May iS, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



237 



The Wild Garden. 



CLUMPS of DalTodil are foand gTovving in moist meadows 

 in the soutli of England and in many parts of Europe, and 

 they can he very appropriately used in harmony with similar 

 natural features here. On lawns they seem quite: out of place, 

 and it is in the wilder parts of the garden where they can be 

 used most effectively. The best opportunities for developing 

 a wild garden, by the natural disposition of suitable plants, are 

 found outside of the limits of the kept grounds, and, where 

 woodland abounds in the immediate vicinity, great care is re- 

 quired in the changing of the natural features not to draw the 

 line too sharply. Many years ago the owner of this estate 

 planted a space in the wilder part of the garden with a few 

 native plants. The group includes the American Cowslip 

 (Dodecatheon Meadia), the Cosed Gentian, Cypripediam pu- 

 bescens, Aquilegia Canadensis, Adiantum pedatum, and 

 Smilacina raceniosa. They are all thriving to-day without any 

 special care. 



It is a fact that many of the most beautiful and tender dwarf 

 herbaceous and alpine plants do better when planted in grass, 

 and disturbed only to free them from weeds. Such a lovely, 

 yet fragile, plant as Anemone deltoidea can never be satisfac- 

 torily cultivated in an ordinary rock-garden, but if planted in 

 a rather moist grassy spot it will thrive nicely. The same may 

 be said of the pretty yellow Anemone ranunculoides, and, for 

 that matter, all the Anemones belonging to the nemerosa 

 type. A. Pennsylvanica is perfectly at home in the wild gar- 

 den, and, in fact', it ought never to be cultivated, in the strict 

 sense of the term. It is a species well worth growing, too, and 

 gives a multitude of pretty cup-shaped white flowers, which 

 are excellent for bouquet-work. It is liable in time, however, 

 to become a nuisance, by monopolizing the territory allotted to 

 other plants. Viola pedata, and especially the varieties alba 

 and bicolor, and V. lanceolata are bright and unobtrusive little 

 plants, as also are the Bluets (Houstonia ccerulea), although 

 there may be some objection to the use of these where they 

 are common in the vicinity. The star-shaped flowers of San- 

 guinaria Canadensis are strikingly bright. They come year 

 after year and interfere in no way with the verdant aspect of 

 the place they occupy. Arenaria grammifolia, A. montana, 

 A. verna and Stellaria Holostea form neat white patches when 

 in bloom, and afterward assimilate with their surroundings so 

 well that their presence is not noticeable. So also do the com- 

 mon Moss Pinks, which just now are a blaze of color. The 

 common Silene Pennsylvanica and the rarer Fire Pink (S. Vir- 

 ginica) are more at home in such a place than under cultiva- 

 tion. The double-flowered Genista tinctoria will be a perfect 

 sheet of yellow while it lasts, and as it is a neat prostrate shrub 

 looks quite natural when out of bloom. There are, also, in ad- 

 dition to several kinds of Narcissus, many other bulbous 

 and tuberous-rooted plants which can be effectively used. 

 These include the American Dog's-tooth Violet (Erythronium 

 Americanum), Spring Beauty, Claytonia Virginica, Dicentra 

 Canadensis, Rhexia Virginica, Calopogon pulchellus, Tulipa 

 cornuta and T. suaveolens. Plants used in this way want in- 

 telligent care, attention enough to protect them from crowd- 

 ing, or any such change in the natural features of the place as 

 will make the wild garden look in any way artificial. 



Where practicable, with sufficient shade, Kalmia latifolia, 

 Andromeda floribunda, A Catesbsei, Rhododendron villosum, 

 R. Wilsoni and R. ferrugineum and choice broad-leaved ever- 

 green shrubs may have a place, and where there is more sun- 

 light flowering shrubs can be used. -r -n tt j: tj 



Wellesley, Mass. T. D. Hatfield. 



The Forest. 



The Forests of California. — II. 



OUR issue for May 4th contained portions of a paper 

 on this subject, read before the American Forestry 

 Association at Washington by Hon. William Alvord, and 

 the following are additional extracts from the same paper : 



The Big Trees (Sequoia gigantea) have been discussed so 

 thoroughly, especially by Dr. Gray in his essay on "The Se- 

 quoia and Its History " and by Mr. F. J. Walker in his admira- 

 ble paper on " The Sequoia Forests " that little needs to be 

 added here. 



They are not found in any other part of the world, and in 

 California only on the westerly slope of the Sierra Nevada, 

 where they occur in groups, standing at intervals along a zone 

 varying from 5,000 to 7,000 and 8,000 feet in height and extend- 

 ing for a distance of 200 miles. 



in the Calaveras Grove, the farthest north and the first dis- 



covered, there are standing 103 trees, twenty of which are 

 about twenty-seven feet in diameter and 250 feet in height, and 

 a number of prostrate trunks, which appear to have been 

 much larger when in their jjrime. 



One of the fallen trees in this grove is estimated to have 

 been about 400 feet in height and thirty feet in diameter ; the 

 tallest in this grove is 260 feet, and in the Mariposa Grove 272 

 feet, antl in the King's River Grove 300 feet. The thickness 

 of the bark is sometimes two feet. In estimating Califor- 

 nia's lumber resources these trees have been left out, because 

 the wood was not considered worth much for that purpose. 

 Up to the present time some lumber, but not much, has been 

 cut from the Big Trees in the counties of Fresno and Tulare, 

 in amounts not to exceed, in all, 30,000,000 feet, some of 

 which, on account of itsfinergrain, is now preferred to the Coast 

 Redwood for interior finish, and has been sold for $40.00 a 

 1,000 feet in San Francisco. The largest body of Sequoia 

 gigantea, and of the densest growth, and perhaps containing 

 more trees than all the other Big Tree groves in the Sierras 

 combined, is on the seven-thousand-acre tract in Converse 

 Basin, on King's River. 



That these trees are very old is evident, but the annual 

 rings are not clearly discernible throughout an entire section, 

 therefore there are variations in the opinion of investigators ; 

 some hold that they are 4,000 years old, while others think 

 that an overestimate, but it seems as if sufficient was known 

 for us to fairly consider them as old as the Christian era. 

 Dr. Gray beautifully says : " It is probable that close to the 

 heart of some of these living trees may be found the circle 

 that records the year of our Saviour's nativity." The Redwood 

 grows from shoots and seeds and bears egg-shaped solitary 

 cones about one inch long, but Sequoia gigantea grows from 

 seeds only, and its cones are remarkable for their small size, 

 being only one to one and a half inches in length. You may 

 get an idea of their size by the average English walnut of com- 

 merce, which they resemble, although more oval. 



The Redwood (S. sempervirens) is another noble tree, 

 and its habitat is restricted to California and not broadly dis- 

 seminated there ; on the contrary, it is confined to a narrow 

 belt of country lying along the sea-coast, its reach inland being 

 nowhere more than forty miles, and generally not half so far. 

 It may be said to reach from the ocean on the west to the sum- 

 mit of the Coast-range on the east. Beginning in Del Norte 

 County, occupying the north-western angle of the state, the 

 Redwood belt extends, with some gaps, down the coast four 

 hundred miles, to Santa Cruz, where, it has been said, is the 

 southerly Hmit of its growth ; but I have recentty seen some 

 trees in San Jose Canon, several miles south of Carmel Bay, 

 and there is a grove of Redwoods about thirty-five miles still 

 farther south, on the South Fork of Sur Chiquito, a good-sized 

 trout-stream running through narrow cations from its source 

 to the ocean, the North and South Fork coming together about 

 three miles from the ocean. The trees average smaller than 

 those growing north of the Golden Gate, but Mr. F. S. Douty 

 measured one that was thirty-eight feet in circumference five 

 and a half feet from the ground. 



Along the central portion of its range the Redwood occupies 

 the ground to the almost entire exclusion of all other trees. 

 Its distinguishing features are the great size of the trees, their 

 amazing vitality and the thickness with which they stand to- 

 gether. Search the world over, and nowhere else will you find 

 such an amount of timber to the acre. The trees vary in height 

 from 180 to 250 feet, and in diameter from nine to twelve feet. 

 They stand so thickly along the central portion of their range 

 that there is hardly space for a team to pass between them. 

 Twelve miles from Boulder Creek, Santa Cruz County, and less 

 than one hundred miles from San Francisco, there is a Red- 

 wood-tree, called the " Father of the Forest," which is said to 

 measure forty-two feet in diameter at its base, and twenty- 

 eight feet five feet from the ground, and is nearly three hun- 

 dred feet in height; the "Mother of the Forest" measures 

 twenty-four feet in diameter. 



In a'n acre of w^oodland near Highland, in Santa Cruz County, 

 Mr. W. E. Emery and a friend counted two hundred and thirty- 

 six trees from one and one-half to eight feet in diameter, and 

 they estimated that a single tree of the latter size would pro- 

 duce from 15,000 to 20,000 feet of lumber, and from such an 

 'acre might be taken a quarter of a million feet, but the average 

 yield per acre in lumber is 25,000 feet in Mendocino, Sonoma 

 and Santa Cruz Counties. In Humboldt County some acres in 

 flats along streams will yield as much as 500,000 feet, but care- 

 ful conservative owners of Redwood-lands in that county esti- 

 mate 60,000 feet as a fair average of lumber per acre. There 

 are of these Redwood-forests more than two million acres, 

 two-thirds of which are densely timbered. 



