SIERRA NEVADA PLANTS IN THE COAST RANGE. 
BY KATHARINE BRANDEGEE. 
The great valley of California is a basin or plain irregularly 
elliptical in shape and about five hundred miles in length by 
one hundred in breadth. Itis rimmed all around with mountains, 
the only opening being that from which all the waters of the 
basin escape to the sea. The northern half of the valley, drained 
by the Sacramento and its tributaries, is called the Sacramento 
Valley; the southern half, drained by the river of that name, is 
called the Valley of the San Joaquin. ‘The slope of the land is 
to the centre, where the two rivers meet and pour their mingled 
waters into the Bay of San Francisco. The rim of the valley is 
highest where the Sierra Nevada makes its eastern wall, even 
the Truckee Pass, where the Central Pacific Railroad crosses 
it, being over seven thousand feet in altitude. ‘The southern 
wall, formed by the Tehachapi Range, is nearly four thousand 
feet in its lowest passes; the northern, formed by the Shasta Ran ge 
is but little less, and the western, though lower, is double, with a 
long valley or series of valleys intervening, the inner, at least in 
the northern half, having many peaks of considerable altitude, 
Yolo Bolo being over eight thousand feet, Sanhedrim, Hull and 
Snow Mountain between six and seven thousand. 
Seeds transported by whatever agency must find suitable 
conditions or they will not thrive, and to this fact, of course, we 
‘owe the diversity of flora still existing. The broad hot valley 
of California offers no suitable home for the plants of the Sierra 
and they cannot cross it. ‘The valley plants cannot endure the 
cold of the mountains, and if they flourish for a season even their 
seeds succumb to the winter frosts. 
It is perhaps from a consideration of the barrier interposed 
by this valley that the flora of the Sierra Nevada has been con- 
sidered to be so different from that of the Coast Range that 
surprise is often expressed at the finding of additional species 
common to both. It is, however, easily understood that plants 
may follow the valley wall in any direction and for a distance 
limited only by comparative height and consequent degree of heat. 
The localities of plants should be observed and recorded at 
