The Hemlocks 



Northern hemlock by botanists and other observers. It has found 

 favour with landscape gardeners, because it is more graceful 

 though more compact than T. Canadensis. Its leaves are longer, 

 darker green above, and a more pronounced white underneath. 

 It rarely grows over 70 feet high, but has a better head when 

 old than its Northern relative. It is a hardy, handsome tree in 

 New England parks, and its popularity is growing, 



Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla, Sarg.) Noble 

 pyramidal tree, 100 to 200 feet high, 6 to 10 feet in diameter, with 

 drooping, horizontal branches and feathery tip. Bark reddish 

 brown, with broad, scaly, interrupted ridges and shallow fissures. 

 IVood tough, durable, hard, light, strong, brown. Buds brown, 

 ovate, small. Leaves grooved on top, lustrous, pale below, rounded 

 at tip; petioles slender. Flowers: monoecious, terminal, solitary; 

 staminate yellow; pistillate purple. Fruit oval, pointed cones 

 I inch long; scales often constricted in the middle, broad, thin. 

 Preferred habitat, moist valleys and uplands from tidewater to 

 6,000 feet elevation. Distribution, southeastern Alaska to Cape 

 Mendocino in California; east to Montana and Idaho. Uses: 

 Wood used chiefly in building; bark for tanning. Indians eat a 

 cake made from the inner bark. Successfully used for ornamental 

 planting in Europe. Not hardy in our Eastern States. 



This greatest of all the hemlocks dominates the magnificent 

 forests of the Pacific coast plain, in size as well as in numbers. 

 It extends east into Idaho and Montana, and north into British 

 Columbia. The tideland spruce is its companion in the lowlands. 

 Superb trees are found on the mountains at an altitude of 6.000 

 feet, but only in moist situations. On dry, high ridges, the tree 

 is stunted. But in the rich river valleys, with the breath of the 

 Japan current to make the air humid, this hemlock is a giant 

 handsome, graceful, the delight of the artist and the lumberman; 

 the most^uperb and the most useful of the hemlocks. 



The root system of this tree is remarkably copious and 

 aggressive. Mosses often a foot in thickness and saturated with 

 moisture clothe the fallen trunks and other rubbish in those 

 deep forests in the neighbourhood of Vancouver. The light 

 seeds of the hemlocks often germinate on some elevated arm of a 

 giant tree long dead. Such a mistake will first be discovered by 

 the roots which go down until they anchor the tree in the earth. 

 The dead trunk rots away, and the growing tree stands on stilts 



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