BOT.— Vol. II.] PEIRCE— SEQUOIA SEMPERVIRENS. 87 



leaves, leaves only recently fallen, and a great variety of 

 small plants — mosses, lichens, etc. — which form a turf. 

 This covering of the forest floor, as every one knows, is 

 the most important natural means of holding back water, 

 restraining it from too rapid flow, and holding it against 

 evaporation. Some or all of these differences between the 

 natural and the artificial habitat of these trees may act upon 

 them as stimuli to which the production of suckers is the 

 visible reaction. 



The Palo Alto, the only large redwood tree still standing 

 on the floor of the Santa Clara Valley, so far toward the 

 Bay of San Francisco, has been subjected to many disturb- 

 ing influences. Its crown has been seriously injured and 

 its underground parts have been subjected to changed 

 environment. The proximity of the railway embankment 

 and bridge have caused changes in the drainage, both sur- 

 face and subsoil, and other disturbances less evident must 

 also have occurred. Around the base of this old tree, 

 growing thickly and closely about it, is a brush or thicket 

 of suckers. No young trees have grown up around the 

 parent, forming a little grove such as one sees around the 

 stump of a felled or fallen redwood of advanced age. Only 

 these suckers are formed, close around the trunk, and these 

 are not likely to attain any considerable height or size. 



So far as I know, it is only when conditions are unlike 

 those prevailing in the natural forest, or when an old tree 

 has been felled or injured or at least considerably disturbed 

 above or below ground, that it sends up suckers from the 

 trunk or stump, or that young trees come up from the re- 

 moter underground parts. These last often make circular 

 groves of greater or less size, known as "redwood temples." 

 Even in the group of giant redwoods at Felton, near Santa 

 Cruz, one sees this arrangement clearly marked. The 

 suckers and sprouts may attain great size in the course of 

 time, as some of these giant redwoods show. 



In the production of suckers or sprouts from the trunks 

 and underground parts of Sequoia sempervtrens, we see 

 the vegetative mode of reproduction engaged in by a species 

 of the Conif eras ; but this recourse to the vegetative mode of 



