Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1874 — Famous Trees. [ARTICLE]

Famous Trees.

The African baobab (.Pini-vq,nr tafiti is held by botanists to be the oldest and largest specimen of vegetable growth in the world. Adanson saw.one in the C;ll>erde" TsTanils" within whose trunk, overlaid by 300 close layers of wood, be discovered an inscription carved by ywiyEnglish travelers three centuries before. By the aid and position of this ! inscription he was able to arrive at a corj reel estimate, not only of the length of I time it took the tree-stem to grow er ini crease in size, but the exact age of the | tree itself, which he puts down at 5,150 > ,,Jhe stem ordinarily attains only ten or twelve feet in height, but is thirtyfour feet in diameter; this immense foundation being required to support the foliage which grows upon it. The main branch raises perpendicularly sixty feet, and, from it'shoot other branches extending horizontally fifty or more feet on all sides, and which, being loaded with the most exuberant growth erf leaves, forms a verdant crown of sometimes an hundred and sixty feet in diameter; a single tree giving thus the appearance of a forest. It is called by the natives by a name which signifies±Ja thousand years,” which would seem to be in agreement with the calculations of its age by all herbalists. A group of these baobab trees, crowning the summit of its rocks, gives the name to the Cape Verde Isle, “green cape.” By theeity of Neustadt, in the Kingdom of. Wurtemberg, there stood p linden tree, which was antique in 1229; for it is written “ that the city of Neustadt,

then called Helinbundt, was destroyed in 1*226 and Rebuilt in 1229, u/ar the ffrmt was Fell known that for centuries German* spoke of Neustadt as “ the city near the .Ihidfin.,’ A p6eni of 1408 describes ft as growing near the | -gate, its-brandies propped by sixty-seven f stone pillars. In 16(14 these pillars were , increased to eighty-two and in 1832 to i 106. In 1832 the trunk at the height j of six feet from the ground measured i thirty-seven feet and it was estimated in that year, when ateirible storm rendered ! it well nigh a wreck, to he over 800 years : old. — Phrenological Juuvnalfvr November. |