July 8, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



273 



The thickets of sprouts encircling the stumps are already 

 from forty to fifty feet high, and dense masses of Douglas 

 Spruce and Fir (Abies grandis), seedlings since the woods 

 were cut, are nearly as tall. No one seeing the second 

 growth in the Redwood forest needs to be told that only 

 intelligent forestry is needed to make them furnish a vast 

 and inexhaustible supply of timber. A very large propor- 

 tion of the large trees now standing are sprouts from an 

 older growth, as is attested by the grouping, the one-sided 

 trunks and the hollows between the individuals of the 

 groups showing where the old trunk burned or rotted out. The 

 stream was used by the loggers for years in getting their 

 logs from the forest to the mill at the seaside, and their chan- 

 nels are cut deep and their beds smoothed by the irresisti- 

 ble force of the great logs driven by a strong flood current. 

 Mosses and Ferns clothe the bed and bottom, and over- 

 hanging the sides the deciduous Rhododendron occidentale 

 grows in plenty. From the floor of aside canon, into which 

 the road now turns, great trees, the finest yet encountered, 

 tower to a height of three hundred feet. The woods are 

 dark and cold, the ground covered with the creeping Salal, 

 Gaultheria Shallon. By the side of the sluggish stream 

 the Lady Fern grows and Trillium ovatum is still fresh in 

 the deep shade. In a little bog in a clearing the handsome 

 Scarlet Currant, Ribes sanguineum, is in full glow, and at a 

 distance of twelve miles from the ocean Rhododendron 

 Californicum, our large-leaved evergreen Rose Bay, is first 

 seen. Other miles of noble woods are passed through, 

 alternating with clearings, where the lumber was cut for 

 ties, and neat homes now take the forest's place, or the 

 trees have just been felled, and the tie-maker having cleared 

 the debris by fire is now hewing out the trees, and the ten- 

 der young growth is springing from the charred groups. 

 In the woods the evergreen Barberry, Berberis Aquifolium, 

 is in masses, now bearing racemes of yellow flowers, and 

 the Wood Sorrel, with its pink-purple flowers, carpets every 

 surface not already occupied. The cold banks above the 

 roadside are crowded with Ferns, among which the 

 Maiden-hair, Adiantum pedatum, appears, and burned 

 woods are yellow with a Wood Violet, Viola sarmentosa. 



The barren is always the same, except when lighted up 

 by the Rhododendrons, the first of which were just bloom- 

 ing in the tangle of Scrub Pine, Cypress and bushes. A 

 few miles of this dreary, but interesting, waste and the last 

 seaward slope is descended through a half-cut forest, a per- 

 fect tangle of great, almost naked trunks, their limbs swept 

 off in the fall of the Redwoods, but still vigorous, standing 

 in among myriads of tall young trees of Pinus muricata, 

 Abies grandis, the lovely Weeping Hemlock, Tsuga Mer- 

 tensiana, and young Redwoods, the logs and brush over- 

 grown by Blueberries, Salal, Salmon berries and Rubus 

 Nutkanus, all bursting into new leaf, with great glowing 

 pink clumps of Rhododendron, here in the fullness of their 

 exquisite flowering. 



A vista of the sea, of a rock-bound coast and dashing 

 surf, of green slopes covered with grain, and Mendocino is 

 reached, with houses embowered in Fuchsias, and hedges 

 of Callas in blossom and Marguerites everywhere, while 

 Foxgloves run riot down the gutters. _ 



Ukiah, Calif. Car/ Purdy. 



Forms of some European Conifers. — II. 



I HAVE already spoken of certain forms of the European 

 Spruce which are not varieties in the botanical sense, 

 but modifications of development. There is, however, on 

 the Alps a single botanical variety of much interest, because 

 it shows the close relationship of our European Spruce with 

 other species of the genus. It is the form medioxima of 

 Nylander. This tree grows in more or less isolated groups 

 on the central ranges ; in the Haut Valais, in Engadine, 

 and also, although less commonly, on lower mountain 

 ranges, and may be distinguished by two characters from 

 the ordinary Spruce-tree. From this it differs, first, by its 

 shorter, much thicker and more rigid leaves, which are 

 more obtuse and marked by four white stomatiferous bands 



which give to this tree a certain resemblance to the Fir, 

 Abies pectinata. Secondly, the fruit is shorter, with more 

 delicate scales, flat and rounded at the apex, the cone 

 being only about half the size of the cone of the ordinary 

 type, with only about two-thirds as many scales. These 

 scales are flexible, with entire margins, the whole cone 

 resembling in a singular manner the cones ot the Black 

 Spruce of America. There is a tree of similar form 

 in Finland and Sweden, while the Picea obovata of Siberia 

 is only a more accentuated variety with cones which are 

 similar, although still smaller. Picea obovata is closely 

 allied to the American species, and our alpine variety 

 medioxima is the representative of a series of species of the 

 extreme north, which has been preserved on the moun- 

 tains of Europe since the glacial epoch. 



I will now consider the forms of the Fir, Abies pectinata, 

 found on our mountains. It is a tree very uniform in 

 habit, showing fewer modifications from the normal type of 

 growth than the Spruce. Nevertheless, it is possible to dis- 

 tinguish the form alpestris, which, although not common, 

 is found occasionally at elevations of three to four thousand 

 feet above the sea-level. It is a rather feeble tree with 

 short and rather erect branches, so that the white surfaces 

 of the leaves are presented to the eye, giving the tree a 

 strange appearance. Mention must also be made of the 

 form candelabra, which may be seen scattered here and 

 there through the Jura and on the Alps, although always 

 isolated in alpine pastures. It is a splendid tree, often of 

 enormous dimensions, with elongated horizontal lower 

 branches which become very stout and develop lateral shoots 

 which grow straight up and have the appearance of young 

 perfectly developed Fir-trees, with the appearance of little 

 trees grafted on the old branches. These great Fir-trees 

 present a most curious aspect, resembling candelabras of 

 eight or ten or more branches. Apparently our Fir is lia- 

 ble to grow into this form anywhere within the area of its 

 distribution when it is not crowded by other trees. Unger 

 & Kotschy figured it in their work on the Island of Cyprus, 

 and it does not appear to be rare in Greece. Of purely 

 botanical varieties of the Fir, a form with pointed leaves is 

 common in south-eastern Europe. Trees with this pecu- 

 liarity of foliage have been described as Abies Apollinis 

 and A. Regin£e-Amali;e. They can only be distinguished 

 from the tree of central Europe by their pointed leaves. 

 These on the ordinary form are confined to the upper and 

 fruitful branches, although they sometimes occur on 

 branches near the middle of the tree. On A. Cephalonica, 

 of the island of Cephalonia, another form of the common 

 Fir, the pointed leaves are the most numerous, apjjearing 

 even on seedling plants. 



It may, perhaps, be interesting to sketch the distribution 

 of the Spruce and Fir in Europe, as the regions occupied by 

 these two trees are so different. The Spruce is a tree of the 

 north of Europe, being found in the south only at high 

 elevations. The Fir, on the contrary, is a tree of the moun- 

 tains of temperate Europe, unknown in the north, ami 

 descending southward over the mountain ranges of the 

 Mediterranean basin. The Spruce covers the plains of 

 Russia from the Ural Mountains, crosses Finland, Scandi- 

 navia, the Baltic Provinces, and enters Germany from 

 Lithuania, but in the west it leaves the plains and covers 

 the mountains of Germany to the Vosges, reappearing on 

 the mountains of central France, and finally disappears in 

 the Pyrenees without entering the Spanish peninsula. It 

 covers the Alps, but does not enter Italy, and becoming 

 rare on the mountain ranges of eastern Europe it does not 

 show itself beyond Transylvania, where it is replaced by 

 Picea orientalis, or extend to the Caucasus. The Fir, 

 on the other hand, has its centre of distribution in the Ger- 

 man mountains and in the Alps, growing on all the rati 

 from the Pyrenees to the Carpathians and on those of 

 Greece and European Turkey. It does not descend into 

 the plains or extend into the Caucasus, where it is replaced 

 by Abies Nordmanniana. It extends, however, along the 

 Apennines to Sicily ; it is common in Greece at elevations 



