420 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 505. 



The aims of associations like this and the work of 

 their members are indications of a high order of intelli- 

 gence and civilization in any community, and such un- 

 selfish and patriotic effort deserves the encouragement and 

 assistance of the public. 













The withdrawal from sale and entry of all Government 

 land more valuable for the production of timber than for 

 other purposes was recommended by the Commission 

 appointed by the National Academy of Sciences to study, 

 at the request of the Secretary of the Interior, a forest policy 

 lor the United States. The proposition was considered radi- 

 cal by many persons, but no w it has been endorsed by the Na- 

 tional Irrigation Congress at its recent meeting in Lincoln, 

 Nebraska, which finds that "the perpetuation of the forests 

 of the arid regions is essential to the maintenance of water- 

 supply for irrigation as well as for the supply of timber for 

 industrial needs, and resolves that the President of the 

 United States shall be memorialized, so soon as a proper 

 and adequate form of administration shall be provided, 

 to withdraw from entry and sale under the Act of Con- 

 gress of March 3d, 1891, all public lands which are of more 

 value f<ir their timber than for agriculture or their minerals." 

 This is particularly interesting, showing as it does a great 

 change of public opinion since the time, still recent, when 

 some of the most influential advocates for Government 

 cooperation in providing irrigation for the west urged that 

 as forests were detrimental to the flow of streams they 

 should be destroyed. It seems to show, too, that the real 

 opposition to a conservative national forest policy comes 

 from the great corporations who derive large profits from 

 plundering the Government and from their paid attorneys 

 in Congress, and confirms our own observations that a 

 large majority of the people living in the western states 

 and territories are anxious for the preservation of the 

 national forests and opposed to the selfishness of the min- 

 ing and timber-cutting companies. Unfortunately, however, 

 the opponents of greed and depredation are not as 

 well organized as the plunderers, and they are without 

 proper representation in Washington. Public opinion, 

 however, is gradually changing on the subject of forests in 

 the west as well as in the east, and the time will come 

 when the present era of wanton forest destruction will be 

 regarded as one of the serious blots upon the intelligence 

 and foresight of the American people. 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — IV. 



IN the last number of these notes we described those 

 junipers of the section Oxycedrus which can be grown 

 in northern gardens. More important than these are the 

 species included in the section Sabina, di>tinguished by the 

 scale-like crowded leaves closely appressed and adnate to 

 mature branches, while on seedling plants and frequently 

 on vigorous shoots they are elongated, sharp-pointed, free 

 and more or less spreading. To this section belong all the 

 large and valuable species of both hemispheres and a few 

 good garden plants, although most of these Junipers are 

 natives of hot, dry regions and cannot bear the humidity of 

 the Atlantic states. Eight, at least, of these arborescent 

 junipers inhabit the United States, and, with one exception, 

 they belong to the west and south-west and to regions of 

 scanty rainfall and long, hot, dry summers, and wherever 

 junipers of this section grow, except in eastern North 

 America, Bermuda, the West Indian and Atlantic islands, 

 and in Sikkim, the rainfall is unequally distributed and the 

 soil is rocky and sterile. 



One of the largest and most valuable of the entire genus, 

 however, Juniperus Virginiana, which is a native of the 

 eastern United States, is one of the handsomest and most 

 desirable coniferous trees which can be cultivated in this 

 climate. Common from Nova Scotia to southern Florida 

 and central Texas, and from the shores of the Atlantic to 

 the valley of the Missouri River, the Red Cedar, as this tree 



is universally called, assumes many forms under the various 

 conditions of its surroundings. In the valley of the Red 

 River in Texas and Arkansas it is sometimes a hundred 

 feet high, with a tall straight trunk three or four feet in 

 diameter; usually it is much smaller, however, and gen- 

 erally forty or fifty feet in height. Sometimes, especially 

 during its early years, the slender branches are pressed 

 close against the stem from the base upward and form a 

 narrow pyramidal head, which in time usually broadens 

 out and finally becomes round-topped and very irregular. 

 This pyramidal form is especially common in the valley of 

 the Hudson River and in some parts of New Jersey and 

 eastern Pennsylvania ; in New England, after the first 

 twenty or thirty years, when the Red Cedar is nearly always 

 pyramidal, the stems often become naked below and the 

 head a broad-based pyramid of slender branches spreading 

 below nearly horizontally and ascending above ; and in 

 the swamps of Florida, where this tree is common and 

 grows to a large size, the branches are long and often pen- 

 dulous. The foliage of the Red Cedar is dark yellow- 

 green, or often pale glaucous, becoming bronze-colored at 

 the north during cold weather, and in autumn and winter, 

 when birds do not eat them, the branches are loaded with the 

 small berries, which are covered with a handsome whitish 

 bloom. 



Juniperus Virginiana has usually been considered to cross 

 the continent to the shores of Puget Sound and Vancouver 

 Island, and to be pretty widely distributed through the 

 interior Rocky Mountain region from the northern border 

 of the United States to northern New Mexico and Arizona. 

 After having seen, however, a good deal of this western 

 tree during the past two seasons, I am inclined to believe 

 that the so-called western Red Cedar as it grows in 

 Wyoming, Montana and Colorado, at least, and perhaps 

 everywhere, will have to be considered another species, 

 and should this supposition prove correct on further inves- 

 tigation, I should propose the name of Juniperus scopu- 

 lorum for it. The habit of the Rocky Mountain tree is 

 very unlike that of any form of the eastern Red Cedar, as 

 may be seen in our illustration on page 423 of this issue, 

 which represents a tree near the Mammoth Hot Springs in 

 the Yellowstone National Park, where this Juniper is very 

 common, and the only arborescent species, and where it 

 grows on gravelly slopes at elevations of six or seven 

 thousand feet with Pinus flexilis. It has the slender branch- 

 lets and opposite leaves in pairs of the eastern tree, but the 

 fruit is larger, and does not ripen until the second year, 

 while that of our Red Cedar ripens during its first autumn. 

 The branches are stouter and covered with more scaly 

 bark, and the bark of the trunk, which is often forked near 

 the ground, is unlike that of the eastern tree, which sepa- 

 rates into thin narrow scales fringed on the margins, but, 

 like that of some other western junipers, divides into irregu- 

 lar, narrow, connected flat ridges, which break up on the 

 surface more or less freely into persistent shreddy scales. 

 The wood has the same fragrance as that of the eastern 

 tree, although it is rather less powerful, and the color is 

 a duller red. The habit and the character of the bark 

 may be due, perhaps, to differences of soil and climate, 

 which might also affect the color of the wood, and the only 

 really tangible character by which the western tree can be 

 separated from the eastern is the biennial fruit. The 

 fact, moreover, is significant that unless the eastern and 

 western trees come together in north-western Nebraska, 

 the meeting place of the eastern and western floras, they 

 are separated by a continuous belt of country through the 

 middle of the continent several hundred miles wide ; and 

 moreover, with the exception of Juniperus communis, 

 which encircles the northern hemisphere, and the White 

 Spruce, which crosses this continent far northward and 

 reaches the Pacific coast within the Arctic Circle, no 

 coniferous tree grows in both eastern and western North 

 America. But before the question of the distribution of the 

 Red Cedar can be satisfactorily determined more observa- 

 tions should be made on the time of ripening of the fruit, 





