In a work of authority it is said that the big trees (Sequoia gigantea) extend along a line of two hundred and forty miles, and moreover, that the highest yet discovered, which is in the Calaveras Grove, is three hundred and twenty-five feet. The grizzly giant of the Mariposi Grove is ninety-three feet in circumference at the ground. These dimensions have been greatly exceeded by report, but the sensational heights of four hundred feet and upwards are believed to be wholly unreliable. Dr. C. F. Winslow, in "The Californian Farmer," has written that "the trees of very large dimensions number considerably more than one hundred. Mr. Blake measured one ninety-four feet in circumference at the root, the side of which had been partly burnt by contact with another tree, the head of which had fallen against it. The latter can be measured four hundred and fifty feet from its head to its root. A large portion of this fallen monster is still to be seen and examined; and, by the measurement of Mr. Lapham, it is said to be ten feet in diameter at three hundred and fifty feet from its upturned root."
Dr. Berthold Seemann, a most trustworthy observer, has given a detailed account of some of the most remarkable of the sequoias, in which the "Hercules" is named as three hundred and twenty-five feet high, and ninety-seven in circumference at the base. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" claims to be three hundred feet high, and seventy-five feet in circumference. The "big tree," which was felled, was ninety-six feet in circumference at the base, and solid throughout. This was effected by boring holes with augers, and then connecting them by means of an axe. Twenty-five men were thus occupied for five days. When this was done, it was only by applying a wedge and strong leverage, favoured by a heavy breeze, that the overthrow was accomplished; stones and earth being cast up with such force that these records of the fall may be seen on surrounding trees, to the height of nearly a hundred feet. Although we have sought, and enquired diligently, we do not find reliable grounds for rejecting Sereno Watson's maximum height of three hundred and twenty-five feet.
The gigantic trees of Australia are gum trees, a species of eucalyptus, for the details of the dimensions of which we are indebted to Baron F. von Mueller. Of later years, as easier tracks have been opened, increased heights have been ascertained. "The highest tree previously known was a Karrieucalyptus (Eucalyptus colossea) in one of the glens of the Warren River of Western Australia, where it rises to approximately four hundred feet high. Into the hollow trunk of this Karri three riders, with an additional pack horse, could enter and turn without dismounting. Mr. D. Boyle measured a fallen tree (Eucalyptus amygdalina), in the deep recesses of Dandenong, and obtained for it the length of four hundred and twenty feet, with proportionate width; while Mr. G. Klein took the measurement of an eucalyptus on the Black Spur, ten miles distant from Healesville, four hundred and eighty feet high." Mr. G. Robinson estimated an eucalyptus in the black ranges of Berwick at five hundred feet. "It is not at all likely that in these isolated enquiries chance has led to the really highest trees, which the most secluded and the least accessible spots may still conceal. It seems, however, almost beyond dispute that the trees of Australia rival in length, though evidently not in thickness, even the renowned forest giants of California (Sequoia gigantea). We possess a standard of comparison in the spire of the cathedral of Strasburg, the highest of any cathedral of the globe, which sends its lofty pinnacle to the height of four hundred and forty-six feet; or in the great pyramids of Cheops, four hundred and eighty feet high, which, if raised in our ranges, would be overshadowed probably by Eucalyptus trees."
In one sense a giant, and in another sense a dwarf, there is no more remarkable plant to be found than that called after the name of its discoverer, Dr. Welwitsch (Welwitschia mirabilis). "Several miles before reaching Cape Negro the coast rises to a height of about 300 or 400 feet, forming a continuous plateau, extending over six miles inland, as flat as a table." Amongst the vegetation of this plateau a dwarf tree was particularly remarkable. This, "with a diameter of stem often of four feet, never rose higher above the surface than one foot, and which, through its entire duration that not unfrequently might exceed a century, always retained the two woody leaves which it threw up at the time of germination, and besides these it never puts forth another. The entire plant looks like a round table, a foot high, projecting over the tolerably hard sandy soil; the two opposite leaves (often a fathom long by two to two and a half feet broad) extend on the soil to its margin, each of them split up into numerous ribbon-like segments." The flowers of this singular plant are produced in clusters, and have the form of crimson cones, not unlike those of the larch.
The first announcement of such a singular "freak of plant-life" was received with some incredulity, but when not only drawings but the plants themselves arrived, the incredulity became changed to astonishment; and its whole history, unfolded in a most complete and thoroughly illustrated memoir, by Sir Joseph Hooker, passed into the records of science as one of the most remarkable discoveries of plant-life which the present century has been able to produce.
The tree which attains the greatest lateral expansion is the Indian fig, or banyan, which drops down rope-like shoots from their branches, and these, when they reach the soil, enter it and take root, thus becoming in the course of time subsidiary trunks. The increase in this manner might also be supposed to be indefinite, by the addition of new trunks, as the branches extend themselves. Milton has alluded to this tree as—
The fig-tree; not that kind for fruit renowned; But such as at this day, to Indians known In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms, Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade High overarch'd, and echoing walks between.
The great tree of the Nerbudda, often alluded to as the most important of these trees, covers a very large area, of which a circumference of two thousand feet is still remaining, though some has been swept away. Three hundred and twenty main trunks have been counted, while there are smaller ones to the number of some three thousand, and each of these is constantly sending forth branches and forming pendent root-stocks so as to extend and increase the colony. "Immense popular assemblies are sometimes convened beneath this patriarchal fig, and it has been known to shelter seven thousand men at one time beneath its ample shadow."
The largest forms of the strange cactus tribe are found in California and Mexico. Missionaries who visited these regions more than a century ago mention them as remarkable trees without leaves, but branched, and sixty feet in height. The giant cactus (Cereus giganteus) inhabits the wildest and most inhospitable regions, where "its fleshy shoots will strike root and grow to a surprising size, in chasms in heaps of stones, where the closest examination can scarcely discover a particle of vegetable soil. Its form is various, and mostly dependent on its age; the first shape it assumes is that of an immense club, standing upright in the ground, and of double the circumference of the lower part at the top. This form is very striking while the plant is still only from two to six feet high, but as it grows taller the thickness becomes more equal, and when it attains the height of twenty-five feet it looks like a regular pillar; after this it begins to throw out its branches. These come out at first in a globular shape, but turn upward as they elongate, and then grow parallel to the trunk, and at a certain distance from it, so that a Cereus with many branches looks like an immense candelabrum, especially as the branches are mostly symmetrically arranged round the trunk, of which the diameter is not usually more than a foot and a half, or rarely a foot more." They vary much in height; some are said to be thirty-six or forty feet, and others not less than sixty. "As seen rising from the extreme point of a rock, where a surface of a few inches square forms their sole support, one cannot help wondering that the first storm does not tear them from their airy elevation. Wonderful as each plant is, when regarded singly, as a grand specimen of vegetable life, these solemn, silent forms which stand motionless, even in a hurricane, give a somewhat dreary character to the landscape. Some look like petrified giants, stretching out their arms in speechless pain, and others stand like lonely sentinels, keeping their watch on the edge of precipices and gazing into the abyss."
We who are accustomed to see such climbing plants in our woods as the honeysuckle and hop, have but a poor conception of what climbing plants become in a tropical forest. Kingsley alludes to a magnificent wild vine or liantasse (Schuella excisa), "so grand that its form strikes even the negro and the Indian. You see that at once by the form of its cable—six or eight inches across in one direction and three or four in another, furbelowed all down the middle into regular knots, and looking like a chain cable between two flexible iron bars. At another of the loops, about as thick as your arm, your companion, if you have a forester with you, will spring joyfully. With a few blows of his cutlass he will sever it as high up as he can reach, and again below some three feet down; and while you are wondering at this seemingly wanton destruction he lifts the bar on high, throws his head back, and pours down his thirsty throat a pint or more of pure cold water. This hidden treasure is, strange as it may seem, the ascending sap, or rather the ascending pure rain water, which has been taken up by the roots, and is hurrying aloft to be elaborated into sap, and leaf, and flower, and fruit, and fresh tissue for the very stem up which it originally climbed; and therefore it is that the woodman cuts the water-vine through first at the top of the piece which he wants, and not at the bottom; for so rapid is the ascent of the sap that if he cut the stem below, the water would have all fled upwards before he could cut it off above. Meanwhile the old story of Jack and the Bean-stalk comes into your mind." Such a "bean-stalk" must be that of Entada scandens, a tropical climber of the bean family, which has pods nearly two yards long and five inches broad, with beans as large as the flattened "Normandy pippins," so often seen in the grocers' windows.
Rattans, which are the terror of schoolboys, are also the dread of the traveller, but for different reasons. These palms, often with stems not thicker than the little finger, are armed with rigid pointed spines, climbing by their aid to the tops of the highest trees, then dropping their extremities to the ground, and rising again until they will attain a length of several hundred feet. In the bulk of stem they are diminutive, but in extension are worthy of note as "giants." They are abundant in all the forests of the Malay and Philippine archipelago, and are everywhere extensively used as cordage, or for the manufacture of basket work. "These singular plants creep along the ground, or climb trees, and, according to the species, to the length of from one hundred to twelve hundred feet." The latter length is given on the authority of Rumphius, but it is very difficult to obtain authentic records of the length to which they will attain. It is not uncommon for the ordinary species, the common "canes" which form an article of commerce, to reach lengths varying from three to five hundred feet, and yet with but little increase of thickness through the entire length. These climbing palms contribute much to produce that character of impenetrable thicket which is so peculiar to tropical forests.