57 2 



Garden and Forest. 



[November 26, 1890. 



to be set apart as a National Sequoia Park. This reservation 

 includes the forest marked on the map as the Sequoia Park 

 Forest, and also the larger part of the Homer Peak Forest, 

 somewhere from 3,000 to 5,000 acres. 



South of these, following the Sequoia belt, we come to the 

 Dillon Mill Forest of over 1,000 acres, with but little remaining 

 to the Government, and from which thousands of Sequoia 

 fence-posts are being hauled this season. And still farther 

 southward, partly in the south-east corner of the same town- 

 ship, and extending into the corners of three other townships, 

 is the Tule River Forest. Much cutting and slashing for a pe- 

 riod of years has here been going on; and during this time dif- 

 ferent mills have been drawing their supply of Mountain Red- 

 wood from this forest, and still by far the larger part remains. 

 Here exists a noted centre of Sequoia growth known as the 

 "McFadyen8o" (acres), estimated by lumbermen to have 

 on it timber sufficient for 8,000,000 feet of lumber. Only one 

 mill is running this season. This, with the Pixley Grove, we 

 will estimate at 3,500 acres. About six miles directly south is 

 the Putnam Mill Forest containing some 4,000 acres. A por- 

 tion of this, that in Township 20, Range 31, is still owned by 

 the Government, and is a very beautiful forest of over 1,000 

 acres. Next comes the Fleitz Forest, owned by a Michigan 

 syndicate; to the south of which are groves owned by the syn- 

 dicate known as the " Kessing," the several tracts comprising 

 an area of some 4,000 acres. Here again, in the south-west of 

 Township 22, Range 31, the Government possesses a forest of 

 somewhat uncertain value and extent, known as the Indian 

 Reservation Forest, and estimated at 1,500 acres. It is not 

 generally known that there exists any Sequoia on the Kern 

 River slope, but there are on that side at least 1,500 or 2,000 

 acres in groves scattered along the slope from Freeman's Val- 

 ley southward for some fifteen miles. Only one of these 

 tracts could be classed as a forest, that of Freeman Valley. 

 Here is a tract of about 1,000 acres, a limited portion of which 

 is probably the heaviest growth of Sequoia gigantea in the 

 world. Unfortunately this also has passed into the hands of 

 lumbermen. One grove more remains to be mentioned, not 

 because of its intrinsic merit, but because of its location, it be- 

 ing, so far as known, the southernmost limit of Sequoia. It is 

 that on Deer Creek, indicated on older maps as " Mammoth 

 Grove." It contains less than 150 Sequoias, scattered over an 

 area of perhaps 300 acres. 



This completes the list. The Sequoia forests proper there- 

 fore extend over a belt of country beginning at Converse Basin 

 on the north and ending with the Indian Reservation Forest 

 sixty miles to the south. The groves and forests together in 

 this region are upward of twenty in number, with an average 

 distance between them of perhaps three or four miles. 



Within this scope of country, a moderate estimate of the 

 Sequoia area would be, according to the foregoing figures and 

 including a few unnamed groves, 37,500 acres, divided be- 

 tween the several river systems as follows : 



King's River 7>5oo 



Kaweah River 14,000 



Tule River. . 14,000 



Kern River 1.700 



Deer Creek 300 



Total acres 37. 5°° 



It has been sufficiently shown that there are in the state 

 several forests and groves of Big Trees still belonging to the 

 Government aside from those embraced in the Vandever 

 bill. To ensure the safety of these, and to put them beyond 

 the designs of timbermen, and, above all, to protect them from 

 devastating forest-fires, it is exceedingly desirable that they be 

 reserved and placed under expert supervision. We need no 

 reminder that the greed of timber and cattle men will soon 

 work havoc with what remains unless something be done to 

 stay the devastation; and if we would save a portion we must 

 begin at once. 



Concerning the utility of the region embraced in these 

 limits as the best natural reservoir for the storage of waters 

 needed for irrigation we need not dwell. But for a moment 

 let me touch on the suitability of the country for a park because 

 of its charming natural attractions. You need hardly be re- 

 minded of this. The heart of the Sierra culminating in Mount 

 Whitney affords grand scenery of peculiar charm and great 

 variety. Here are three Yosemites rivaling their noted pro- 

 totype in many features, with a little world of wonders cluster- 

 ing around the headwaters of Kern, Kaweah and King's Rivers. 

 We will simply mention the Grand Canon of the Kern, where, 

 for twenty miles, the mad waters of the river are walled in 



with the continuous battlements of the California Alps, crowned 

 with nameless and unnumbered domes and towers. Then, 

 only a few miles across the divide, extends the canon of King's 

 River with its wealth of impressive scenery, and some eight 

 miles farther to the north lies the valley of Tehipitee — the gem of 

 the Sierra — with its wondrous dome of rock rising in rounded 

 majesty some 6,000 feet from the level of the river-cleft mea- 

 dow at its feet. Yet a view of the most impressive and char- 

 acteristic scenery of the region is to be earned by scaling one 

 of the lofty peaks of the Kaweah Range. At least a hundred 

 peaks here rise to altitudes exceeding 10,000 feet. One never 

 can forget the impression who has once looked out over the 

 California Alps from the pinnacle of Miner's Peak. As I once 

 before said, in describing this scene: "Here amid the com- 

 panionship of peaks one beholds with speechless wonder the 

 spectacle beyond. No satisfactory view of the Whitney Range 

 can be found from the San Joaquin plains. The intervening 

 Kaweah Range veils the view of the higher peaks beyond. 

 But here, standing on the crest of the Kaweah Sierra, one 

 looks across the Grand Canon of the Kern, and the encircling 

 wilderness of crags and peaks is beyond the power of pen to 

 describe. Mounts Monache, Whitney, Williamson, Tyndall, 

 Kaweah and a hundred nameless peaks — the crown of our 

 country — have pierced the mantle of green that clothes the 

 canons below, and are piled into the very sky, jagged and bald, 

 and bleak and hoary — a wilderness of eternal desolation." 



Plant Notes. 



Some Recent Portraits. 



THE November number of the Botanical Magazine contains 

 a figure of Acineta densa (t. 7143), a magnificent Orchid 

 from Costa Rica, belonging to the tribe of the Vandas, and re- 

 lated to Lueddemannia and Peristeria. It produces pendu- 

 lous, dense-flowered racemes of large, pale golden yellow 

 flowers. This is not a new inhabitant of gardens, having been 

 introduced into England as long ago as 1849. ^ ' s still, how- 

 ever, rarely seen, although one of the showiest of all the plants 

 of its class. 



There is a figure {t. 7144) of Encharis Bakeriana, a native of 

 Columbia, and related to the well known Eucharis Amazonica, 

 or, as it should be called, E. grandiflora. Another of the 

 bulbous species of Iris (I. Sindjarensis, t. 7145), allied to /. 

 Caucasica, I. orchidoides and I. Pal&stina, is figured. It is a 

 dwarf plant, with crowded, lanceolate, broad, distichous 

 leaves and pale lilac flowers, discovered in 1865 in Mesopo- 

 tamia by Dr. Hansekenecht, and introduced into cultivation 

 by Max Leichtlin, of Baden-Baden. There is a figure of the 

 dwarf variegated Bamboo {Arundinaria Simoni, var. variegata, 

 t. 7146) best known in cultivation as Bambusa Sii7ioni, a native 

 of Japan, and introduced many years ago into the garden of 

 the Paris Museum by one of the French Consuls in China, 

 Monsieur Simon. It is a hardy, tufted plant, reaching in 

 Europe a height of eight or ten feet and flowering sparingly. 

 " In Algiers it is described by Riviere as forming rhizomes 

 that bury themselves one and a half to two feet, and from 

 which new culms rise in the beginning of May, which, during 

 the first year, are simple, clothed with spathaceous sheaths, 

 and attaining twenty to twenty-five feet in height. Toward the 

 end of the second year these culms ramify in whorls from 

 above downward and flower. The leaves are eight to ten 

 inches long and quite glabrous." The specimen which served 

 as a subject for the illustration is "from a magnificent plant 

 grown by Mr. Paul in a Camellia-house at Cheshunt, the culms 

 of which are fourteen feet high and as thick as the thumb" — a 

 suggestion of the best way this plant, as well as many other 

 species of the dwarf Bamboos, can be used in our northern 

 states in decorative gardening. There is a figure of the well 

 known Pereskia aculeata it. 714.7), a member of the Cactus 

 family, and one of the first of the tropical plants introduced 

 into Europe, it having been cultivated in the Royal Gardens at 

 Hampton Court as early as 1696. In Kew, it appears, it has 

 been cultivated ever since the foundation of that establish- 

 ment, although there is no record of its having flowered there 

 until last year. It is a straggling or climbing bush or small 

 tree whose branches are described as climbing, but more gen- 

 erally it climbs by means of the hooked spines of the young 

 branches. The flowers are an inch and a half in diameter, with 

 pure white, rosy or yellowish white petals. The fruit is the 

 size of a small gooseberry, globose, transparent, few- seeded 

 and covered with small spreading leaves, the free tips of the 

 sepals. The leaves are used as a pot-herb in Brazil and the 

 berries are eaten in all parts of the tropics of the New World. 



