which when Elwes saw it in 1906 seemed thriving.
It seems to be as hardy as any of the genus, and might be planted with good prospects of success in the extreme south-west of England near the sea. (A.H.)
NOTHOFAGUS BETULOIDES
- Nothofagus betuloides, Blume, Mus. Bot. Lugd. Bat. i. 307 (1850); Reiche, CArZ Buch. 15 (1897); Wildeman, Voy. Belgica, 74 (1905); Macloskie, Princeton Univ. Expedit. Patagonia, Botany, 329 (1903–6).
- Fagus betuloides, Mirbel, Mém. Mus. Paris, xiv. 465, t. 4 (1827); Loudon, Arb. et Frut. Brit. iii. 1982 (1838); Hooker, Journ. Bot. ii. 155 (1840), and Fl. Antarct. ii. 349, t.124 (1847).
- Fagus Forsteri, Hooker, Journ. Bot. ii. 156, t. 8 (1840).
- Betula antarctica, Forster, Comm, Goett. ix. 45 (1789).
- Calusparassus betuloides and C. Forsteri, Hombron et Jacquinot, Voy. Pôle Sud, Atlas t. 7 (1853).
A large evergreen tree. Bark smooth, grey; scaling near the base in old trees. Young branchlets slender, viscid, covered with short pubescence. Buds minute, brown, ovoid. Leaves (Plate 202, Fig. 3) persistent for two or three years, distichous and crowded on the branchlets, rigid, coriaceous, ¾ to 1 inch long by 4 inch or slightly more in breadth, ovate, rounded at the base, acute at the apex, crenate or serrate in margin; upper surface shining, glabrous, often viscid; lower surface finely reticulate, glabrous, dotted with resinous papille; petioles short. Male flowers solitary ; calyx funnel-shaped, four- to seven-lobed; stamens ten to sixteen, with long and slender filaments. Fruit: involucre four-lobed, with erect filiform glandular processes.
According to Loudon, both N. betuloides and N. antarctica were introduced in 1830, but he had not seen a specimen of either. Sir W.J. Hooker’ states that healthy young trees of both species, the first, as far as he knew, that ever had reached Europe, were sent in Wardian cases to Kew from Cape Horn in 1843, being
1 Report on Tasmanian Timbers by Mr. R.A. Ransome, of the Stanley Works, Chelsea, in Kew Bil. 1889, pp. 114, 115.
2 Notes Bot. Antarctic Voyage, 64 (1843); cf. also Loudon, Gard, Mag. 1843, p. 442.
