62 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 364. 



swamps and low river-banks, and when it is made to stand 

 out alone on a hill it never looks at home or in harmony 

 with its surroundings, while the Red Cedar, of all our trees, 

 most easily tits into its place in the landscape, and, per- 

 haps, no one ever saw a Red Cedar that looked out of 

 place in connection with its associates in any American 

 sylvan landscape. As a hedge-plant the Red Cedar has 

 not proved very successful ; the plants grow too slowly for 

 the impatient American, who wants his hedge to grow as 

 rapidly as a carpenter could build one with boards, and the 

 branches often die out, making here and there ugly gaps. 



Like most other trees, the Red Cedar is easy to raise 

 from seeds when the person who undertakes to do it under- 

 stands its peculiarities. The stone enclosed in the fleshy 

 berry of the Juniper is very thick and hard, and it takes a 

 long time to soften so that the seed can get out and begin 

 to grow. Planted in the ground in the ordinary manner a 

 Juniper-seed will sometimes lie for years without germi- 

 nating, and the way to treat them is to soak the berries 

 thoroughly in warm water as soon as they are ripe in the 

 autumn, mix them with sand, bury the whole mass in the 

 ground in some place where they will keep moist during 

 the following summer, and then plant them either in the 

 autumn, a year from the time they were gathered, or in the 

 following spring. Treated in this way the seed will ger- 

 minate in a few weeks after they are planted, and produce 

 strong plants the first year, which will be six or eight 

 inches high at the end of the second season, and ready to 

 transplant. Nurserymen do not raise Red Cedars very 

 often now, for there is no great demand for them. Young 

 plants can be transplanted from old pastures, however, or 

 from the sides of walls or fences, where the seeds dropped 

 by birds germinate in great quantities, producing the long 

 lines of Cedar-trees which are conspicuous and beautiful 

 features of the landscape in the northern and middle states. 



The Red Cedar is a long-lived and hardy tree, and if any 

 man has a fancy to plant for posterity or to preserve his 

 memory in a tree, there are few trees that he can plant 

 with greater assurance of attaining the object of his ambition. 



The illustration on page 65 of this issue, made from a 

 photograph, for which we are indebted to Mr. Charles S. 

 Bradford, Jr., represents a venerable Red Cedar-tree of a 

 common form growing near Wawa Station, Delaware 

 County, Pennsylvania. 



Black Locust in the West. 



SO far as I know, the only place west of the Mississippi 

 where Black Locust, Robinia Pseudacacia, is indigen- 

 ous, is in Arkansas, where there is a heavy rainfall. But the 

 species will flourish under widely different conditions of 

 moisture, and it succeeds quite as well, even in high land, as 

 any other tree as far west as the one hundredth meridian. 

 It will not endure excessive cold, however, and it is not 

 advisable to plant it north of central Iowa and the Platte 

 River, in Nebraska. 



Black Locust has been extensively planted in the prairie 

 portions of Missouri, and in Kansas it is a favorite tree, 

 owing to the great variety of soils in which it succeeds, its 

 ability to withstand drought, and the superior excellence 

 of its wood for post timber, and for all uses requiring contact 

 with the soil. It is the hardest and most durable broad- 

 leaved timber that can be grown in this climate, and as 

 fencing is an important problem in the west, there is 

 economy in including a good post timber in the shelter belt 

 plantation. Black Locust seedlings have been extensively 

 distributed by the Kansas Commissioner of Forestry. At 

 the State Forestry Station, Ogallah (longitude 99° 40' W. ), 

 this tree is grown in high prairie, and trees seven years 

 planted are as healthy as any on the grounds. The annual 

 rainfall at Ogallah is about twenty-four inches. At the 

 Kansas Agricultural College, Manhattan, Black Locust and 

 Catalpa have been used as nurse-trees for Oaks. The Lo- 

 custs have not done especially well in this mixture, grow- 

 ing about as rapidly as the Catalpa. The Locust is a 



light-demanding tree, and should be planted in mix- 

 ture with good shade-enduring kinds, such as Russian 

 Mulberry and Wild Cherry. The trees should be set close 

 — not more than four feet apart both ways, and three feet 

 is better. This close planting will force them tall, and as 

 in post timber length of trunk is a most important consid- 

 eration, the importance of plenty of shade-making trees 

 and close planting will be recognized. The Locust should 

 not constitute more than one-fourth of the plantation. 

 Mixed planting will also tend to lessen the danger of dam- 

 age from borers, which cause much injury to trees of this 



species. 

 Washington. Charles A. Keffer. 



California Experiment Stations. — II. 



THE Forestry Station at Santa Monica, in southern 

 California, occupies a most interesting and picturesque 

 site. The town of Santa Monica is, perhaps, as well 

 known as any part of the Californian seacoast, because it 

 is particularly accessible from Los Angeles by rail- 

 road, and has become the leading watering-place be- 

 tween Coronado and Monterey. A long sweep of seashore, 

 bold, high cliffs, with an almost level plain above them, 

 rising north and north-east to the bluest of mountain 

 ranges, and traversed by deep barrancas or straight-sided 

 caiions, such is the general aspect of the great Santa Monica 

 rancho. Fifty years ago a hundred thousand acres here, 

 the estate of an old Spanish family, supported vast herds 

 of horses and cattle. Then came the railroads — the Ameri- 

 can town-builders. Senator Jones, of Nevada, and others 

 bought the ranch, founded the town, pushed out an im- 

 mense wharf a couple of miles away, at Port Los Angeles, 

 where the steamships land, and Santa Monica, upon the 

 frostless bluff overlooking the blue Pacific, began to take 

 shape. Now one sees there rows of tall Bananas, heavy- 

 fruited, all winter long ; Tacsonias and Passifloras grow 

 and bloom, and semi-tropical gardens surround costly cot- 

 tages on every hand. 



The greatest and deepest barranca in this entire Santa 

 Monica plain is that known as the Santa Monica Canon. 

 It is not really a caiion in the strict interpretation of the 

 Spanish word, which refers to mountain ravines, but more 

 nearly conforms to the Spanish idea of a barranca, a wide 

 cleft across the plain from the mountains to the sea. In 

 reality there are two large barrancas there, running in a 

 direction somewhat parallel for four or five miles, although 

 they are sometimes close together, and at other times wide 

 apart. The narrow tongue of land between them extends 

 to within an eighth of a mile of the ocean. The tvi'o streams 

 of water that flow through these deep and well-wooded 

 depressions unite at the foot of this gradually sloping 

 tongue of land that overlooks the seabeaches. Here, on 

 the sides and summit of this narrow central plateau, be- 

 tween two deep gorges, the Santa Monica Forestry Station 

 is situated. It is almost completely hidden from the town 

 and the watering-place. It is greatly sheltered from storms, 

 and yet the view from its heights is wonderfully extensive. 



To the tourist driving northward from Santa Monica, 

 along the cliff overlooking the Pacific, the dry level plain 

 seems to stretch unbroken, except by slight depressions, 

 for twenty miles. Suddenly, by an old adobe ruin, he 

 pauses, at the verge of a cliff ; a hundred and fifty feet be- 

 low, the Santa Monica ripples over its pebbles and through 

 its groves of giant Sycamores, which rank among the 

 noblest in southern California. Half a mile beyond, the 

 plain continues again on the same level ; betvv'een the two 

 divided fragments a narrow tongue of rocky land projects 

 and sweeps in long curves downward to the -Sycamore 

 groves. Eastvi-ard, along the ascending lines of the vast 

 chasm, are darker and larger masses of forest. Walnut, 

 Oaks, Cottonwood and other groves of Sycamores. Be- 

 yond, and at points of vantage on the sides of the descent, 

 are plantations and avenues of various species of Eucalyptus. 

 The cultivated fields cease at the edge of the gorge, and 

 only begin again beyond the further cliff; the space be- 



