March ii, i8gi.] 



Garden and Forest. 



109 



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. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles :— The Western Arbor- vitee. (With figure.) 



How to Begin Reform in Forest-management 



Castiglioni's Travels in the United States C. E. Faxon. 



The Sleepv Grass Dr. V. Havard, U. S. A. 



Can the Gypsy Moth be Exterminated ? J. G. Jack. 



New or Little Known Plants : — New Orchids Ii. A. Rolfe. 



Plant Notes : — Some Recent Portraits 



Cultural Department :— The Genus Cycas. (With figure.) W. Watson. 



Hardy Plant Novelties E. O. Orpct. 



NBtes from Cornell University C. IV. Mathews. 



OrchidNotes M. Barker. 



Cattleya s'peciosissima F. Atkins. 



Greenhouse Rhododendrons .W. 



Clerodendron Thompsonce J. S. T. 



Correspondence: — Wiid Flowers in California Carl Pur dy. 



Peaches and Yellows Professor John B. Smith. 



The Nettle-tree in New Jersey Rev. John E. Peters. 



Viola hastata S. F. G. 



Lilium Hansoni Max Leichtlin. 



Periodical Literature 



Exhibitions: — Orchids in New York 



Notes 



Illustrations : — Cycas pectinata, Fig. 22 



Thuya gigantea, Fig. 23 



AGE. 



109 

 no 

 no 



114 

 "5 

 "5 

 117 

 117 

 117 



118 

 118 



119 

 119 

 114 



The Western Arbor-vitas. 



THIS tree has played its part in the exciting drama of 

 early American transcontinental exploration. The 

 little band of travelers under the command of Captains 

 Lewis and Clark, after a long winter passed in the country 

 of the Mandans on the waters of the upper Missouri, left 

 their dreary camp in April, 1805, and pushed on into the 

 vague and mysterious regions which still separated them 

 from the shores of the Pacific, to reach which they had left 

 their homes in the east a year before. The mountain bar- 

 rier which divides the waters of the Atlantic from those of 

 the Pacific was overcome with comparatively little trouble 

 or hardship, for the pass by which they crossed and which 

 still bears the names of the leaders of the party is one of 

 the lowest and most easily approached of all the natural 

 highways which penetrate the continental divide. But 

 when this was passed, they entered into a region of mighty 

 mountains and of deep and swift-running rivers bordered 

 by forests, through which, except along the rare hunting- 

 trails of the Indians, travel was made almost impossible 

 by fallen timber larger than they had ever encountered 

 before. Here trees were seen which were new to them — 

 a great Spruce, with something of the appearance of a 

 Hemlock, but vastly larger than any Hemlock of the east, 

 and unknown Pines and Firs and many unfamiliar shrubs 

 and flowers, and the Arbor-vitas, which only caused com- 

 ment from its great and unusual size, for they did not real- 

 ize that they had found the giant of its race any more than 

 they realized that the Larch-tree, which they soon met with 

 in great numbers, was not the Larch of the eastern states, 

 but a species which they were the first white men to look 

 upon. The Arbor-vitse interested them, for in its tall 

 trunks they saw possible relief from the hardships of their 

 daily struggle with the unrelenting forces of the wilderness. 

 It was not, however, until the end of September, the men 

 being worn out with fatigue and hunger, that their leaders 

 determined to abandon their animals and entrust them- 

 selves to the rapid and uncertain currents of the river. On 

 that day, having found a grove of Arbor-vitae of proper size 



and at a convenient distance from one of the tributaries 

 of the upper Columbia, they proceeded to make five canoes, 

 which on the 10th of October, so industriously did they 

 labor, were ready for use, and which, after many dangers 

 had been overcome, floated the men who first crossed 

 North America to the shores of the Pacific. 



Lewis and Clark saw the western Arbor-vitse at the ex- 

 treme eastern limits of its distribution ; it had, however, 

 been seen a few years earlier on the coast of Alaska and 

 of Puget Sound by Vancouver at the time of his Pacific 

 voyage, and his naturalist and physician, Menzies, had 

 carried a few leaves back to England. It was not, how- 

 ever, until several years later, or about 1820, that it was 

 properly distinguished and described. It was Thomas 

 Nuttall, to whom Weyth brought specimens from the Flat 

 Head River, who gave to this tree the name of Thuya 

 gigantea. The name was well chosen. In a region of 

 great trees, of Sequoias, of Sugar Pines and of Douglas 

 Firs, the western Arbor-vitae holds its own for bigness, 

 sending up a mighty shaft free of limbs for perhaps a hun- 

 dred feet from an enormous enlarged base tapering gradu- 

 ally, until at twice the height of a man from the ground its 

 diameter may not be more than a dozen feet. Beside this 

 giant, the other Arbor-vitaes of the world appear like pig- 

 mies. There are not many of them now, although once 

 they or their ancestors occupied a more important place 

 in the forests of the world than they do at present. The 

 type of the genus, the familiar Arbor-vitae, inhabits the 

 northern and mountainous parts of eastern America ; Thuya 

 gigantea occupies similar positions on the Pacific side of 

 the continent ; one species, very similar in all the details 

 of its structure to the Pacific tree, occurs in Japan, and 

 another, which is often called Biota instead of Thuya, 

 having been considered at one time sufficiently distinct 

 from our Arbor-vitae to constitute a genus by itself, belongs 

 in China. 



Thuya gigantea is one of the most beautiful trees of the 

 American forest, and in cultivation it is not surpassed, in 

 its young state, at least, by any tree of its class. Econom- 

 ically it is of great importance. Lewis and Clark learned 

 the value of its trunks for canoes from the Indians, who 

 used no other tree for this purpose in all the region 

 where it is found ; and it is from the western Arbor-vitae 

 that the great canoes which astonished the early travelers 

 in Alaska were hewn. The inner bark was used by the 

 Indians for food, and cut into long strips it served to 

 hide their nakedness. The color of the wood, which is 

 dull red, has caused this tree to be called almost universally 

 in the north-west "Red Cedar" from its fancied resem- 

 blance probably to the so-called Red Cedar of the east. 

 The wood is very valuable ; it is light, soft and easily 

 worked, and so durable in contact with the ground, or 

 when exposed to the elements, that no one has ever known it 

 long enough to see it decay. It furnishes admirable material 

 for the interior and exterior finish of buildings, for fences 

 and for cooperage, and especially for shingles, which are 

 not inferior to those made from any other wood, and 

 which are now sent in large quantities, and of unusually 

 large size, to all parts of the country. 



Thuya gigantea, unfortunately, is not hardy in the eastern 

 states, and, like many of the trees of the Pacific forests, it 

 cannot be used to beautify and enrich our plantations. In 

 Europe, however, where it was first planted many years 

 ago, especially in England and in some parts of France, it 

 has grown rapidly and vigorously, and promises to be a 

 useful as well as an ornamental tree. 



There has been more or less confusion among culti- 

 vators in Europe with regard to the name of the western 

 Arbor-vitae, and this confusion serves to show the hold on 

 life a mistake of this sort has when it has once been made, 

 and how hopeless are the efforts of scientific men to cor- 

 rect popular errors. There are two of these Thuya-like 

 trees in western America ; both are giants and both 

 are beautiful and desirable trees in cultivation. One 

 is Tliuya gigantea, and the other is Libocedrus decurrens, a 



