558 



Garden and Forest. 



[November 19, 1890. 



It should be added that asparagus, to be at its best, must 

 be gathered only a few hours before it is cooked. In most 

 cities and towns there seems to be an unlimited demand for 

 asparagus, fine, medium, and even poor. Still good fresh 

 specimens always command a much higher price than small 

 wiry ones, or than asparagus brought from a distance. 



The general ignorance which prevails in this country 

 with regard to trees, and especially with regard to the 

 simplest phenomena of their lives, is always a matter of 

 surprise to the few persons who study the different phases 

 of tree-life and look on the trees they pass in their 

 daily walks, or in longer journeyings, as old friends and 

 companions. We recall the instance of a person of more 

 than ordinary intelligence and cultivation, possessing the 

 instincts of a naturalist, shown in an unusual love of 

 animals and in a fondness for studying the habits of bees, 

 ants and other insects, and who, moreover, was bred in 

 the country. This person, when past middle life, learned 

 for the first time that Oak-trees had blossoms and that the 

 cones of the Spruce had grown from flowers. Trees had 

 been taken as a matter of course, and passed by year after 

 year without a thought bestowed upon the secrets of their 

 existence. The individual flowers of the Oaks and Wal- 

 nuts, the Beeches and Alders, the Birches and Hornbeams, 

 the Pines and Spruces, had never been seen, and the beauty 

 of their marvelous structure had never been so much as 

 dreamed of. 



That ignorance of this sort is not unusual is shown by the 

 fact that we find in common vise the terms "flowering 

 trees" and "forest-trees" employed as if some trees, like 

 the Apple or the Locust, produced flowers and others 

 growing in the forest did not, and this by authors from 

 whom better things might naturally be expected. All this 

 only goes to prove that we in America need more instruc- 

 tion about our trees than we are in the way of obtaining. 

 Some accurate knowledge of the common trees which sur- 

 round our homes and make up our forests should form 

 part of the mental equipment of every educated man and 

 woman. Knowledge of this character adds immensely to 

 the pleasures of life. Once gained it is never lost ; and the 

 field is never exhausted, for there is always something new 

 to learn about a tree. 



This is a subject of wide-spread and practical import- 

 ance. Trees collectively, that is when they form forests, 

 have an important influence upon the destiny of the human 

 race. Americans are destroying their forests with a reck- 

 lessness unknown to any other people. This recklessness 

 is the result, in a large measure, of ignorance, and if the 

 value of our forests is ever really understood it will be 

 through the intelligence of the individual trained to ap- 

 preciate them. How can this intelligence, which, if once 

 acquired, will, perhaps, eventually make the protection of 

 forests possible through wise and far-seeing legislation, be 

 developed? There is certainly no more practical way to 

 begin than by teaching the children of the country some- 

 thing of trees. Knowledge in such matters, especially if 

 acquired early, begets affection, and affection for the indi- 

 vidual tree as a tree once fixed, it will be a comparatively 

 easy matter to build up in a community, trained from 

 childhood to love trees, an intelligent interest in the forest 

 in its practical relations to humanity. 



Field Notes from the Colorado Desert. 



ON the 15th of September I left San Diego by rail for Yuma, 

 Arizona, to make botanical collections in the region gen- 

 erally known as the Colorado Desert, in south-eastern Cali- 

 fornia. At Yuma I found that the season had been slightly 

 drier than usual, and there was scarcely any vegetation except 

 along the banks of the Colorado River. I had the pleasure of 

 experiencing one of the heaviest rains of the season, a brisk 

 shower that lasted about half an hour, accompanied by con- 

 siderable wind. 



Opuntia tessellata was fruiting on the hills near Yuma, and 

 I have since found it in various portions of the desert. The 

 fruit is small, dry, with comparatively few large seeds. This 



and one or two other species of the same genus were the only 

 Cacti seen on either bank of the river, except a few trans- 

 planted in gardens and a single beautiful plant of Mamillaria, 

 found on the sandstone hills south of Fort Yuma, in San 

 Diego County, California. 



From El Rio Station, on the Southern Pacific Railway, I 

 walked southward over the hills bordering the Colorado 

 River to Hanlon's Ranch, better known in former times as 

 Hanlon's Ferry. The old station-house, on a rocky bluff at 

 what was once the ferry landing, is now over a mile from the 

 river bank, the river having cut its way to the eastward. This 

 new-made land is subject to an annual overflow and is ex- 

 tremely fertile. It is grown up to a forest of Cottonwoods, 

 Willows and Mesquite-trees of magnificent proportions, and 

 the growth of underbrush and other vegetation is very 

 luxuriant. 



Mr. Hall Hanlon, one of the few remaining pioneers of early 

 days, since the advent of the railroad has turned his attention 

 to stock-raising and horticulture. He has been the first to 

 demonstrate the practicability of cultivating the Date in the 

 Colorado Desert. In 1884 he had fully a hundred Date-trees 

 nearly ready to bear, but, unfortunately, an overflow of the 

 river on his land and a combination of other disasters, nearly 

 destroyed them. The Date comes into blossom in five years 

 from setting on his ranch, and he had a supply of fruit in eight 

 years from the planting of the seed. He has two varieties in 

 bearing now, one with large yellow fruit, and a smaller kind 

 with beautiful, rounder, reddish fruit, which at the time of 

 my visit hung in tempting clusters from the trees. Hundreds 

 of offshoots from his trees he has planted out, and in a few 

 more years he could have one of the most profitable and novel 

 of California orchards, or fruit ranches as they are generally 

 called. Other experiments in the culture of the Date were 

 soon to be made near Yuma, Arizona, in the Gila River Val- 

 ley, which is very aptly called the Gila Desert to distinguish it 

 from the Colorado Desert that lies west of the Colorado River. 



Traveling westward from Fort Yuma I found an almost 

 unbroken, barren plain, destitute of verdure until near Indio, 

 in the north-eastern portion of the region. In the Cargo 

 Muchacho Mountains, where several gold mines are being 

 developed, I found it equally uninteresting from a botanist's 

 point of view, except where the " tailings " and waste water 

 from the quartz mill were allowed to flow. A few grasses, 

 one or two introduced weeds and a number of wild flowers — ■ 

 several new to me — were thus caught out of season. 



Indio, and the section of the desert to the westward, is prob- 

 ably the best known portion of the region as far as its botan- 

 ical resources and horticultural possibilities are concerned. 

 The Washington Palm-trees, on the open plains and on the 

 sides of the mud hills to the northward, form one of the most 

 interesting features in the landscape, since the Californian 

 Fan Palm elsewhere is of a more retiring disposition, seeking 

 the seclusion of rocky and almost inaccessible canons. Some 

 of the Palms grown in the grounds around the railroad hotel 

 at Indio are of most luxuriant growth — a single leaf almost 

 sufficient to shield a standing man from observation ! 



On the 1st of October I again set out for the southern bor- 

 ders of the desert with a two-horse team. The reports of the 

 great overflow of the Colorado River, through the New River 

 section, had been confirmed by reports received at Yuma, and 

 it was with a view of securing the consequent vegetation that 

 I undertook this trip. It has been six years since the last great 

 overflow occurred, in 1884, and the chance offered by the June 

 and July overflow was one not to be neglected. La Laguna 

 Maquata, a shallow basin just south of the United States boun- 

 dary, usually dry, was also reported full of fresh water from 

 the same overflow, and said to be teeming with fish. No 

 water has been known in this lake since 1884 either, and here 

 was another opportunity. 



At Mountain Springs we filled all our water-cans, fearing 

 that this might be the last good water we should find, and it 

 proved fortunate that we took the precaution. At Coyote Wells, 

 fifteen miles distant, we found the water unfit for man or beast, 

 but by digging a new well we were able to secure a limited 

 supply of strong alkali water, which we ventured to give our 

 horses. The only feed was some Gietta Grass, about two 

 miles distant from our camp. Proceeding in a southerly di- 

 rection from Coyote Wells we traveled over a sandy, rolling 

 country to a point in the Maquata Basin between the Cocopah 

 and the main peninsula-range of mountains. The western 

 shores of the lake were dry and strewn with millions of fresh 

 water shells, which encouraged us to expect to find some fresh 

 water. Along the sandy arroyo leading to the lake were nu-J 

 merous beautiful fronwood-trees, fifteen or twenty feet high, 

 and nearer the shores of the lagoon were bush-like clumps 



