4-02 



Garden and Forest. 



[August 20, 1890. 



and so on up to family circles of ten or twelve about the 

 roots of some giant of an earlier generation. The very 

 side-sprouts, which grow up from the base of these Red- 

 woods, are as large here as timber-trees in other countries. 

 One of the trees which Mr. Shihn measured was forty-seven 

 feet in circumference and 325 feet high. 



From a late number of the Cloverdale Reveille we learn 

 that Colonel Armstrong has decided not to present the state 

 with this tract of Redwood, nor does he intend to give it to 

 any particular municipality, but to trustees, for the use of 

 the people for all time. The Board will be constituted 

 perhaps as follows : The Chairman of the Board of Trus- 

 tees of the Golden Gate Park of San Francisco, the land- 

 scape-gardener of Central Park, the Chief Justice of the 

 Supreme Court of California and a local trustee in the 

 county. These gentlemen will have the power of appoint- 

 ing their successors, and they will be hampered by few re- 

 strictions in the deed of trust. One condition will be that 

 none of the timber is to be cut. Another is that the park 

 shall not be a place of encampment, for fear of fire, and 

 that it shall only be visited by daylight. This magnificent 

 tract lies in Sonoma County, and is accessible by rail from 

 San Francisco, which-is only seventy miles distant, and it is 

 the last considerable tract of Redwood in this region or so 

 near the city. Of course the forest is not exclusively Red- 

 wood, for these trees are mixed with Laurels and Oaks, 

 sometimes in a compact wood and again in open order, 

 with occasional grassy openings. 



It is probable that this report is incorrect in one particu- 

 lar, and that is in regard to arrangements which are said 

 to be in preparation for propagating strange plants, flowers 

 and shrubs to be used in bordering the drives and other- 

 wise ornamenting the giant grove. No doubt Colonel 

 Armstrong appreciates his forest so thoroughly that he will 

 not think of improving it by tricking it out with any exotic 

 finery. He means to preserve it for posterity as a Red- 

 wood forest and he will hardly allow its grand expression 

 to be trifled with by any attempts at decoration. 



A Fine Bur Oak. 



WE published last year (ii., 500) an illustration showing 

 the stem of a remarkably fine specimen of this 

 tree grown on the rich alluvial lands bordering the river- 

 bottoms of southern Indiana, where this species attains its 

 greatest height and girth of stem. This particular speci- 

 men had grown in the midst of the forest, thickly encom- 

 passed by other trees which had forced an upright develop- 

 ment of stem and prevented the great spread of branches 

 characteristic of this and other species of the Oak when 

 these trees find the room and light essential for the full 

 growth of their lateral branches. Wide-spreading Oaks 

 are never met with in the dense forest, although they 

 abound in the north-west in the region which separates the 

 heavy forests of the eastern part of the country from the 

 midcontinental prairies. These intermediate regions, cov- 

 ered with an open growth of Oak-trees, are called Oak- 

 openings. The sparseness of the timber and the prevalence 

 of Oaks, which resist better than most other trees the 

 effects of constant burning, is due, no doubt, to the fires 

 which constantly swept over this whole territory before 

 the advent of white settlers. These fires made the prairies 

 what they are and restricted the forest-growth on the de- 

 batable middle ground to the edges of sloughs and other 

 depressions in the general surface of the ground where oc- 

 casional trees were able to escape the effects of fire and 

 grow to a very large size. 



The Bur Oak (Quercus tuacrocarpa) is one of the com- 

 mon trees of the Oak-opening region, where it grows 

 sometimes to noble size. A portrait of one of these large 

 trees appears in our illustration on page 407. It shows the 

 habit and appearance of this tree when it is allowed full 

 opportunity for unimpeded growth in all directions. 



This specimen is known as the " Cravath Tree," from the 

 fact that it stands on the farm of Mr. Miles G. Cravath, 



near the town of Whitewater, Wisconsin. The trunk girths 

 at the ground eighteen feet and six inches. Three feet 

 higher it is twelve feet three inches, and the beautiful 

 cylindrical stem and ponderous limbs arc perfectly sound, 

 the tree being still in perfect health. The age of this great 

 Oak can, of course, only be guessed, but it must have been 

 a remarkable specimen in a region of fine trees long before 

 a white man first floated over the surface of the limpid 

 waters of the upper Mississippi. 



We are indebted to Mr. Edward Salisbury, President of 

 the State Normal School at Whitewater, for the photograph 

 from which our illustration has been prepared. 



The Florida Spruce Pine. 



'THE littoral belt extending from the alluvial lands of the 

 *■ Mississippi River eastward to the neck of the Peninsula of 

 Florida presents no essential difference in climate or soil, or 

 in the general features of vegetation throughout its entire 

 length. Meteorologically it all belongs to one province. The 

 line of sixty-eight degrees mean annual temperature follows 

 the northern border along the thirty-first parallel of north lati- 

 tude, and the isotherm of seventy-two degrees follows the sea- 

 shore. The mean annual precipitation between these limits 

 varies from forty-eight to fifty-four inches, showing but slight 

 differences in its distribution throughout the year. Highly 

 silicious deposits of stratified drift cover its surface, almost 

 everywhere making sandy and gravelly soils or light sandy 

 loams. The fiat coast plain, intersected by large bays, and 

 smaller inlets surrounded by marshes, is fringed along its 

 shore by hillocks of loose and often drifting sand. The Long- 

 leaved Pine or Cuban Pine form very open forests, which 

 cover a large part of the plain. The damp, sandy soil of these 

 flat- woods, devoid of surface drainage, is covered with a dense 

 carpet of Cyperaceous plants, Rhynchospora, Scirpi, Fuircnas 

 Eleocharis, and numerous species of Xyris, Eriocaulon.andSar- 

 racenias. Their monotonyis relieved by groves of LiveOakand 

 Wax Myrtle on the sands of the sea-shore and the more varied 

 tree growth of the richer spots of the swampy depressions. 

 Magnolias, Laurel Oaks, Water Oaks, Sweet Gum and Black 

 Gum are the most prominent on the hammock-land, while the 

 Bald Cypress represents the water-soaked banks of the rivers 

 and their estuaries. 



One who travels this coast from west to east is struck by the 

 successive appearance of plants which are never or very 

 rarely met with in the section left behind. If he leaves the 

 eastern shore of the Bay of Mobile his attention is constantly 

 directed to the plants which he has never encountered in the 

 coast region between the western shore of the bay and the 

 Mississippi delta. After crossing the extensions of the sea 

 which intersect this coast, and entering the basins of the great 

 streams which empty into them, he is surprised by the sudden 

 appearance of plants not observed before, most of them be- 

 coming more frequent as he approaches the region which dis- 

 charges its waters into the Atlantic. It would seem that while 

 the wide bays of this coast, with the river basins connected 

 with them, form the only obstacles to the general diffusion of 

 plants over the littoral region of the eastern gulf states, yet to 

 many species which are found on the South Atlantic sea- 

 board these obstacles prove insurmountable, and absolutely 

 prevent their spread toward the west. It would seem also that 

 other plants whose centre of distribution lies toward the west- 

 ern confines of this belt are prevented by the same difficulties 

 from making any progress toward the east. At another time 

 it may be of interest to give instances of this restriction of dif- 

 ferent species to given limits, instances which cannot but excite 

 interest in the problem of plant distribution throughout a re- 

 gion in which the same climate, soil and topographical features 

 prevail. 



Among the forest-trees which one would observe in con- 

 nection with this distribution of plants, Pinics clansa, the Flor- 

 ida Spruce Pine or Sand Pine, would occupy a prominent 

 place. Among the Pines of the southern United States this 

 species is confined to the narrowest limits. It is found from 

 the western boundary of Florida to Key West, where it was 

 observed by Professor Sargent, and along the eastern coast of 

 the peninsula, on the rolling uplands to their termination in 

 the lower part of Volusia County, in thetlatwoodsand swamps 

 of the further south. This Pine is strictly confined to an arid 

 sandy soil ; it flourishes on the dunes of pure white drifting 

 sands which fringe the shore, where its roots often fail to 

 obtain a firm hold, so that it often succumbs to the force of 

 storms, and it is seen bent low in the direction of the prevailing 



