A SECULAR CYPRESS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3830, 6 November 1936, Page 9

A SECULAR CYPRESS

Of all monsters living- to-day none is older than a cypress tree in the little Indian village of Santa Maria del Tide, in south-western Mexico. With a circumference of 175 feet, this colossus of the plant kingdom has outlived a hundred and fifty generations of men and will probably live on indefinitely, or so long as people allow it to live. El Tule was a giant at the birth of Jesus; it was a King of the Forest when Alexander the Great wept because he had no more realms to conquer; it was worshipped as a god when all Europe was still pagan To-day, El Tule stands within a stone fence and beside a beautiful church. Just a few hundred feet away there is another cypress of the same species, which the Indians call the son of El Tule and on the other side of El Tule is still another cypress, which they call the grandson of El Tule. But there is no proof that these trees, which ar. much younger, sprang from El Tule’s seeds. A Mexican botanist, Professor C. Conzat-ti, atteimpted to grow trees from El Tule’s seeds, but failed, despite the fact that he had carefullyplanted about seventy seeds. Does this mean that El Tule is so old that it cannot reproduce any more? No body knows. Anyhow-, nobody living has actually succeeded in growing trees from the seeds.—Don Glassman in Chambers’s Journal.