60 Prof. Asa Gray on Sequoia and its History. 



the difficulty was not in the getting from the one district to the 

 other, or into both from a common source, but in abiding there. 

 The primordially unbroken forest of Atlantic North America, 

 nourished by rainfall distributed throughout the year, is widely 

 separated from the western region of sparse and discontinuous 

 tree-belts of the same latitude on the western side of the con- 

 tinent, where summer rain is wanting or nearly so, by immense 

 treeless plains and plateaux of more or less aridity, traversed 

 by longitudinal mountain-ranges of a similar character. Their 

 nearest approach is at the north, in the latitude of Lake 

 Superior, where, on a more rainy line, trees of the Atlantic 

 forest and that of Oregon may be said to interchange. The 

 change of species and of the aspect of vegetation in crossing, 

 say on the forty-seventh parallel, is slight in comparison with 

 that on the thirty-seventh or near it. Confining our attention 

 to the lower latitude, and under the exceptions already specially 

 noted, we may say that almost every characteristic form in the 

 vegetation of the Atlantic States is wanting in California, and 

 the . characteristic plants and trees of California are wanting 

 here. 



California has no Magnolia, nor tulip-trees, nor star-anise 

 tree, no so-called papaw {Asimina), no barberry of the common 

 single-leaved sort, no Podoj^hyllum or other of the peculiar 

 associated genera, no Nelumho nor white water-lily, no prickly 

 ash nor sumach, no loblolly-bay nor Stuartia, no basswood 

 or linden-trees, neither locust, honey-locust, coffee-trees 

 {Gymnocladus) , nor yellow-wood (Cladrastis), nothing answer- 

 ing to Hydrangea or witch-hazel, to gum-trees {Nyssa and 

 Liquidamhar) J Viburnum or Diervilla] it has few asters and 

 golden-rods, no lobelias, no huckle-berries, and hardly any 

 blue-berries — no Epigc^a, charm of our earliest eastern spring, 

 tempering an icy April wind with a delicious wild fragrance — 

 no Kalmia, nor Clethra, nor holly, nor persimmon — no catalpa 

 tree, nor trumpet-creeper ( Tecoma) — nothing answering to sas- 

 safras, or to benzoin tree, or to hickory — neither mulberry nor 

 elm — no beech, true chestnut, hornbeam, nor ironwood, nor a 

 proper birch tree ; and the enumeration might be continued 

 very much further by naming herbaceous plants and others 

 familiar only to botanists. 



In their place California is filled with plants of other types, 

 trees, shrubs, and herbs, of which I will only remark that they 

 are, with one or two exceptions, as different from the plants of 

 the eastern Asiatic region with which we are concerned (Japan, 

 China, and Mandchuria) as they are from those of Atlantic 

 North America. Their near relatives, when they have any in 

 other lands, are mostly southward, on the Mexican plateau, or 



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