September 29, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



579 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — The Forests of Alaska 379 



Pollen-bearing vs. Plant Vigor M. G. Kains. 3S0 



Baron Von Mueller's Services to California Charles //. Shinn. 381 



Foreign Correspondence : — Nepenthes rK Watson. 3S2 



New or Little-known Plants: — Rhus trichocarpa. {With figure-). ... C. S. S. 3S4 



Cultural Department :— Raspberry, Bunvard's Superlative E. O. Orpet. 384 



The Cultivation of Cannas .' T. D. Hatfield. 384 



Notes on the Orchid-flowering Cannas Professor F. A. Waugk. 3S4 



Hot-house Palms G. W Oliver. 385 



Notes on Propagation IV. H. Tallin. 385 



Sternbergias J. N. Gerard. 386 



Calochorti in a Southern California Garden E D. Sturtevant. 386 



Correspondence : — Notes from Missouri Lora S. La Manee. 386 



A Missouri Fruit-farm Fanny Copley Seavey. 3S6 



A Wet Season D. H. R. Gaodale. 3S7 



Insects in the Garden Thomas Median. 387 



Recent Publications 387 



Notes 387 



Illustration : — Rhus trichocarpa, Fig. 49 383 



The Forests of Alaska. 



THE great maritime forest of north-western North 

 America, which at the south embraces the Redwoods 

 of California and spreads over western Oregon and Wash- 

 ington, terminates on the Alaskan coast on the eastern 

 shores of Kadiak Island, just below the fifty-eighth degree 

 of north latitude. Taken as a whole, this coniferous forest 

 is unequaled in productiveness and in the size, beauty 

 and value of its trees. Not only is the Redwood the largest 

 of all conifers, with the single exception of its relative of 

 the Sierras, which excels it in bulk of stem and branches, 

 but not in height, but in this 'maritime forest are found the 

 largest Spruce-tree and the largest Hemlock in the whole 

 world. Of the Arbor-vitses here grows the giant of its 

 race ; and of all the Cypress tribe none can equal Lawson's 

 Cypress in majesty of port. Here, too, the Alder becomes 

 a great tree, and Firs assume their noblest proportions. 



To-day, however, we would speak more particularly of 

 that part of this forest covering the coast mountains of 

 south-eastern Alaska, and which in many of its general 

 features resembles the forests of Puget Sound and of 

 western British Columbia, although the Douglas Spruce, 

 the most abundant tree on the shores of Puget Sound 

 and Vancouver Island where it surpasses all its associates 

 in height and in size of stem, does not reach Alaska. The 

 White Fir (Abies grandis), which is so conspicuous with its 

 tall pyramids of lustrous dark green foliage on the shores 

 of the Gulf of Georgia, is absent, too, from the Alaska forest, 

 as is the Great-leaved Maple (Acer macrophyllum), abundant 

 in all the coast region further south. The Arbor-vita? 

 (Thuya gigantea), which is common and of fine size on 

 Prince of Wales Island and on the southern part of the 

 Cleveland Peninsula, is rare, if it exists at all north of latitude 

 fifty-six ; and the coast forest of south-eastern Alaska is 

 composed almost entirely of two trees, the Sitka Spruce 

 (Picea Sitchensis) and Merten's Hemlock (Tsuga Merten- 

 siana). From the edge of tidewater these two trees grow up 

 to the timber line, which varies in elevation from 2, 500" to 

 4,000 feet, every where in dense, serried masses, like the blades 

 of grass in a meadow, covering all islands and the seaward 

 slopes of the mainland mountains, which shut off the mois- 

 ture from the dry interior. Sometimes the Spruces pre- 



dominate, especially toward the north ; sometimes the 

 Hemlocks are more abundant, and often the two are mixed 

 in nearly equal numbers. Through this forest the Sitka 

 Cypress (Cupressus Nootkatensis) is scattered, usually at ele- 

 vations of about 1,000 feet above the sea-level, although it 

 often descends to the water's edge. It grows not in large 

 bodies, but often in numbers sufficient to enliven the som- 

 bre Spruces and Hemlocks with the cheerful yellow tints of 

 the graceful frond-like branchlets which descend from the 

 wide-spreading branches of this splendid tree, unrivaled 

 by any other American conifer in the beauty and value of 

 its wood. On the margins of the little flats and beaches 

 which occur only at the mouths of streams — for on the 

 Alaska coast the mountains usually rise abruptly from the 

 sea — Alders of two kinds and the lovely Sitka Willow 

 light the borders of the forest ; and Alders sometimes 

 extend up the banks of streams or hang over rocky sea- 

 cliffs. On sloping seashore bogs, rich in mosses and studded 

 with many charming herbs and dwarf shrubs, Pinus con- 

 torta, the only Alaskan Pine, occurs rather sparingly ; and 

 on Baranof Island, near the town of Sitka, Patton's Spruce 

 (Tsuga Pattoni), which is probably widely distributed over 

 the coast mountains at high altitudes, descends with a few 

 small individuals nearly to the sea-level. These, with the 

 addition of the Balsam Poplar, which is only seen near 

 streams, and the little Rocky Mountain Maple (Acer glab- 

 rum) are the only trees of the coast forest of south-eastern 

 Alaska, which is remarkable in its poverty of species, in 

 its richness in individuals, and in the size these attain in the 

 thin soil, a few inches deep at best, and often on the nearly 

 perpendicular slopes of these glacier-swept hills. They are 

 wonderful, too, in the deep mosses of the forest floor, 

 and in their impenetrable undergrowth of Blue-berries of 

 many varieties, Salmon-berries, Menziesias, and the ter- 

 rible Devil's Club (Panax horrida), which so cover the ground 

 with their entangled stems that travel through the woods 

 is practically impossible. 



As compared with trees in forests further south, those of 

 Alaska are not large, although Spruces and Hemlocks a 

 hundred and fifty feet high, with trunks three or four feet 

 in diameter, are not rare at the sea-level as far north as 

 Baranof Island ; ascending from the shore, however, the 

 trees rapidly decrease in size and near the timber-line be- 

 come small and stunted, as they often do at the sea-level 

 at the heads of the numerous estuaries and fiords cut deeply 

 into the mainland coast range. 



The deepest and most interesting of these fiords, the 

 Lynn Canal, a narrow continuation of Chatham Strait, ex- 

 tends a hundred miles northward from the coast nearly to 

 the sixtieth degree, and at its head is fed by the waters of 

 the Chilkat, the Chilkoot and the Skagway rivers, swift 

 mountain streams, which afford difficult passage across 

 low passes into the interior to the headwaters of the great 

 western tributary of the Yukon. The forests at the head 

 of the Lynn Canal differ somewhat from those in the 

 region nearer the coast. The narrow bottom-lands are 

 covered with masses of Balsam Poplar or with the so-called 

 Green Alder, which here becomes a tree fifty feet high. 

 The Spruce is still abundant at the river-level and on the 

 lower slopes, but it is everywhere small and stunted. The 

 Hemlock also occurs here, but only sparingly, and not of 

 large size. The Pine is seen on the flats and at considera- 

 ble elevation on the hillsides, but here its leaves are broader 

 than those of the coast trees, and it is passing into the 

 variety Murrayana of the interior plateau, the Lodge-pole 

 Pine of our northern Rocky Mountains. A White Birch is 

 very common at low elevations, and is more like the 

 Birches of Siberia and northern Japan than any described 

 American species, and growing with it is Acer glabrum, 

 which is certainly the most widely distributed of all the 

 North American Maples, and probably the most boreal mem- 

 ber of the genus, and Patton's Spruce is at the timber line. 



When these passes from the humid coast region to the 

 dry interior are crossed an entirely different forest is en- 

 countered. The Hemlock and the Sitka Spruce have dis- 



