332 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 339. 



tial to hardy gardens in eastern America have more than 

 once been pretty fully noticed in one way or another, and 

 yet we shall be very glad to continue this work and make 

 it even more systematic in the future. 



Of course, there are many items of knowledge which no 

 text-book can convey. The plant which is picturesque and 

 attractive in one position will be a weed in another, and 

 this can only be learned by personal and familiar acquaint- 

 ance. Fortunately, it is one of the keenest delights of hor- 

 ticulture to make such acquaintance with plants. No doubt, 

 the manuals and journals can all improve upon their 

 methods of instruction, and we shall always welcome sug- 

 gestions in this direction ; we shall take pleasure also in 

 answering specific questions about specific subjects. But, 

 after all, the keenest satisfaction does not come from read- 

 ing what some one else has learned, but from actual and 

 practical experience in the garden. After all is told about 

 a plant and its habits a careful and sympathetic grower 

 will find that it develops under his hands characteristics of 

 which he had never dreamed— that is, it will never cease 

 to be an object of interest, a result certain to happen 

 just as soon as he knew it completely. It is the perennial 

 delight of horticulture, and the special delight of the peren- 

 nial garden, that it constantly offers a field for study and 

 for research ; that it has something new to unfold every 

 day ; that old plants are constantly developing new beau- 

 ties, and that new ones are constantly disappointing or 

 surprising. In short, a garden continues to be always at- 

 tractive because it is never finished. It will be enriched 

 with memories of success and failure every season ; but, 

 after all, its fresh and hopeful promise for the future will 

 never fail, but will stimulate an ever-renewed and ever- 

 deepening interest as the years move on. 



Some Trees at Rancho Chico. 



A GREAT many prominent persons remember with 

 pleasure the hospitality of Rancho Chico, in Butte 

 County, California, but the place is especially dear to bota- 

 nists. There the Sir Joseph Hooker Oak stands ; there the 

 late Dr. C. C. Parry spent many vacations, and the late Asa 

 Gray, John Muir, the mountaineer, and many others have 

 studied and admired that magnificent estate of 26,000 acres 

 of valley and foot-hill. 



Much of the ranch is still in forest — the primeval Oak 

 forest of the Sacramento valley. Along Rio Linda and 

 Chico Creek are thousands of the finest Sycamores in Cali- 

 fornia, often draped to their summits with the wild Grape- 

 vine. The range of native vegetation is very extensive, 

 and no species has been allowed to be destroyed. There 

 is a wild garden of many acres, unpastured and unmowed 

 these fifty years. 



But the grounds about the mansion alone afford sufficient 

 material for more than one article. Here, General Bidwell, 

 the owner of Rancho Chico, began to plant native and exotic 

 trees as early as 1856 in what was then a great unfenced 

 cattle range, on the north side of Chico Creek. Some earlier 

 efforts to move young Conifers from the Sierras had utterly 

 failed, when a Scotch gardener, named Carmichael, offered 

 to transplant specimens of native California trees to the 

 place. 



He brought down about a hundred selected specimens 

 of Pines, Firs and other Conifers ; of Mountain Oaks, of 

 Ceanothuses, Manzanitas and various shrubs. Every one 

 grew, and some of the Pines thus planted in 1856 are now 

 a hundred feet high, with trunks three and a half feet in 

 diameter. The bulk of the ornamental planting, however, 

 was not done until about 1868, and, except where otherwise 

 noted, the trees hereafter named are twenty-five or twenty- 

 six years old. In the first rank of notable trees is the 

 famous Rancho Chico Fig, which stands on the lawn east 

 of the mansion. It was illustrated several years ago in The 

 Century Magazine, but it is larger and more picturesque 

 now. The variety is the old Mission, known as Black 

 California, an immense bearer, not as hardy as some varie- 



ties, but in favorable situations one of the strongest growers 

 known. Spreading out from a central crown the tree has 

 sent out vast boughs that have rooted somewhat after the 

 fashion of an Indian Banyan, and so extended themselves. 

 It still keeps the appearance of a single tree, however — a 

 broad, low tree, fifty feet high, with boughs that cover a 

 circle nearly a hundred feet across. 



Two specimens of Quercus Robur merit attention. They 

 are very shapely, with clear trunks twenty inches in diam- 

 eter, and are, perhaps, forty-five feet high. A Quercus 

 Cerris of about the same age and size is heavily loaded 

 with acorns. Quercus aquatica and other American species 

 have evidently found a most congenial home here. 



Everywhere one notes with pleasure the free use made 

 of American trees and shrubs. Among many trees Juglans 

 Californica, one fine specimen, girths twelve feet, and is 

 about seventy-five feet high. The Catalpas are very large, 

 probably unsurpassed in California. Pecans and Hickories, 

 sixty feet high, are in full bearing. Sequoias (S. gigantea), 

 eighty feet high, stand with equally choice specimens of 

 Pinus ponderosa, Pseudotsuga taxifolia, Cupressus Law- 

 soniana, the giant Thuya, the Libocedrus and many other 

 notable trees. Still older Sycamores, Oaks (Quercus lobata) 

 and one giant Cottonwood (Populus Fremontii) stand on 

 the sloping banks of the stream, as they stood while Cali- 

 fornia was an obscure Mexican province. The Cotton- 

 wood is one of the great trees, a hundred feet high and 

 sixteen feet in circumference of trunk. It stands at a bend 

 of the stream, where its flowering season causes little or 

 no annoyance, and at all other times it is a grand specta- 

 cle of semi-tropic luxuriance. 



Here are American Elms that would not disgrace 

 New England, and superb evergreen Magnolias, seventy 

 feet high, and Olives whose trunks are mossed and ridged 

 till they seem century-old trees. But there is no more re- 

 markable tree on the grounds than the one specimen of 

 Flame-tree (Brachychiton diversiloba). This, I feel confi- 

 dent, is unique in its way. General Bidwell obtained a 

 small tree of this beautiful species some thirty years ago. 

 It grew rapidly and blossomed, but a very severe winter 

 killed it to the ground eight or nine years ago ; a sprout 

 came up, and it is now a straight and lovely shaft of 

 smooth silken green, crowned with the charmingly diver- 

 sified foliage so characteristic of the species. 



Among other species that are not American one ob- 

 serves a fine Ginkgo biloba, perhaps thirty-five feet 

 high ; a Camphor-tree, about sixty-five feet high ; a tall 

 Cedrus deorara, a most beautiful specimen of Thuya gra- 

 cilis pendula, fully seventy feet high ; a very large Cryp- 

 tomeria Japonica ; a Tamarix, whose trunk is eighteen 

 inches in diameter, and a Chamaerops excelsa, whose 

 crown is well up among the older trees of the garden. 



The collection contains some particularly fine Lauruses — 

 an L. Chinensis, twenty-six feet high and eighteen feet 

 across, the branches extending downward to the ground ; 

 also equally good specimens of L. Cerris and L. Japonica. 

 Then, too, one notes such distinctive American shrubs and 

 small trees as Ceanothus cuneatus, Heteromeles arbutifolia 

 and several of the Manzanitas. The beautiful pink-flow- 

 ered Acacia of Constantinople, Albizzia Julibrissin, leans 

 over the bridge by the entrance to the grounds. 



The list might easily be made twice as long. Even as 

 it is, I have not described the superb Chestnuts, the Ameri- 

 can Persimmons, the Cherry-trees, that are among the 

 largest in California, and many other notable specimens 

 that attract little attention here, where they seem lost in 

 the multitude. Sufficient has, perhaps, been said, how- 

 ever, to draw the attention of students to this collection, 

 the finest in northern California. It only remains to be 

 added that the grounds are freely open to the public every 

 day, except Sunday, and will amply repay a visit. Severe 

 thinning is now necessary to preserve the shape of the 

 finer specimens, but if this is properly done these grounds 

 will long increase in botanical and historic importance. 

 Berkeley, Calif. Charles Howard Sliinn. 



