80 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA 



CONIFERS. 



The bark contains enough tannic acid to make it commercially valuable as a tanning material. 



Tsuga Mertensiana was discovered on Baranoff Island in the neighborhood of the town of Sitka 

 in 1827 by K. H. Mertens.^ It was next found on the mountains south of the Eraser Eiver^ in 1851 

 by John Jeffrey/ by whom it was introduced into European gardens, where, as well as in those of the 

 eastern United States, it has proved hardy. In cultivation, however, Tsuga Mertensiana grows very 

 slowly,^ and, although it has already produced its cones in England,^ gives little promise of ever 

 assuming the airy grace of habit which makes it the loveliest cone-bearing tree of the American forest. 



Kuiu Island, Alaska, small quantities of lumber known as red 

 spruce have been made from it. (See Gorman, Pittonia, iii. 68.) 



1 Karl Heinrich Mertens (May 17, 1796-September 17, 1830) 

 was tbe son of Dr. Franz Karl Mertens, who was the head of an 

 institution of learning in Bremen and the author of botanical 

 papers, and who is commemorated in the genus Mertensia. He was 

 born in Bremen, where he received his early education, and ac- 

 quired a fondness for natural history, especially botany, which he 

 studied later in Paris with Jussieu, Desfontaines, Lamarck, and 

 Mirbel, and where he made the acquaintance of Dawson Turner, 

 by whom he was invited to London and introduced to Kobert 

 Brown, Sir Joseph Banks, and the elder Hooker. Returning to 

 Germany in 1817, he commenced the study of medicine in Gottin- 

 gen and then in Halle, where he took his doctor's degree in 1820, 

 and began to practice his profession in Berlin, which, however, he 

 soon left to make his home in his native city. An intense love of 

 natural history and a desire for travel made the prospect of a quiet 

 professional life in Bremen unbearable, and Mertens went to St, 

 Petersburg in the hope of being appointed naturalist to the explor- 

 ing expedition which was fitted out there under command of Kotze- 

 bue. Failing to obtain this position, he remained for two years 

 in Russia practicing his profession, and finally in the spring of 

 1826 was made naturalist and physician to the expedition which 

 sailed that year under Captain Lutkf on the S^miavine to make 

 a scientific journey of exploration around the world. During the 

 liext four years Mertens visited England, Teneriffe, Rio de Janeiro, 

 Cape Horn, Valparaiso, the coast of Alaska, Kamtschatka, the 

 Caroline Islands, Manila, the Cape of Good Hope, and St. Helena. 

 Returning to St. Petersburg, he presented to the Academy of Sci- 

 ences of that city a number of papers chiefly devoted to the inver- 

 tebrates collected during his journey. He was still engaged in 

 studying his collections when he joined, in 1830, his old commander 

 Lutki on a cruise along the coast of France and Ireland, during 

 which he contracted a nervous fever, from which he died shortly 

 after his return to Russia. 



On Baranoff Island Mertens discovered, in addition to the Hem- 

 lock-tree which bears his name, a number of other interesting 

 plants which were described by Bongard in his paper on La Vegeta- 

 tion de Vile de Sitka, based on Mertens's collection on that island 

 and published in the second volume of the Memoires de VAcade- 

 mie des Sciences de St. Petersbourg. A communication from Mer- 



tens on the flora of Karagin Island off the coast of Kamtschatka 

 and the shores of Behring Strait, published in the third volume 

 of Linncea, appears to have been his only botanical paper. (For a 

 sketch of Morten's career see Voyage autour du Monde execute par 

 ordre de sa Majeste V.Empereur Nicholas I. sur la Corvette Le Semi- 

 avine dans les Annees 1826, 1827, 1828 et 1829, par Frederic Lutki, 

 iii. 337.) 



^ ^* Abies sp. No. 430. Found on the Mt. Baker range of moun- 

 tains. This species makes its appearance at the point where A. 

 Canadensis disappears, that is at an elevation of about five thousand 

 feet above the sea ; from that point to the margin of perpetual 

 snow it is found. Along the lower part of its range it is a noble 

 looking tree, rising to the height of one hundred and fifty feet, and 

 thirteen and one half feet in diameter. As it ascends the moun- 

 tains it gets gradually smaller, until at last it dwindles into a shrub 

 of not more than four feet high. Leaves solitary, dark green 

 , above, silvery beneath, flat and rounded at their points, thickly 

 placed round the branches. Cones about an inch long, produced at 

 the points of the branches. Branches pendulous. Bark rough, of 

 a grayish color. Timber hard and very fine in the grain, of a red- 

 dish color. Soil on which this tree was growing most luxuriantly 

 was red loam, very stony and moist. If this tree proves unde- 

 scribed, I hope it will be known under the name of Abies Pattonii." 

 (From Report of John Jeffrey read at a meeting of the Oregon 

 Committee, August 24, 1852, and printed in September following 

 in a circular to its subscribers.) 



3 See xi. 41. 



* Like other alpine trees, Tsuga Mertensiana grows slowly. The 

 log in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the 

 American Museum of Natural History, New York, from the Cas- 



r 



cade Mountains of Oregon, is eighteen inches in diameter inside 

 the bark and one hundred and eighty-five years old, the sapwood 

 being three inches and three quarters in thickness, with ninety-one 

 layers of annual growth. Leiberg found that the trunk of a tree 

 six inches in diameter, which had grown in Idaho in a very exposed 

 position, was seventy-five years old, and trees in the same region 

 which had grown under the most favorable conditions as to soil 

 and situation were nineteen inches in diameter, and from two hun- 

 dred to two hundred and fifty years old. (See Contrib. U. S. 

 Nat. Herb. v. 63.) 



5 Masters, Gard. Chron. ser. 3, xii. 10, f . 1 ; xiii. 659, f. 96. 



