January 27, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



39 



shrubs associate very thickly." This plant Dr. Coues refers 

 to Amelanchier alnifolia, which he believes becomes semi- 

 evergreen on the Oregon coast. This, however, seems to 

 be a doubtful statement, and wherever we have seen this 

 widely distributed shrub or small tree its leaves are truly 

 deciduous. It was more probably the evergreen Vaccinium 

 ovatum than an Amelanchier that the travelers tried to 

 describe. 



Of the large trees of the coast " the first species grows to 

 an immense size" (iii., 829). "The trunks are very com- 

 monly twenty-seven feet in circumference six feet above 

 the earth's surface ; they rise to the height of two hundred 

 and thirty feet, one hundred and twenty of that height with- 

 out a limb. We have often found them thirty-six feet in 

 circumference. One of our party measured one and found 

 it to be forty-two feet in circumference, at a point beyond 

 the reach of an ordinary man. . . . The timber is sound 

 throughout and rives better than any other species; the 

 bark scales off in flakes irregularly round, and of a reddish 

 brown color, particularly the younger growth. . . . The 

 leaf is acerose, one-tenth of an inch in width, three-fourths in 

 length, firm, stiff and acuminate. It is triangular, a little 

 declining, thickly scattered on all sides of the bough, and 

 springs from small triangular pedestals of soft spongy elastic 

 bark at the junction of the boughs. " This first species Dr. 

 Coues tells us "is probably Abies nobilis, the Red Fir of 

 the Pacific coast." Lewis andClark, however, probably never 

 ascended the mountains high enough to see Abies nobilis 

 or Abies amabilis which grow only at considerable alti- 

 tudes above the sea-level, and their description is an admi- 

 rable one of the tide-water Spruce, Picea Sitchensis, which 

 is the only tree at the mouth of the Columbia which attains 

 the size which they describe. Their second conifer (iii., 

 830) is correctly referred by Dr. Coues to Tsuga Merten- 

 siana. The third species (iii., 831) resembles, they tell us, 

 " in all points the Canadian Balsam Fir. It grows from 

 two and a half to four feet in diameter and rises to the 

 height of eighty or one hundred feet. The leaves are ses- 

 sile, acerous, one-eighth of an inch in length and one-six- 

 teenth in width, thickly scattered on the twigs, adherent to 

 the three under sides only, gibbous, a little declining, 

 obtusely pointed, soft and flexible. This' tree affords, in 

 considerable quantities, a fine, deeply aromatic balsam, 

 resembling the balsam of Canada in taste and appearance. 

 The wood is white and soft." Of this tree Dr. Coues says, 

 "the third species is uncertain, possibly Thuya gigantea," 

 but the description points to a Balsam Fir, and evidently to 

 Abies grandis, which is the common and only species near 

 the sea-level at the mouth of the Columbia. The fourth 

 species resembles (iii., 831) the second (Tsuga Mertensiana) 

 in size. " The bark is of a dark reddish brown, thicker 

 than that of the third species, divided by small longitudinal 

 interstices, not so much magnified as in the second species. 

 In relative position the leaves resemble those of the Bal- 

 sam Fir, excepting that they are only two-thirds the width 

 and little more than one-half the length, and that the upper 

 disk is not so green and glossy. The wood yields no bal- 

 sam and but little rosin. The wood is white and tough, 

 though rather porous." This, we suspect, is only a form 

 of the Hemlock, although Dr. Coues believes it to be Abies 

 grandis. The absence of balsam would seem, however, 

 to suggest some other genus. The fifth species is probably, 

 as Dr. Coues suggests, the Douglas Spruce, although the thin 

 bark "scaling off in thin rolling flakes " would better apply 

 to Picea Sitchensis. The description, however, of the cone 

 of what was believed to be the same tree growing on low 

 marshy ground leaves no doubt of the identity of this last 

 with the Douglas Spruce. The sixth species (ii., 832) " does 

 not differ from what is usually denominated the White Pine in 

 Virginia. The unusual length of the cone seems to consti- 

 tute the only difference. This is sometimes sixteen or eigh- 

 teen inches in length and aboutfourin circumference. It 

 grows on the north side of the Columbia, near the ocean." 

 Dr. Coues refers, without hesitation, this treetoPinus Lam- 

 bertiana, the well-known Sugar Pine. The length of the cone, 



if the measurement is correctly given, would certainly 

 point to that tree. No one, however, since the time of 

 Lewis and Clark, so far as we have been able to learn, has 

 ever seen Pinus Lambertiana growing north of the Colum- 

 bia River or north of the Santiam River valley, fully a 

 hundred miles south of the Columbia. Pinus Monticola, 

 another White Pine, does grow in the coast region of Wash- 

 ington, but the cones of this tree are rarely more than eight 

 or nine inches in length. The seeds of the Sugar Pine, 

 however, were an important article of food to the Indians 

 of south-western Oregon, and it is not impossible that the 

 cones described by our travelers may have come into pos- 

 session of some of the Indians on the Columbia River 

 through barter with their southern neighbors, and that 

 Lewis and Clark may have been misled as to the habitat of 

 the trees producing them. At any rate, it hardly seems 

 possible that they could have seen the Sugar Pine. 



The seventh and last species (iii., 832), which is described 

 as seldom rising higher than thirty-five feet, with a trunk 

 not more than two and a half to four feet in diameter, is 

 probably a depauperate form of Picea Sitchensis to which 

 Dr. Coues has referred it. The tree of the lower Columbia 

 River resembling the Ash, when divested of its foliage (iii., 

 834), with leaves divided into four deep lobes, is Acer macro- 

 phyllum, here first described, although a technical descrip- 

 tion of it was not published until somewhat later. On the 

 same page is the first description, too, of the Vine Maple, 

 Acer circinatum. The earliest account of Sambucus glauca 

 appears on page 835, where the fruit is well described as 

 pale sky-blue. 



In ascending the Columbia on the return journey, on the 

 4th of April, 1806, the travelers noticed for the first time 

 Cornus Nuttallii (ii., 930), and on this day a fallen Fir-tree 

 was seen which, including the stump of about six feet, was 

 318 feet in length, although its diameter was only three 

 feet. This probably, judging from the small diameter of 

 the trunk in proportion to the height, was Abies grandis. 

 Few taller trees have actually been measured in the United 

 States. The Crimson Haw seen on the Walla Walla River 

 on April 30th, 1806 (iii., 979), is probably Crataegus coc- 

 cinea, var. macracantha, which would here be near the 

 extreme western limits of its range. The Purple Haw 

 found at the western base of the Bitterroot Mountains (iii., 

 104 1 ) is referred by Dr. Coues to Viburnum pauciflorum. 

 We should have supposed, however, that Purple Haw here 

 means Crataegus Douglasii. In the same paragraph there 

 is described "a species of dwarf Pine, ten or twelve feet 

 high, which might be confounded with the young Pine of 

 the long-leaved species, except that the former bears a cone 

 of a globular form, with small scales, and that its leaves are 

 in fascicles of twos, resembling in length and appearance 

 those of the common Pitch Pine." This undoubtedly is 

 another reference to the Lodge Pole Pine, Pinus contorta. 



On June 15th (iii., 1043), the party, then ascending the 

 upper Clearwater to cross the Bitterroot range, found a 

 "thick growth of Long-leaved Pine, with some Pitch Pine, 

 Larch, White Pine, White Cedar, or Arbor Vita?, of large 

 size, and a variety of Firs." The Long-leaved Pine here is 

 Pinus ponderosa, the Pitch Pine is Pinus contorta, the Larch 

 is Larix occidentalis, which here first makes its appearance 

 in literature, although it was not described until 1S49 ; the 

 White Pine is Pinus flexilis, and the White Cedar, or Arbor 

 Vitae, again referred by Dr. Coues to Thuya occidentalis, 

 is Thuya gigantea. The Firs are Abies grandis at low 

 elevations, and near the summit of the mountain Abies 

 lasiocarpa, these being the only Fir-trees of these 

 forests. The Larch is mentioned again on page 1066 as 

 confined with the Firs to the higher parts of the hills, 

 " while the Long-leaved Pine grows as well in the river- 

 bottoms as on the hills." The Cottonwood mentioned here, 

 " with a wider leaf than that of the upper part of the .Mis- 

 souri, though narrower than that which grows lower down 

 the river," is probably Populus angustifolia, a species which 

 varies considerably in the width of the leaves. 



On the 25th of July, 1806, Captain Lewis, having recrossed 



