LUTHER BURBANK 



I must not attempt to speak except in a general 

 way of the other members of the great tribe of 

 conifers, the merits of most of which, as orna- 

 mental trees, are familiar to every garden and 

 landscape architect. 



There are some scores of genera and some 

 hundreds of species of conifers but the varieties 

 are too numerous and too intricately blended for 

 accurate computation. 



No other single region has so many forms of 

 evergreens, and ones that show such wide range 

 of variation, as the Pacific Coast region. It has 

 been estimated, indeed, that there are as many 

 species of conifers in California as in all the rest 

 of the world. 



But the conifers of one kind and another grow 

 everywhere throughout the colder regions of the 

 northern hemisphere, some of them making their 

 way also to parts of the South. 



Every one of them is an object lesson in the 

 possibility of plant variation; for as a class they 

 represent a modification of leaf form of the most 

 striking character to meet the exigencies of a 

 changing environment. 



Time was, doubtless, when the ancestors of 

 the conifers had flat, spreading leaves like the 

 leaves of other forms of vegetation. But when the 

 climatic conditions changed, the pampering influ- 



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