5i6 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 514. 



which is common from south of Mer Rouge to New Or- 

 leans. Here I saw also the common Papaw, which I had 

 not observed further south. Leaving Mer Rouge, I went 

 to Varner, Arkansas, where I spent two days in examining 

 the country near the railway station. Here I observed the 

 French Mulberry in abundance, and also the White Ash. 

 The second day I went some distance into the lowlands, 

 across Cypress Creek, and here I found Fraxinus profunda 

 in great quantities, besides plenty of Green and White Ashes. 

 I examined several hundred trees of Fraxinus profunda, but 

 could not find any fruit, although I secured good leaf speci- 

 mens, as well as those of Leitneria, which is also abundant 

 here. My guide told me that the people in the neighbor- 

 hood called Fraxinus profunda Pumpkin Ash on account of 

 its being swell-butted, a character which I had already 

 noted in the trees in Missouri. This Ash grows here to a 

 height of one hundred feet, with a trunk eighteen inches 

 in diameter, and is larger and better developed and 

 more abundant than I have seen it elsewhere. The Leit- 

 neria was also larger than at Apalachicola, being here 

 about twelve feet in height, with stems nearly four 

 inches in diameter. The Arkansas River is only six miles 

 distant from this point, and although I examined the 

 country carefully the next day I did not see either a 

 Pumpkin Ash or Leitneria on its banks. 



Leaving Pine Bluff, I went next to Marked Tree, Arkan- 

 sas, where I fully expected to find both Fraxinus profunda 

 and Leitneria, as this place is at the junction of the St 

 Francis and Little Rivers, on which further up in Mis- 

 souri I had collected the two trees. I was disappointed 

 however, in not finding either of them. Leaving Marked 

 Tree, I went to Papaw Junction, in New Madrid County, 

 Missouri, where I found the Fraxinus profunda in abundance, 

 and where it is almost the only Ash. Here the trees were 

 in splendid fruit. At this point the Green Ash appears to 

 be rare, and, on account of the exceedingly dry season and 

 the draining of the overflow of Little River by a new canal, 

 the fruits of the Pumpkin Ash were remarkably small here, 

 still showing, however, the characteristic form which first 

 attracted my attention. 



I saw no Leitneria at Papaw this year, although when I 

 was there two seasons ago I was told that it grew in the 

 neighboring swamp. This is probably true, as the condi- 

 tions for it are exactly right. The Pumpkin Ash here is a 

 rather medium-sized tree, growing to a height of about 

 fifty feet, with a trunk a foot in diameter. I am of the 

 opinion that the regions of the greatest abundance and 

 largest development of the Ash and the Leitneria are some- 

 where in the vicinity of Big Lake, that is, in south-eastern 

 Missouri and north-eastern Arkansas. 



Courtney, Mo. -#. P. BuS/l. 



The Forest. 

 The Shasta Fir (Abies Shastensis). 



AMONG the conifers of the Pacific coast, two Firs, Abies 

 L nobilis and Abies magnifica, have long been a hard 

 knot for botanists. Abies nobilis was described in 1833, 

 Abies magnifica in 1863, and after various bibliographical 

 vicissitudes, during which the real distinctness of the two 

 was seriously questioned by the highest botanical authori- 

 ties both in the United States and Great Britain, the essen- 

 tial distinctive character of the species was considered by 

 Dr. Engelmann in 1878* to be the exserted bracts on the 

 cones of A. nobilis, a tree of the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, 

 and the included bracts of A. magnifica, a tree of the Sierra 

 Nevada of California, a position he still maintained in 

 i88o.f Two years later, however, after a trip through 

 Oregon and California with Professor C. S. Sargent, he ex- 

 pressed the opinion that the real differential mark of the two 

 trees was the grooved leaf of A. nobilis and the two-keeled 

 leaf of A. magnifica. J Now, on Mount Shasta, which is inter- 



* Engelmann, Trans. St. Louis Acad., iii., 602 (187S). 



t Engelmann in Brewer and Watson, Bot. Cal., ii , 119 (1880). 



X Engelmann, Bot. Gazette, vii., 4 (1882). I find that while Dr. Engelmann was the 



mediate in geographical position between the Cascades and 

 the Sierra Nevada, occur large forests of a Fir with two- 

 keeled leaves and exserted bracts. In the light of his earlier 

 opinion Dr. Engelmann considered this tree a form of A. 

 nobilis, but afterward, in the light of his later opinion, a 

 form of A. magnifica. 



In 1890 Mr. J. G. Lemmon took the matter up, following 

 Dr. Engelmann's later view that the grooved leaf consti- 

 tuted the real character of A. nobilis, and ventured to de- 

 scribe the Mount Shasta tree as a variety, Shastensis, of Abies 

 magnifica ; and in May of the present year he published it 

 as a distinct species, Abies Shastensis. 



During the past summer the writer, in company with Mr. 

 Elmer I. Applegate, of Klamath Falls, Oregon, had ample 

 opportunity, on a journey from end to end of the Cascade 

 Mountains of Oregon, to examine both A. nobilis and A. Shas- 

 tensis. As no botanist has made this trip before, many 

 new facts regarding the geographical distribution of plants 

 were observed, and among other interesting things, the 

 most of which must be deferred for later publication, the 

 rather startling discovery was made that the bracted Fir 

 abundant in the Crater Lake region and for nearly a hun- 

 dred miles toward the north along the Cascades, is not 

 Abies nobilis, as has heretofore been supposed, but is in 

 reality Abies Shastensis. 



We entered the Cascade Mountains from the east at a 

 point about fifteen miles north of the Oregon-California 

 boundary, and turning northward from Buck Lake toward 

 Lake of the Woods, we came upon the Shasta Fir near the 

 summit of the divide between these two lakes at an eleva- 

 tion of a little more than 5,000 feet. On the following day, 

 traveling south-westw r ard from the Lake of the Woods about 

 two miles on the Dead Indian Road we found the tree 

 again, on the summit of a divide of about the same altitude 

 as the other, and probably continuous with it. These two 

 localities, about twelve miles south-east of Mount Pitt, are 

 situated near the point where the great Cascade Range 

 breaks down, being separated from Mount Shasta, sixty 

 miles to the south, by a broad gap through which the 

 Klamath River flows oceanward from the elevated plains 

 of the interior. 



From these first localities we observed the tree north- 

 ward along the Cascades at points of suitable elevation as 

 far as the mountain immediately south of Davis Lake, one 

 of the reservoir sources of the Deschutes River, about lati- 

 tude forty-three degrees thirty-five minutes. The tree has 

 been reported by Mr. Lemmon as occurring also west- 

 ward from the Cascade-Shasta gap in various smaller ranges 

 toward the sea, including Mount Eddy, the Trinity Moun- 

 tains, Scott Mountains and the Siskiyou Mountains, all 

 except the last lying wholly south of the Oregon-California 

 line. 



The individual localities at which we saw the tree in ad- 

 dition to the first two already cited, are in detail as follows : 

 Sparingly about the base of Mount Pitt, in the vicinity of 

 Four-mile Lake, and for three or four miles down the 

 stream that forms its outlet ; abundant along the upper part 

 of Anna Creek Canon to Crater Lake and down the Rogue 

 River road on the western slope of the mountains to Whiskey 



first, apparently, to bring this leaf distinction prominently before botanists, espe- 

 cially as a key to the difference between true nobilis and the Mount Shasta tree, that 

 this leaf character had been advanced as early as 1875 {Gardeners' Chronicle, page 

 752) by Mr. Syme, the London nurseryman, as a means of distinguishing nobilis 

 from magnifica. In the note, written by Andrew Murray, in which this character is 

 announced there is an evident hesitation to assert its constancy. The note reads, 

 . . . "There are a great many plants in this country (Great Britain) which have 

 always been considered Picea nobilis (now Abies nobilis), which have been bought 

 as P. nobilis, which have been raised from seed sent home to Great Britain as P. 

 nobilis which yet have tetragonal leaves. I anticipate Mr. Syme's answer to this 

 objection, that P. magnifica has been confounded with P. nobilis in its native coun- 

 try (tile north-west coast of America), and that these plants with subtetragonal leaves 

 are really P. magnifica raised from seed sent home as P. nobilis by mistake." This 

 suggested solution of the difficulty is undoubtedly correct in the main, but the trees 

 cultivated in Great Britain under the incorrect name Abies nobilis, having tetragonal 

 or two-keeled leaves, may be not magnifica alone, but some of them Shastensis. 

 The original importation of seeds by David Douglas in 1830, was, of course, true 

 nobilis. John Jeffrey's importation, in 1851-53, was a failure, as none of his seeds 

 grew. The seeds sent by William Murray and A. F. Beardsley a few years later 

 reached Great Britain in good condition and were successfully grown, but none of 

 these could have been A. nobilis, for that tree does not grow in the region in which 

 they got their seeds. All the trees grown from this importation must be either 

 magnifica or Shastensis. 



