THE TECATE CYPRESS. 

 S. B. Parish. 



The region along the Mexican boundary to the east of 

 San Diego is a complex of rugged mountains, the altitude 

 of whose highest summits seldom exceeds 500 feet. Deep 

 and narrow gorges penetrate them, carrying the drainage 

 of the scanty rainfall to the Tia Juana river, but for the 

 greater part of the year waterless, except in the few places 

 where a feeble flow maintains a precarious existence through 

 the summer, and suffices to irrigate an occasional pocket 

 or little vale, affording space for a garden spot or a few 

 farmsteads. 



The country rock is granitic, and the red or yellow soil, 

 thin except in the little flats, is the resultant of its more or 

 less complete weathering and disintegration. Blocks and 

 fragments of all sizes and shapes lie scattered over the sur- 

 face, and cracked ledees proiect, especially toward the sum- 

 mits, which are mostlv capped with naked rocks. Elsewhere 

 a shaggy chaparral clothes the hills, and renders it difficult 

 to. explore them. A thin file of Cottonwoods, Willows and 

 Sycamores follows the beds of the larger drainage courses, 

 and on their outer margins here and there a stunted Oak 

 appears. All are of less than the normal size to which they 

 attain under more favorable conditions. They obstruct 

 rather than shade the channels which they border. Hard as 

 are the conditions Avhich here confront plant life, they have 

 developed an abundant, varied and interesting flora, inviting 

 alike to the ecologist and to the taxonomist. 



An excellent road winds through these mountains from 

 the city of San Dieeo to Mountain Springs, where it 

 drops down to the Colorado desert, and so eoes on to Im- 

 perial Valley, an artificial oasis in the Salton Sink. Descend- 

 ing by loops and curves the abrupt slope of one of these 

 mountains, the road crosses Cottonwood Creek, and at once 

 begins the equally tortuous ascent of the northern side of 

 Mount Tecate. This crossing, designated on maps as Cot- 

 tonwood Station, is 35 miles east of San Diego, and has an 

 altitude of 900 feet above sea level. It consists of a single 

 house, provided with a watering trough and a gasoline tank 

 for the accommodation of the two classes of travel which 

 pass over this road. 



Mount Tecate is 4,000 feet in altitude, and is exactlv on 

 the dividing line between the United States and Mexico, 

 two of the boundarv monuments being situate on its summit. 

 To the botanist it is of interest as one of two isolated and 

 limited habitats of a Cypress, a genus which, althouph well 

 represented in the central and northern parts of the state, is 



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