June 12, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



285 



two or three years more. Any seed which can be found should 

 be carefully collected and sown, so that a succession of young 

 plants can be kept up. 



Lonicera parvifolia, a small, shrubby species from the al- 

 pine Himalaya is in flower. It is a neat shrub with minute 

 leaves and small, greenish-white Mowers with cylindrical, 

 corolla-tubes a quarter to a third of an inch long — a pretty plant 

 enough, but of no great beauty or horticultural interest. 



Lonicera glaiica (the L. parviflora of Gray's Manual) is a 

 beautiful native Honeysuckle, which is now in flower. It has 

 trailing or sometimes bushy stems, rarely more than four or 

 five feet long, smooth leaves, green on the upper and very 

 pale and glaucous on the lower surface, the upper pairs 

 united and all closely sessile. The flowers are greenish-yel- 

 low, tinged with dark purple, and are produced in closely ap- 

 proximate whorls. 



This is a northern plant, extending almost to the shores of 

 Hudson's Bay, and not uncommon in northern New England 

 and New York or on the high Carolina mountains — a good 

 subject to naturalize on rocky banks or the borders of woods. 



Lonicera Alberti (see Garden and Forest, i., 226) may be 

 mentioned again, that the testimony of another year's trial 

 may be recorded in its favor. It is certainly one of the best 

 small shrubs ot recent introduction. The habit is graceful 

 and the coloring tlelightful. The flowers are abundant, fra- 

 grant and of goov.1 color ; the fruit which was produced here 

 last year very freely, is large (three-fourths of an inch in di- 

 ameter), vinous-red and covered with a glaucous bloom. 

 This is, so far as we know here, by far the most valuable of 

 the ligneous plants introduced, in late years from central Asia 

 through the efforts of the Russian botanical explorers, the 

 most active and successful of whom. Dr. Albert Kegel, is very 

 fittingly commemorated in this charming plant. 



Lyciian pallidum, figured last year in Garden and Forest 

 (f. 54), is now loaded with its handsome, tubular flowers. The 

 introduction of this species was certainly a very lucky hit. 

 The fact that a plant of the dry south-west grows here so well 

 and flowers so profusely is a remarkable and interesting fact. 



May 25th. J. 



The Forest. 

 Succession of Forest Growths. 



THE following is from an address delivered by Mr. 

 Robert Douglas before the Association of American 

 Nurserymen at the meeting in Chicago last week : 



It is the prevailing and almost universal belief that when 

 native forests are destroyed they will be replaced by other 

 kinds, for the simple reason that the soil has been impov- 

 erished of the constituents required for the growth of that 

 particular tree or trees. This I believe to be one of the fal- 

 lacies handed down from past ages, taken for granted, and 

 never questioned. Nowhere does the English Oak grow bet- 

 ter than where it grew when William the Conqueror found it 

 at the time he invaded Britain. Where do you find White 

 Pines growing better than in parts of New England, where 

 this tree has grown from time immemorial ? Where can you 

 find young Redwoods growing more thriftily than among their 

 giant ancestors, nearly or quite as old as the Christian era ? 



The question why the original growth is not reproduced 

 can best be answered by some illustrations. When a Pine-for- 

 est is burned over both trees and seeds are destroyed, and as 

 the burned trees cannot sprout from the stump like Oaks and 

 many other trees, the land is left in a condition well suited for 

 the germination of tree-seeds, but there are no seeds to germ- 

 inate. It is an open field for pioneers to enter, and the seeds 

 whicli arrive there first have the right of possession. The 

 Aspen Poplar {Populus tremuloides) has the advantage over all 

 other trees. It is a native of all our northern forests, from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific. Even fires cannot eradicate it, as it 

 grows in moist as well as dry places, and sprouts from any 

 part of the I'oot. It is a short-lived tree, consequently it seeds 

 when quite young and seeds abundantly ; the seeds are light, 

 almost infinitesimal, and are carried on wings of down. Its 

 seeds ripen in spring, and are carried to great distances at the 

 very time when the ground is in the best condition for them. 

 Even on the dry mountain sides in Colorado, the snows are 

 just melting and the ground is moist where they fall. 



To grow this tree from seed wovdd require the greatest skill 

 of the nurseryman, but the burnt land is its paradise. Wher- 

 ever you see it on high, dry land you may rest assured that a 

 fire has been there. "On land-slides you will not find its seeds 

 germinating, although they have been deposited there as 

 abundantly as on the burned land. 



Next to the Aspen and Poplars comes the Canoe Birch, and 

 further north the Yellow Birch, and such other trees as have 

 provision for scattering their seeds. I have seen acorns and 

 nuts germinating in clusters on burned lands in a few instances. 

 They had evidently been buried there by animals and had es- 

 caped the fires. I have seen the Red Cherry [Prunus Pennsyl- 

 vanica) coming up in great quantities where they might never 

 have germinated had not the fires destroyed the debris which 

 covered the seed too deeply. 



A careful examination around the margin of a Vjurned for- 

 est will show the trees of siuTounding kinds working in again. 

 Thus by the time the short-lived Aspens (and they are very 

 short-lived on high land) have made a covering on the burned 

 land, the surrounding kinds will be found re-established in 

 the new forest, the seeds of the conifers, carried in by the 

 winds, the berries by the birds, the nuts and acorns by the squir- 

 rels, the mixture varying more or less from the kinds which 

 grew there before the fire. 



It is wonderful how far the seeds of berries are carried by 

 birds. The waxwings and cedar-birds carry seeds of our Tar- 

 tarean Honeysuckles, Purple Barberries and many other kinds 

 four miles distant, where we see them spring up on the lake 

 shore, where these birds fly in flocks to feed on the Juniper 

 berries. It seems to be the same everywhere. I found Euro- 

 pean Mountain Ash trees last simimer in a forest in New 

 Hampshire ; the seed must have been carried over two miles 

 as the crow flies. 



While this alternation is going on in the east, and may have 

 been going on for thousands of years, the Rocky Mountain 

 district is not so fortunate. When a forest is burned down in 

 that dry region, it is doubtful if coniferous trees will ever grow 

 again, except in some localities specially favored. I have seen 

 localities where short-lived trees were dying out and no others 

 taking their places. Such spots will hereafter take their places 

 above the timber-line, which seems to me to be a line gov- 

 erned by circumstances more than by altitude or quality of soil. 



There are a few exceptions where Pines will succeed Pines 

 in a burned-down forest. Pinus Miirrayana grows up near 

 the timber-line in the Rocky Mountains. This tree has per- 

 sistent cones, which adhere to the trees for many years. I 

 have counted the cones of sixteen years on one of these trees, 

 and examined burned forests of this species, where many of 

 the cones had apparently been bedded in the earth as the trees 

 fell. The heat had opened the cones and the seedlings were 

 growing up in myriads; but not a conifer of any other kind 

 could be seen as far as the fire had reached. 



In the Michigan Peninsula, northern Wisconsin and Afinne- 

 sota, P. Banksiana, a comparatively worthless tree, is replacing 

 the valuable Red Pine {P. resinosa), and in the Sierras P. Miir- 

 rayana and P. tiiberciclata are replacing the more valuable spe- 

 cies by the same process. 



In this case, also, the worthless trees are the shortest-lived, 

 so we see that Nature is doing all that she can to remedy the 

 evil. Man only is reckless, and especially the American man. 

 The Mexican will cut large limbs off his trees for fuel, but will 

 spare the tree. Even the poor Indian, when at the starvation 

 point, stripping the bark from the Yellow Pine {P. ponderosd), 

 for the mucilaginous matter being formed into sap-wood, 

 will never take a strip wider than one-third the circumference 

 of the tree, so that its growth may not be injured. 



We often read that Oaks are springing up in destroyed for- 

 ests where Oaks had never grown before. The writers are no 

 doubt sincere, but they are careless. The only Pine-forests 

 where Oaks are not intermixed are either in land so sandy that 

 Oaks cannot be made to grow on them at all, or so far north 

 that they are beyond their northern limit. In the Green Moi.m- 

 tains and in the New England forests, in the Pine-forests in 

 Pennsylvania, in the Adirondacks, in Wisconsin and Michi- 

 gan — except in sand — I have found Oaks mixed with the Pines 

 and Spruces. In north-western Minnesota and in northern 

 Dakota the Oaks are near their northern limit, but even there 

 the Burr Oak drags on a bare existence among the Pines and 

 Spruces. In the Black Hills, in Dakota, poor, forlorn, scrubby 

 Burr Oaks are scattered through the hills among the 

 Yellow Pines. In Colorado we find them as shrubs among 

 the Pines and Douglas Spruces. In New Mexico we find them 

 scattered among the Piiions. In Arizona they grow like Hazel- 

 bushes among the Yellow Pines. On the Sierra Nevada 

 the Oak region crosses the Pine region, and scattering Oaks 

 reach far up into the mountains. Yet Oaks will not flourish 

 between the one hundredth meridian and the eastern base of 

 the Sierras, owing to the aridity of the climate. I recently 

 found Oaks scattered among the Redwoods on both sides of 

 the Coast Range Mountains. 



Darwin has truly said " The Oaks are driving the Pines to 



