154 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



Of these species, that known in scientific parlance 

 as Sequoia sempervirens, is the redwood of every 

 day speech. It forms more or less pure forests 

 along the coast from the neighborhood of Monterey 

 to the Oregon line, constituting a belt about 450 

 miles long, whose width is determined by the reach 

 of the fogs that drift inland from the Pacific; for 

 fogs are the life blood of the redwood forests. 

 Never-to-be-forgotten forests they are, to any who 

 has ever traversed the glorious stretches of one, now 

 drenched and misty with fog, now shot through with 

 descending shafts of light filtering down from the 

 high leafy roof that even hides the sun. Here the 

 wild oxalis of the Coast spreads its fat leafage by 

 day and folds it by night, and opens to the passer-by 

 rare bells of pink loveliness; here the wild ginger 

 sheds its spicy fragrance, its strange, spidery blos- 

 soms recumbent on the mold about it; and here the 

 California huckleberry, as famous for its decora- 

 tive red stems fringed with shiny little evergreen 

 leaves extensively used in urban decoration, as for 

 its juicy fruit flings its luxuriant branches hither 

 and yon, to the length of six or eight feet. Here, 

 too, grow lovely yellow violets of three or four 

 species blue violets are rather scarce in Cali- 

 fornia, but some of the yellow species have a couple 

 of petals dashed with purple or brown, pansy-like. 



