February 5, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



63 



even pasture-land, which was covered by a close, short grass, 

 and interspersed with numerous plants of Sheep-laurel, Hard- 

 hack, Cassandra, Sweet Gale, Cranberry and a few Alders. 

 There were twenty or more old plants and a multitude of 

 seedlings springing from the peaty soil, mixed with sand, 

 which was well adapted to the cultivation of any Heaths. The 

 earth was kept moist by a brook running through the meadow, 

 and here the plants nourished. A thorough investigation of 

 all the circumstances connected with the growth of the plants 

 showed that it was extremely improbable that they had come 

 from seed sown by man, and the committee concluded that 

 the plants were indigenous. Professor Gray visited the locality 

 in September in company with a member of the committee, 

 and he, likewise, came to the conclusion that the plants were 

 native. 



Subsequently a small locality was detected in the neighbor- 

 ing town of Andover and another in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. 



Somewhat over a year ago the writer had the pleasure of 

 visiting the Tewksbury locality in company with one of our 

 most assiduous devotees of botany, Mr. Walter Deane, of 

 Cambridge. At the dwelling-house nearest the locality we ob- 

 tained explicit directions as to the exact spot, and we walked 

 with confidence, expecting to see that the Heather had per- 

 haps spread over a larger area in the twenty-seven years that 

 had elapsed since Dr. Gray's visit. On the way to the brook 

 we saw a vigorous clump of Heather, which had evidently 

 been transplanted from the larger locality, and this removed 

 any doubt we might have entertained as to finding the original 

 place. Our utter discomfiture can therefore be realized when 

 it is stated that we hunted high and low, up the brook and down 

 the brook, and even far into a neighboring young forest, with- 

 out detecting a trace of the plant. We were both rather accus- 

 tomed to hunt for rare plants, and did not feel inclined to give 

 up the search easily, but at last we were forced to return to 

 the house lor further instructions. Here we learned that we 

 had been indeed in the right place, and, to prove this, the 

 owner of the land went with us to point it out. On reaching 

 the place with us he walked back and forth through the Alder- 

 bushes, and at last declared that he could not account for its 

 disappearance. To be sure, the place had been visited by 

 many persons who had carried away reasonably large speci- 

 mens for transplanting, but this would not explain the utter 

 extermination. A few straggling, "drawn," prostrate and 

 dying specimens were finally found, but they were only mere 

 shadows. All that we could do was to make a pecuniary ar- 

 rangement with the owner to clear away the overshadowing 

 Alders and other young shrubs, and give the remnant a chance. 

 But the chance appeared to be indeed a very small one, hardly 

 worth even a day's labor. Such seems to be the history of 

 about all the localities of Heather known to us in this country. 

 For instance, a well-established locality discovered by the 

 writer a few years ago on the line of the Maine Central Rail- 

 road, in Westbrook, Maine, and known to a few members of 

 the Portland Society of Natural History, has been entirely lost 

 by fires along the track. Some of the stations in the provinces 

 have held on rather better, but the plants do not appear in any 

 case to spread over more ground. Uncared for, the plants are 

 speedily crowded out by more vigorous contestants for the 

 space, and they give up the unequal struggle. 



Late in the summer of 1888, I received some excellent speci- 

 mens of Heather from a lady living in Townsend, Massachu- 

 setts, a town near the New Hampshire line. I have visited 

 this locality twice, in company with other botanists, and on the 

 last occasion accurate measurements of the area covered by 

 the plant were made. Without giving details, it will suffice now 

 to state that considerably more than an acre of ground was 

 found well filled with healthy, strong plants, and that there was 

 every indication of their being in full possession. The only rivals 

 were the low bushes, common in what is everywhere known 

 in New England as a Blueberry-pasture. The sandy soil had 

 a few strong Cranberry-vines, but against these and the grass- 

 like plants the Heather was evidently making its way. There 

 were also a few plants of species of Viburnum and Cornus as 

 well as of those seen in the Tewksbury station, but they did 

 not appear threatening, nor did the one or two trees. The 

 Heather was spreading into adjacent fields and even invading 

 the woods near by. In short, the locality impressed all who 

 examined it as one likely to be long preserved. 



The question is again brought before us, by this new and 

 strong station, as to the relations of this plant to our flora. 

 The proximity of the station to that in Tewksbury and the lost 

 one in Andover, suggested that the three might be the fading 

 traces of a general occupation of a large area. It was with a 

 measure of disappointment that the information was received 

 which emptied this suggestion of all its value. Upon learning 



that there was a good degree of interest in the matter, the 

 owner of the land said that he could tell us how the plant 

 came there. About the time of the Franco-Prussian war, his 

 sister-in-law visited the north of Ireland and brought back as a 

 souvenir a few sprays of Healher from her old home. In the 

 box holding these dry sprays were some seeds which it was 

 suggested should be sown near the homestead in Townsend, 

 but it was finally decided that the Cranberry-pasture would 

 give the seeds a better opportunity for growth. Here the 

 seeds were sown and the rapid growth had taken place in the 

 period of sixteen years which had elapsed. In the pasture the 

 browsing and grazing animals had kept down the competitors 

 of the Heather, and with the happiest results. The moisture 

 of the land was enough to provide for the plants the water 

 which, in the Old World, they get from the humidity of the 

 atmosphere over the moors (that is, the moisture in the air, 

 condensing on the plants, must make partly good the lack of 

 moisture in even the dry sand there), and so the Townsend 

 Heather had kept its place. 



There would seem then to be much encouragement in these 

 facts for our dwellers in country homes. Given a barren pas- 

 ture with a fair amount of moisture in the soil, and given, also, 

 some means of keeping down the shrubs which would crowd 

 the Heather out, the plants will have a fair chance of surviving. 

 It seems possible that many of our country and even our sea- 

 side pastures may be made attractive in this way, at least 

 the experiment is so promising that it should be fairly tried. 



While, therefore, I believe that with a little help in keeping 

 its competitors under, Heather may be made to thrive under 

 conditions easily attainable here, I can no longer believe that 

 the scattered stations of Heather now existing in the prov- 

 inces, and, more rarely, in New England, date farther back 

 than the accidental or intentional scattering of Heather-seeds 

 by the hand of man. 



We have, in such a study of Heather in a New England pas- 

 ture, a capital illustration of the paucity of simple facts at 

 one's command. What we do know, is the following: A 

 common plant, wild in a soil and in a climate much like our 

 own, refuses, under the ordinary conditions of the struggle for 

 existence, to make even a pretense of holding its ground 

 when it comes here. What no one knows, is the following: 

 Whether the conditions here, of heat and cold, dryness and 

 moisture, insect visitants, competing shrubs and herbs, graz- 

 ing animals, and the like, are so nearly favorable that with a 

 trifling change, one way or the other, they might serve the 

 plant well and give it here an open welcome. Careful ob- 

 servation of a few plants of Heather, left to themselves in 

 different localities in New England or the middle states, might 

 settle some of these points which otherwise must be left, as 

 now, to mere conjecture. George Lincoln Goodale. 



Cumbiidge, Mass. 



New or Little Known Plants. 

 Picea Breweriana. 



WE are indebted to Mr. J. G. Lemmon, the botanist 

 of the California Board of Forestry, for the photo- 

 graphs from which the illustrations of this California Spruce 

 on pages 66 and 67 have been prepared. Picea Breweriana* 

 is the most local of all the Spruces and perhaps from its 

 peculiar habit of growth one of the most remarkable of 

 them all. It was not noticed until 1884, when Mr. Thomas 

 J. Howell, of Arthur, Oregon, found it on the north slope 

 of the Siskiyou Mountains near the head waters of the 

 Illinois River, in the extreme northern part of California. 

 It was seen later by Mr. T. S. Brandegee (who obtained a 

 trunk of this tree for the Jesup collection in the American 

 Museum of Natural History in this city), a little to the 

 south of Howell's locality on one of the small north forks 

 of the Klamath. These are the only stations known for 

 this remarkable tree, and there are hardly a hundred fully 

 grown individuals in them both, although it will be found, 

 doubtless, on some of the adjacent ridges or mountain- 

 ranges; for all that part of California lying west of Mount 

 Shasta, one of the most broken and rugged parts of the 

 state, is still very imperfectly known and its botany is 

 practically unexplored. Mr. Brandegee found the few trees 

 which he saw, widely scattered over an area of several 

 hundred acres, growing with the Douglas Fir, the Sugar 



♦Watson in Proc. Am. Acad., n. ser. XII, 378. 

 icle, n. ser. XXV, 493, f. 93. 



Jargent in Gardeners' Chron- 



