52 



JSILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



CONIFERS. 



Illinois River and just south of the northern boundary of California^ ^vhere it was discovered^ in June, 

 1884, by Mr. Thomas Howell.^ There is a grove also a few miles farther south on the head-waters of 

 a small northern tributary of the Klamath River and on the southern slope of the Siskiyou Mountains 

 at an elevation of seven thousand five hundred feet.^ This tree covers a mile square of mountain side 



F 



at the head of Elk Creek, a tributary of the Klamath, on a high peak just west of Marble Mountain, 

 in Siskiyou County, California, where it was discovered in 1897.* It grows on the Oregon coast 

 ranges on the divide between Canon Creek and Fiddlers' Gulch at the head of one of the western forks 

 of the Illinois River,^ and on the eastern end of the Chetco Range at elevations of between four 

 and five thousand feet above the sea.® In Oregon it grows also on the north slopes of the Siskiyou 

 Mountains on Sucker Creek, and on high mountain-tops south of Rogue RiverJ 



The wood of Picea Breweriana, which is considerably heavier than that of the other North 

 American species of Picea, is soft, close-grained, and compact, with a satiny surface ; it is light brown 



^ 



or nearly white, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood, and contains numerous thin medullary rays, 

 broad widely scattered conspicuous resin passages, and broad and conspicuous bands of small summer 

 cells.^ The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.5141, a cubic foot weighing 32.04 pounds.^ 

 Picea Breweriana most resembles in leaf structure and in the form of its cone-scales the flat- 

 leaved Picea Omorika of the Balkan peninsula, the least known of European conifers, as this Weeping 

 Spruce is the most imperfectly known conifer of North America. Already less widely scattered and 

 less multiplied than any other Spruce-tree, it seems destined soon to perish by fire, which has no doubt 

 confined it to the few isolated and inaccessible mountain peaks where it has found its last resting- 

 place.^® In its specific name this beautiful tree, which differs from all other Spruces in its long pendent 



1 The real discoverer of Picea Breweriana was probably Profes- 

 sor William H. Brewer, who, in 1863, found a Spruce-tree with 

 long pendulous branchlets on Black Butte to the north of Straw- 

 berry Valley, and at the western base of Mt. Shasta, California. 

 (See Engelmann, Brewer Sf Watson Bot. Cal. ii. 122.) Efforts to 

 rediscover this tree have failed, and it is only known from the 

 leaves and branchlets collected by Professor Brewer, who did not 

 find cones. The branchlets resemble those of Picea Breweriana in 

 their pubescent covering, and the leaves are undistinguishable 

 from those of this species. If the surmise that the tree discov- 

 ered by Brewer in 1863 is Picea Breweriana is correct. Black 

 Butte would be the most southern station known for this species, 

 which would have a range north and south of nearly one hundred 



. miles. 



2 Thomas Howell (October 9, 1842) was born in Cooper County, 

 Missouri, and was the youngest of the five children of Dr. Benja- 

 min Howell, the descendant of a Welsh family which had early 

 settled in New Jersey, and a mineralogist of some reputation. 



Dr. Howell, with his family, left Missouri in 1850, crossed the 

 plains with an ox-team to Oregon, and settled on Sauvie's Island 

 * iu the Columbia River on one of the donation land-claims which 

 then were given by the government to citizens of the United 

 States in order to encourage American emigration to Oregon. 

 A self-educated man, as schools were few and far between in 



4 



the Oregon of fifty years ago, Mr. Howell manifested a strong 

 love for plants from his early boyhood, although he did not 

 begin the study of botany until 1877. In 1881 he published 

 a list of all the flowering plants of Oregon, Washington, and 

 Idaho. This was followed in 1887 by a catalogue and check- 

 list of all the plants then known to occur in Oregon, Washington, 

 and Idaho, and embracing 2,152 species and 227 varieties. In 

 1897 he began the publication of a Flora of Northwest America^ 

 covering the same territory, and not yet completed. Fifty plants 

 new to science discovered by Mr. Howell testify to his activity 



and success as a field botanist. His name is commemorated in 

 twenty-eight species and one genus of his discovery. 



^ This small grove of scattered trees was found on the watershed 

 of the Klamath in September, 1885, by Mr. T. S. Brandegee. 



w 



This is probably the most accessible station of this tree. It can 

 be reached in a day from Waldo, in Josephine County, Oregon, by 

 following the Happy Camp Trail, which crosses the Siskiyou Moun- 

 tains from the waters of the Illinois River to those of the IClamath, 

 and then taking one which near the summit leaves it for Big 

 Meadows ; this place is about four miles to the westward of the 

 point where the summit of the Siskiyou is crossed, and beyond it 

 the trail passes close to the trees. 



* Jepson, Erythea, vi. 12. 



s T. H. Douglas, Garden and Forest, v, 591, f. 102, See, also. 



Garden and Forest, v. 506. 



+ 



® Teste A. J, Johnson. 



' Teste A. J. Johnson. The station above Rogue River valley, 

 which was discovered by Mr. Johnson in 1896, is about fifty miles 

 north of the Siskiyou Mountains. 



s Probably Picea Breweriana is a slow-growing tree, the log 

 specimen cut by Mr. Brandegee in 1885, near Big Meadows, for 

 the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, New York, is thirteen and a quarter 

 inches in diameter inside the bark and one hundred and sixty-six 

 years old. The sapwood, which is hardly distinguishable from the 

 beartwood, is three inches and seven sixteenths in diameter, with 

 sixty-one layers of annual growth, 



® Sargent, Garden and Forest, iii. 356. 



10 Fires are prevalent and very destructive in all the dry moun- 

 tain region which forms the natural boundary between northwest- 

 ern California and southeastern Oregon, and which is now probably 

 the only home of Picea Breweriana. They have already done in- 

 calculable damage to the forests of this region and are increas- 

 ing every year in frequency and destructiveness as the number of 



