1508 



HORTICULTURE 



HORTICULTURE 



lished in 1877. "The California Fruit-Grower," began 

 in 1888, and survives as the "California Fruit News." 

 'The California Cultivator," of Los Angeles, estab- 

 lished in 1884, is still published. "The Pacific Tree and 

 Vine," of San Jose, established in 1884, is no longer 

 published. 



Sometimes we are inclined to think that the litera- 

 ture of the garden began on the Pacific coast in the 

 age of steam presses, telegraphs and transcontinental 

 railroads. It is not so; and we should go farther back 

 than the excellent writings listed above. The "first 

 fine rapture" of discovery and conquest gave birth to a 

 splendid enthusiasm for the flowers and plants of the 

 vast unfenced wilderness stretching from Texas to 

 Oregon, and one finds its expression in hundreds of 

 books of travel, in ponderous government reports, in 

 forgotten periodicals and, to some extent in the whole 

 outdoor literature of Europe and America during the 

 exciting period of the gold rush to California. 



We once had many and very quaint publications in 

 California, all dead and forgotten now, but still worth 

 studying in the libraries. There was the old "Alta 

 California," the "California Farmer," the "Golden 

 Era," the "Hesperian," the "Pioneer," "Hutching's 

 Pioneer Magazine." They contained stilted essays, 

 sketches and stories, often modeled after forgotten 

 literary patterns of New York and Paris. But their 

 descriptive writings first broke away from these hamper- 

 ing traditions, and shaped themselves anew under Cali- 

 fornia skies. Ewer, "Shirley," Hutchings, Wadsworth, 

 Dr. Kellogg and a few others wrote of things as they 

 saw them, and in some degree caught the outdoor 

 charm of the new land as it was slowly yielding to 

 spade and plow. 



But there had been a still earlier discovery of the 

 floral wealth of the Pacific coast. Long before 

 Marshall's mill-race gleamed with that fateful flake of 

 gold, the botanists and collectors had sent forth a cry 

 of delight that stirred the pulses of Europe. The 

 letters, journals and various contributions to descrip- 

 tive and scientific literature, made by the long line of 

 botanical explorers who visited this coast between 1790 

 and 1848, should be a part of this record. Among these 

 enthusiasts were men like Langsdorf, who accom- 

 panied that unfortunate Count Rozanoff of Bret Harte's 

 beautiful poem, and Chamiso and Eschscholtz. The 

 last two, friends close-linked in literature and science, 

 gave our orange-hued poppy its consonantal name. 



The starting-point, however, for most students of the 

 floral resources of California is with the extensive work 

 done by David Douglas (1825-1833), under the 

 auspices of the Royal Horticultural Society of England. 

 In the proceedings of that Society one finds some of his 

 reports and the first colored plates ever issued of many 

 California bulbs. The second volume of Hooker's 

 "Companion to the Botanical Magazine" contains his 

 fascinating letters. After Douglas came Coulter, Nut- 

 tall, Hartweg and others, and then the famous groups 

 of botanical explorers whose work appears in govern- 

 ment publications, such as the Pacific Railroad and 

 Boundary Survey reports. Men like Gray, Thurber, 

 Newberry, Torrey, Engelmann and Parry wrote much 

 that was a real gift to the literature of the period, and 

 in many cases they had for illustrations those wonder- 

 ful pen-and-ink drawings made by T. C. Hilgard. 



But, if one says that government reports are only 

 the "raw material" of outdoor literature, then turn to 

 Edinburgh, in 1859-1860, when Dr. Andrew Murray 

 published his two parts of "Notes on California 

 Trees," compiled chiefly from the letters of his brother 

 Wm. Murray of San Francisco, and illustrated with 

 superb lithographs of the sequoias. It was in 1860, 

 also, that Thomas Starr King wrote a very charming 

 account of a trip "Around the Bay in the season of 

 flowers," when, as he expressed it, there were "flowers 

 by the acre, flowers by the square mile." 



Here we begin to reach the modern way of looking 

 at things. All through the pages of the publications of 

 the State Agricultural Society between 1856 and 1860, 

 the early reports of the State Surveyor General, the 

 "State Register" for 1857-60, the rambling surveys of 

 Dr. Trask, the first state geologist, we have had some- 

 what obscure glimpses of a land overflowing with growth 

 and blossom. We have seen the pioneer surveyors, Day 

 and Goddard and the rest, camping in the lily-beds of 

 the high Sierra valleys; we have watched pioneer com- 

 mittees going around, away back in the early fifties, to 

 tell us, all too briefly, of the glories of Shell Mound 

 Nurseries, the New England Gardens, Hook Farm, 

 Fontainbleau, and other places now, alas! in ruins. We 

 hear of Fox, Sontag, Prevost, Macondray, Lewelling. 

 These reports, though hardly the literature of the gar- 

 den, are very excellent materials out of which, some of 

 these days, the right man or woman will reconstruct 

 the whole story, and give us our long-needed book on 

 "California Floriculture." 



The "modern note" in our garden literature, aside 

 from the glowing essays of Thomas King, was also 

 manifest in some of the California writings of Dr. 

 Bushnell. Then it found fuller expression in the pages 

 of the "Overland Monthly," where Muir, the LeContes, 

 A very, Williams, Miss Coolbirth, Bartlett and Sill, and 

 a little later, some of Professor Sill's pupils, made for a 

 few years a very striking presentation of the life, color, 

 strength and beauty of outdoor California. Much of 

 the best writing of this period between 1868 and 1875 

 appeared in the "Bulletin," "Argonaut," "California 

 Horticulturist" and "Rural Press." It is notable his- 

 torically, because it covers the whole field. Nothing 

 that is now being written about gardens and flowers is 

 in its way any better than some of the work, signed and 

 unsigned, that appeared in the "Overland Monthly," 

 and in other San Francisco publications in the days 

 before the gaudy splendors of the sensational Sunday 

 newspapers. 



In the way of distinctive floral publications we have 

 had two of importance: The first, the "California 

 Horticulturist," founded by F. A. Miller in 1870, lasted 

 ten years. One of its most interesting editors was the 

 late E. J. Hooper, one of the owners of the "Western 

 Farmer and Gardener," established by him in Cincin- 

 nati in 1839 and 1840. Plates of fruit and flowers, 

 colored by his hands, appear in early volumes of the 

 "California Horticulturist." The still earlier and yet 

 more rare "California Culturist" of W. Wadsworth, 

 which began with June, 1858, and continued two years, 

 contained a good deal of floriculture. 



In May, 1888, at Santa Barbara, appeared the "Cali- 

 fornia Florist," an attractive publication which soon 

 moved to San Francisco and there continued until May, 

 1889. Since that date, outside of trade publications, 

 catalogues, and occasional pamphlets, the floral 

 interests of California have been, most of the time, 

 without a separate publication, but they have never 

 lacked for space, whenever required, in other periodicals. 



There have been few books in the past twenty-five 

 years which deal other than casually with the floral 

 field, but there have been many and excellent botanies, 

 chiefly local, and more are being written, so that before 

 long the whole field will be covered, and brought down 

 to date with revised nomenclature and description. 

 In these brief limits, one cannot expect even a partial 

 bibliography, of either the popular or the technical 

 writings of California botany or floriculture. Begin- 

 ning with the writings of Kellogg, Bolander, Lemmon, 

 Miller, Ludeman, Sievers,Wickson, Rixford, and others, 

 the list ends with the many bright people who write 

 for the press on these topics at the present time. The 

 standard early w r ork on California plants is Brewer and 

 Watson's "Botany of California," comprising two 

 volumes of the State Geological Survey, published 1876- 

 1880. Books like Bartlett's "Breeze from the Woods," 



