The Alders 



reaches as far as Santa Barbara in California. It loves also the 

 canon sides in the coast range. 



The reddish-brown wood is beautifully satiny when polished. 

 It is light and easily worked, and though weak and brittle is made 

 into furniture. The Indians make "dug-outs" of the butts of 

 large trees. 



The White Alder (A. rhombifolia, Nutt.), equal in size to 

 the preceding species, grows along the mountain streams from 

 northern Idaho to southern California. It has a white scurf on its 

 new shoots and the opening leaves are clothed with white hairs. 

 Its wide sap wood is also white. The tree's spring appearance 

 probably justifies its name. The irregularly diamond-shaped 

 leaves are sharply and finely cut on thin wavy margins. 



The wonderful thing about this tree is its blooming in January 

 or February, hanging its conspicuous yellow catkins out while 

 yet all other trees are asleep. Even in California this is a striking 

 phenomenon along the mountain streams fringed with these trees. 



The bark of the trunks of white alder is furrowed and dark 

 brown. The trees need not be confused with the Oregon alder, 

 if the trunk be examined. 



The Lanceleaf Alder {A. oUongijolia, Torr.), whose name 

 describes it well, comes up from the Peruvian Andes through 

 Mexico, and is found at high altitudes along caiion sides in New 

 Mexico and Arizona. 



The Paperleaf Alder {A. tenuifolia, Nutt.) — A small tree 

 with thin, firm-textured leaves, ovate in shape with laciniate 

 lobes, twice saw toothed, one of the prettiest of the alders, is 

 abundant in thickets along the headwaters of streams that rise 

 in the Western mountains. It follows the various ranges from 

 British Columbia to Lower California, Colorado and northern 

 New Mexico. 



Poets do not always realise their responsibility. The one 

 who characterised the trees that fringed the sluggish streams and 

 cover the "water galls" in England as "the water spungie alder, 

 good for naught," put into rhythmic form, too easy to remember, 

 a stigma that brands a really picturesque and useful tree. The 

 alder's primary virtue is that it will thrive in places so boggy 

 that even willows and poplars cannot grow there. Can any lover 

 of English landscapes spare the alders from unsightly places whose 

 lines they soften and whose baldness they conceal with billows of 



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