Ferdinand von Mueller

1

Letter not found. The text given here is from 'The height of trees', Australian town and country journal (Sydney), 8 June 1878, p. 1073 (B78.06.02). The letter was introduced by:

In reference to this matter, about which so many opinions are at variance with each other, we have received the following from Baron F. Von Mueller, the Victorian Government Botanist, than whom there is no better authority in Australia, or any other country.

Sir—

In reply to your question concerning the greatest height of the Eucalyptus,

2

Letter not found.

I would observe that exact data, giving a height much over 400 feet, seem to me unreliable. I have made measurements which gave me approximately 400, but nevertheless, I may have missed higher trees, because on the slopes of forest ranges the trunks are often concealed by underwood, so that a tree may be much higher, when thus partially hidden, as than would appear from the distance. Some of our tallest trees may also have been felled already. After the ruinous breaking up of my department, the greater part of my library had to be packed away in a private dwelling; thus I have no access now to some former notes of measurements. I think you will find in various of my previous publications, records on the heights of E. amygdalina. It is quite likely that in some of the southern districts of New South Wales in dense forest ravines, that species will reach to quite as great a height as in Victoria. Lately I have seen also E. diversicolour

3

Typesetters error for E. diversicolor?

in West Australia, on the Shannon and Gordon Rivers, fully 400 feet high. The tallest

Wellingtonia

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s, actually measured in California, are 325 feet high, but the diameter of those colossal trees will occasionally be as much as 24 feet for the wood, and 3 feet more for the bark would be added; but such trees are considered many hundred years old, whereas our eucalypti attain their greatest height, probably in less than one century. Heights of 450 feet, which stood originally on records for

Wellingtonia

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s, have been confirmed by clinometric measurements of existing trees.

Pinus grandis

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is also recorded to be up to 320 feet high, the diameter of the stem being still 6 feet at 209 feet from the butt; nor is pinus menziesii of less dimensions in extreme cases; and almost the same may be said of pinus lambertiana. I have collected many data to this effect for a new edition of the "Select Plants," together with other supplemental notes.

4

The next Australian edition, B81.01.04, contained notes on measurements of tall trees of E. amyygdalina, which in its variety 'which might be called Eucalyptus regnans, represents probably the loftiest tree on the globe', E. diversicolor and E. globulus, and in the discussion of Sequoia wellingtonia of California comments 'traditional accounts seem to have over-rated the height of the Mammoth-tree'.

June 1, 1878.