2 14 TRANSACTIONS OF ROVAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Owing to the many degrees of latitude covered by the State, 

 and the great differences of altitude, the flora is more varied 

 than that of any other ; I suppose that no country in the 

 world of its size is so especially rich in species of conifers. 

 The two great valleys were originally a wilderness of wild oats 

 and flowers, but are now almost entirely under cultivation. Of 

 trees in the plains there are none except Quercus lobafa, the 

 great Californian white oak, standing solitary, and now 

 surrounded by wheatfields and vineyards. 



Along the banks of the rivers grow poplars of two or three 

 kinds, the commonest being Populus Fremontii, several alders, 

 such as Alnus Sitchensis and A. rhomboides. There are many 

 willows, too, of which Salix lasiandra and Salix Nuttallii are 

 perhaps the commonest. There, too, one finds the western plane 

 tree — Platatius racemosa — a large tree not yet introduced into 

 Great Britain. 



The photographs I have to show were for the most part 

 those taken on a trip eighteen months ago into the King's River 

 Canon, one of the great valleys which run up from the San 

 Joaquin River into the heart of the Sierra Nevada Range. 



Our starting-point was a fruit ranch in Southern California. 

 For two days we drove through the brown and dried-up 

 foot-hills, and on up the valley of the Kaweah River, to what is 

 known as " Camp Sierra " — 86 miles and a 6000-feet rise 

 from the ranch. As we climbed we soon left the dried-up 

 herbage and irrigated orange groves, and our road led upwards 

 through a jungle of shrubs of many kinds. Conspicuous were 

 the "Spanish Dagger" — Yucca Mohavensis — and the white-barked 

 California buck-eye trees, the only ALsculiis of California, with 

 the leaves already sear and brown. 



The great bulk of the brush, which covers countless square 

 miles of the hills of South California, consists of Adenostoma fasci- 

 culatum — a large heath-like shrub belonging to the rose family, and 

 flourishing on dry ground below the conifer belt. From a distance 

 it looks like heather, but its average height is over 6 feet.^ Then 

 there is the Ceanothus — represented by several species — a mist of 

 blue earlier in the year ; the Californian bay — a poor tree here 

 compared to what it is further north in the Siskiyou Mountains ; 

 the Manzanita {Arctostaphylos) — with its grey round leaves, red 



' Erica arborea attains in the South of I'lance a height of 12 to 14 feet. — 

 Hon. Eu. 



