May 6, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



205 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted bv Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article :— The Douglas Fir. (With figure.) 205 



A Call Eornia Cemetery Charles Hoivard Shinn. 206 



The Sap and Sugar of the Maple-tree.— Ill . . William D. Ely. 207 



Winter Studies of the Pine Barren Flora of Lake Michigan.— III. E. J. Hill. 208 

 New or Little Known Plants : — Encephalartos Frederici Guilielmi. (With 



fio-ure.) ^ Watson. 208 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson. 209 



Cultural (Department :— Earliness in Vegetables T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 210 



The Egg-plant and its Cultivation 212 



Garden Annuals E. O. Orpet. 212 



Odontoglossum (Erstedii 7- Weathers. 213 



Iris Caucasica, Scilla trifolia, Phlox subulata Sadie, Begonia Triomphe 



de Lcmoine, Begonia Louis Closson J. N. G. 213 



Correspondence : — Botanical Nomenclature B. E. Eemow. 213 



April Flowers in Northern California CarlPurdy. 214 



Washington in April M. Fuller. 214 



Orchids' at Whitinsville W. S. 215 



Recent Publications 21s 



Notes 2l6 



Illustrations :— Encephalartos Frederici Guilielmi, Fig. 37 209 



The Douglas Fir, Fig. 38 211 



The Douglas Fir. 



THE Douglas Fir, from many'points of view, is one of 

 the most interesting- trees of the American forest. 

 Its monotypic character, its probably recent development 

 in its distinct existing form, for the record of the ages has not 

 divulged the secrets of its ancestry, the vastness of the 

 region it occupies, its size and value to man, its beauty 

 and capacity of adapting itself to new surroundings, all 

 make the Douglas Fir an important inhabitant of the 

 forests of western America — forests remarkable for the 

 variety, size and value of the cone-bearing trees of which 

 they are principally composed. 



The Douglas Fir is distinguished from the true -Firs or 

 Abies by its petioled leaves, which, in falling, leave oval 

 scars, by its pendulous cones with persistent scales, and 

 by its seeds, which are not furnished with resin vesicles. 

 It looks, moreover, in general appearance, more like a 

 Hemlock than a Fir; it differs from the Hemlock, how- 

 ever, in the absence of the permanent, persistent bases of 

 the fallen leaves which roughen the branchlets of all 

 Hemlock-trees, and in its much larger cones, which may 

 be always recognized by the large acutely two-lobed and 

 long-pointed bracts extended beyond the scales. It can 

 be readily known, too, by the flat, distinctly stalked leaves 

 which are somewhat two-ranked by a slight twist at their 

 base. 



Where climatic conditions favor the growth of large 

 trees, as they do in the humid region of western Washing- 

 ton and Oregon, or on the middle western slopes of the 

 northern Sierra Nevada, the Douglas Fir often rises, in the 

 course of five or six hundred years, to the height of three 

 hundred feet, and forms a trunk ten or twelve feet in 

 diameter above its enlarged base. The bark, which, like 

 that of the Hemlocks, contains a considerable amount of 

 tannin, is thick, deeply furrowed, and dark brown or red, 

 or sometimes gray, in certain situations. Young trees, 

 like young Spruces and Firs, are pyramidal in form, and 

 retain their lower branches for a considerable time, some- 



times even for two or three hundred years, when the 

 individual finds sufficient space for their lateral growth, as 

 it does occasionally when it has stood on the margin of 

 the forest or on the steep slopes of some mountain canon. 

 Usually, however, the trees stand close together, especially 

 in those parts of the country in which, under the favoring 

 influences of a heavy rain-fall, they grow to the largest 

 size, and then their great trunks tower upward, for a 

 hundred feet or more, without a branch. The leaves are 

 linear and generally obtuse, an inch or an inch and a 

 quarter long, dark green and very abundant, covering the 

 long, slender, graceful branchlets. The flowers of the 

 Douglas Fir are produced from the axils of the leaves of 

 the previous year, the males surrounded by conspicuous 

 bud-scales, the females much shorter than their narrow 

 bracts. The cones, which are subcylindrical, ripen the 

 first year, and vary in length from two to four inches. 

 The seeds are triangular, convex, and red on the upper 

 side, flat and nearly white on the lower side, with short 

 wings, broad at the base and acute at the apex. 



The Douglas Fir extends from latitude fifty-five north, 

 where it is found in the coast ranges and on the interior 

 plateau of British Columbia, southward through all the 

 region west of the Cascade and the Sierra Nevada Moun- 

 tains to southern California. It is abundant in the Rocky 

 Mountains from British Columbia far into Mexico, extend- 

 ing eastward to their eastern slopes in Montana, Wyoming, 

 Colorado and Texas ; it is common on the Wahsatch and 

 Uintah Mountains in Utah, but is unknown on the ranges 

 of the great basin and on the eastern slopes of the Sierra 

 Nevada. It is most abundant and reaches its greatest size 

 on the low glacial plain which surrounds the shores of 

 Puget Sound. Here the Douglas Fir can be seen in all its 

 majesty. It is the most common tree in a forest in which 

 trees stand so close together that the traveler can barely 

 push his way between their mighty trunks which support 

 far above his head a canopy so dense that the rays of the 

 sun never pierce it. Through these dark and awful shades 

 the most thoughtless man cannot pass without experiencing 

 that sense of solemnity and awe with which the human 

 mind is impressed when confronted by Nature in her 

 grandest manifestations. 



The Douglas Fir grows almost as large on some of the 

 California mountain-slopes as on the shores of Puget 

 Sound, and it is one of the remarkable things about this 

 tree that it flourishes at the sea-level and on high moun- 

 tains. In California it often grows to a great size at ele- 

 vations varying from 6,000 to 8,000 feet above the sea, 

 and sometimes ascends on the Rocky Mountains of Colo- 

 rado to even higher altitudes, although it is always 

 smaller and less valuable as a timber-tree in the dry inte- 

 rior portions of the continent than in the moist coast region. 

 Other trees of the Pacific forest produce more valuable 

 wood than the Douglas Fir — the Port Orford Cedar, the 

 Sugar Pine and the Redwood. These trees are confined 

 to a comparatively small region, however, and the Douglas 

 Fir, in view of the great territory over which it has spread, 

 must be considered the most important timber-tree of west- 

 ern America, and of no other tree is there now standing 

 such a body of valuable and available timber. The wood 

 of the Douglas Fir is hard, strong and durable ; it may be 

 recognized by the numerous spirally marked wood cells 

 which distinguish it from the wood of allied conifers. The 

 small cells which are developed in the wood of conifers at 

 the end of the growing season are very numerous, and 

 form broad bands which often occupy half the width of 

 the layers of annual growth. These bands of small cells 

 are dark colored and conspicuous, and become hard and 

 flinty with exposure, making the wood of this tree difficult 

 to work except when it is freshly cut. Some trees produce 

 light red and some yellow wood, and individuals vary to a 

 much greater degree than those of most other trees in the 

 time required for their sap-wood to turn into heart-wood. 

 The yellow wood is closer-grained and is considered much 

 more valuable than the red wood. Lumbermen recognize 



