November 2, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



517 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted bv Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, iS 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGF. 



Editorial Artici.ps :— Quercus dcnsiflora. (With figure.) 517 



The White Mountain Forests 517 



Grottoes in France 51S 



Are American Varieties of Fruits Best Adapted to American Conditions? 



Professor L. H. Beiiley. 518 



Hard Times in West Virginia Mrs. Danske Dandridge. 520 



New OR Little-known Plants : — Aster surculusus. (With figure.) 520 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson, 520 



Cultural Department :— Hardy Bulbs C L. A. 522 



Tlie Colchicums M. Barker. 523 



Cape O.valis.— HI IV. E. Endicott. 524 



Fern Notes W.H. Taplin. 524 



Magnolia Soulangeana, Cestrum aurantiacum, Phygelius Capensis, 



M. Earlier. 525 



Hardy Ever-blooming Roses Joseph MeeJian. 525 



Correspondence ; — Rambling Notes from the Ozarks Lora S. La Mance. 525 



The Sierra Nevada Forests Mark B. Kerr. 526 



Fungus Troubles in the Orchard Professor L. H. Bailey. 526 



A Good Hybrid Anlhurium R. M. G. 526 



Chrysanthemums at Short Hills, New Jersey X. 526 



Periodical Literature 527 



Notes 527 



Illustrations : — Aster surculosns, Fig. 88 521 



The Tan Bark Oak, Quercus densiflora. Fig. 89 523 



Ouercus densiflora. 



THE Tan Bark Oak, as Quercus densiflora is usually 

 called in California, is morphologically the most re- 

 markable of all the North American Oaks, and in some 

 respects is almost as much of a Chestnut as it is of an 

 Oak, although its fruit is a true acorn. The inflorescence 

 resembles that of the Cliestnut, and consists of a cluster of 

 long, erect aments, pistillate at the base and staminate 

 above, or entirely staminate, and particularly conspicuous 

 from the slender filaments many times longer than the 

 minute anthers. From those of the Chestnut, however, 

 the female flowers differ in being solitary, and not clus- 

 tered in the involucre which develops into the cup of the 

 acorn. This tree is particularly interesting, therefore, as 

 showing the near relationship between the Oak and the 

 Chestnut, while to the student of plant-archseology and of 

 the laws which govern the distribution of forms of plant- 

 life over the surface of the earth, it is of special interest. 

 No other tree in America or Europe resembles it, but in 

 eastern and southern Asia there is a whole group of Oaks 

 so similar in the structure of their flowers to this solitary 

 inhabitant of the New World that it is possible to suppose 

 that the Californian and the Asiatic trees possessed, not 

 very long ago, a cominon ancestor from which the two 

 lines, slightly differentiated in structure and now widely 

 separated geographically, have come down. The relation- 

 ship is all the more remarkable, because it is in the flora 

 of eastern America, and not in that of the western part of 

 this continent, that we are accustomed to find eastern 

 Asiatic t)'pes, and the peculiar trees of our Pacific forests 

 have few prototypes on the opposite shores of that ocean. 

 The Tan Bark Oak is one of the handsomest and most 

 useful Oaks of North America. Large specimens, which 

 are sometimes a hundred feet tall, develop a broadly conic 

 to oblong head of unusual regularity ancl beauty. Under 

 the shadow or on the borders of the forests of Redwood, 

 the favorite situation of this tree, it is forced upward in 



search of light, and then forins a more or less spire-like 

 top, but in open situations where light and space abound, 

 the branches spread out horizontally and form the broad 

 head which makes some individuals of this tree as hand- 

 some and symmetrical almost as it is possible for any Oak- 

 tree to become. The leaves are persistent through the 

 year, large, leathery, and lustrous, in shape and size not 

 inferior to those of a vigorous Chestnut-tree, but much 

 thicker, and while young covered on the lower surface 

 vi'ith pale tomentum which, in disappearing, leaves them 

 pale and smooth. Like all California Oaks, individuals of 

 Quercus densiflora differ remarkably when subjected to 

 different conditions of climate and soil. Sometimes they 

 are tall and stately trees, and sometimes little bushes with 

 slender stems only a fevif feet high. Sometimes the leaves 

 are six or seven inches long, sharply and boldly toothed, 

 and very thick ; on other individuals they are thin, entire 

 or nearly so, and barely an inch and a half long. The 

 fruit, however, with its beautiful shallow cups, silky- 

 tomentose oii the inner surface and covered with long 

 linear spreading and recurved scales, does not vary except 

 in size, so that when the trees are in flower or are bearing 

 fruit, it is easy to distinguish them in spite of the uncertain 

 characters afforded by the foliage. 



The wood of the Tan Bark Oak is hard and heavy ; it is 

 too porous, however, for casks, and, like that of all the 

 California Oaks, is too brittle to be of much use for the 

 purposes for which Oak-timber is mostly esteemed, 

 although it makes good fuel. The great value of the tree 

 is in the character of its bark ; this is extremely rich in 

 tannin, and leather made from the wood is of excellent 

 quality. The bark of no other tree of the Pacific coast is 

 so esteemed by tanners, and for years its systematic de- 

 struction has been going on in all the region it inhabits. 

 This, fortunately, is of considerable extent, as the Tan 

 Bark Oak is scattered over the coast-ranges from the valley 

 of the Yumqua River, in Oregon, to the Santa Lucia 

 Mountains, in southern California. Unlike some of our 

 eastern Oaks, however, it never forms a large part of the 

 forest, and although it was by no means a rare tree thirty 

 years ago, it was nowhere very abundant. Like other 

 Oaks, it reproduces itself freely if fire and browsing animals 

 do not destroy the young plants too often, but natural re- 

 production is not keeping pace with the annual destruction 

 of the old trees, and unless conditions of forest-manage- 

 ment in California are radically changed, in the course of 

 a few years the Tan Bark Oak, like several other California 

 trees, must become extremely rare, and California tanners 

 will have to depend on the Hemlock-forests of the far 

 r.orth, or on the bark of Australian Acacia-trees, raised in 

 the south, to supply their vats. This is a state of affairs 

 which they should nOt contemplate with equanimity, as it 

 will mean that they will not be able to compete advantage- 

 ously with the product of eastern tanneries. 



The illustration on page 523 of this issue displays a fine 

 specimen of Quercus densiflora, grown on the borders of 

 the forest, in the neighborhood of the Bay of San Fran- 

 cisco. For the photograph from which it has been made, 

 our thanks are extended to Mrs. T. S. Brandegee, of San 

 Francisco, who kindly furnished it for publication. 



The White Mountain Forests. 



IN the very first nuiTiberof the first volume of this journal 

 Francis Parkrnan made a plea for the preservation of 

 the forests of the White Mountains because of their impor- 

 tance as elements of the scenery which makes that region 

 so attractive to summer tourists, and so profitable, there- 

 fore, to the state of New Hampshire. This value is just as 

 real and tangible as is the modifying power of a tree-cov- 

 ered mountain-slope over the agriculture and manufactures 

 and general health of the people who live in the plains 

 below and receive their water from fountains above. It is 

 a value which can be estimated in dollars and cents as 

 truly as can the wood-products vidiich pass into economic 



