CONIFEK^. 



8ILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



89 



rarely light or dark bluish green at maturity,* and are usually persistent until their eighth year, when 

 they begin to fall gradually and irregularly. The staminate flowers are from three quarters of an inch 

 to an inch long, with orange-red anthers ; and the pistillate flowers are about three quarters of an 

 inch in length and nearly half an inch in thickness, their slender elongated bracts being deeply tinged 

 with red, which is darkest on the midribs. The cones, which hang on stout stems often half an inch 

 in length, and mostly fall as soon as their seeds have escaped in the autumn, are from two to four 

 inches and a half in length and from an inch to an inch and a quarter in thickness, with scales which 

 are thin, slightly concave, rounded and occasionally somewhat elongated at the apes, thin and more or 

 less erose on the margins, and usually rather longer than they are broad ; at midsummer, when the cones 

 are fully grown, they are slightly puberulous, dark apple-green below, purplish toward the apex, and 

 bright red on the closely appressed margins ^ and the pale green bracts, which are now slightly reflexed 

 above the middle and from one fifth to one quarter of an inch wide, often protrude half an inch beyond 

 their scales and begin gradually to turn brown. The seeds are a quarter of an inch long, nearly an 

 eighth of an inch wide, light reddish brown and lustrous above, pale and marked below with large 

 irregular white spots, and almost as long as their dark brown wings, which are broadest just below the 

 middle, oblique above, and rounded at the apex. 



From the shores of Lake Tacla in the Rocky Mountains, a little to the north of the fifty-fifth 

 degree of latitude and from the head of the Skeena River in the coast range in latitude 54"* north,^ 

 Pseudotsiiga mucro7iata spreads southward through aU the Rocky Mountain system to the mountains 

 of western Texas and to those of southern New Mexico and Arizona, along the Sierra Madre of Chi- 

 huahua^ and the mountains of Nuevo Leon, where it forms dark groves in ravines and on northern 

 slopes of the highest mountains,^ to San Luis Potosi 5 ^ in the coast region it extends southward at 

 some distance from the sea to latitude 51° north, and then spreads over Vancouver Island, over the 

 coast valleys and plains of southern British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, and over their moun- 

 tains, ranging in British America eastward to the eastern foothills of the- Rocky Mountains.*^ In 

 California the Douglas Spruce extends southward in the coast mountains at least as far as Punta Gorda 

 in Monterey County, near the lower end of the Santa Lucia Mountains,*^ over the cross ran^res in the 



+ F 



1 In Colorado and New Mexico the leaves of individual trees of 

 Pseudotsuga mucronata, like those of many other conifers on the 

 southern Rocky Mountains, are light or dark blue in color, espe- 

 cially early in their first season. 



2 In British Columbia, where in the dry interior southern por- 

 tion Pseudotsuga mucronata is confined to the high ridges which 

 separate the river-valleys, and at the north descends to the pla- 

 teaus, it occurs with a few individuals on the Skeena Kiver, but 

 is absent from the Queen Charlotte Islands and the coast archi- 

 pelago north of Vancouver Island, occurring here only on the 

 shores of inlets at some distance from the sea. Southward from 

 latitude 51° north, however, it is abundant in the coast region of 

 the mainland and in all parts of Vancouver Island with the excep- 

 tion of the exposed western coast ; and near the forty-ninth paral- 

 lel it extends from the ocean to the eastern slopes of the Rocky 

 Mountains, sometimes ascending to elevations of six thousand feet 

 above the sea. It does not grow in the elevated and comparatively 

 humid Cariboo region or on the higher portions of the Gold and 

 Selkirk Ranges. The line which marks the northern limits of its 

 distribution as now known is curiously irregular. It grows in the 

 neighborhood of Fort George and northeastward as far as McLeod's 

 Lake, but it has not been found on the Parsnip River ; it extends 

 half way up Lake Tacla, occurs on the shores of Babine Lake, and 

 is common about Fraser and Frangois Lakes. It ranges from the 

 valley of the Fraser River to the coast mountains on the line of 

 the Chilcotin and its tributaries, and occurs on the Nazco and up 



« 



the Blackwater to the mouth of the Iscultaesli, but is absent from 

 the region northward from these streams to Francois Lake. The 

 extension of its range to the northeast on the Rocky Mountains is 

 still to be determined. (See G. M. Dawson, Can. Nat, n. ser. ix. 

 323. — Macoun, Cat. Can. PI 472.) 



^ "I saw heavy forests of Pseudotsuga on the cooler and more 

 fertile slopes of the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua some two hundred 

 miles south of our boundary." (C. G. Pringle in litt. See, also, 

 C. G. Pringle, Garden and Forest, \. 441.) 



4 Watson, Proc. Am. Acad, xviii. 158. — C. G. Pringle, I. c. iii. 

 338. 



s Tsuga mucronata was collected by Parry and Palmer near the 

 city of San Luis Potosf in 1878. 



^ In June, 1897, Mr. John Macoun found Pseudotsuga mucronata 

 on Jumping Pond Creek, near Calgary, Alberta, which is the most 

 eastern station in British America from which I have seen speci- 

 mens of this tree. 



^ Pseudotsuga mucronata is common on the Santa Lucia Moun- 

 tains at elevations of from twenty-five hundred to about three 

 thousand feet above the sea, but I have not been able to hear of 

 it at any point farther south on the coast mountains. It is not 

 improbable, nevertheless, that it may extend along them into Sau 

 Luis Obispo County or even to the northern part of Santa Barbara 

 County. On the Santa Inez Mountains in the southern part of the 

 last named county the Pseudotsuga is of the southern species. 



