September 30, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



457 



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 TOST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— Jeffrey's Pine. (With figure.) 457 



English Walnuts P. L. Simmonds. 458 



The Gardens of I.e Notre 45S 



The Weeds of California.— V Professor E. IV Hilgard. 458 



How We Renewed an Old Place.— XIX Mrs. J. H. Robbins. 459 



Forest-vegetation of the Upper Mississippi.— I.. Professor L. H. Pammd. 460 



Recent Plant Portraits 402 



Cultural Department: — Plums and Plum-trees E. P. Powell. 462 



The Planting of Hardy Bulbs E. O. Orpet. 463 



The Newer Phloxes E. P. Powell. 464 



Protecting Plan is in Mild Climates Professor IV. F. Massey. 464 



Cen tran thus ruber, Nicotiana affinis G. 464 



Cereus triangularis R. Cameron. 464 



Syniplocos crataegoides 5. 465 



Correspondence : — The Beaver and the Flow of Streams H. B. A. 465 



Pomology : — Meeting of the American Pomologieal Society — I. : The President's 



Address 465 



The Hybridization of Plants Professor Charles E. Bessey. 466 



Success with Small Fruits J. H. Hale. 467 



New and Promising Small Fruits J. T. Lervett. 467 



Notes 468 



Illustration : — Jeffrey's Pine (Pinus Jeffreyi) on the Mountain above the 



Yosemite Valley, Fig. 73 461 



Jeffrey's Pine. 



ONE of the interesting- journeys that can be made 

 through the forests of North America is from some 

 point in Nevada, like Reno or Carson's City, at the eastern 

 base of the Sierra Nevada, across the mountains into. Cali- 

 fornia. The Yosemite Valley can be reached in this way 

 from Nevada by an easy drive of four or five days, during 

 which the traveler will be able to examine the flora of the 

 two sides of the range, and to study, as well as in any 

 other part of the world, the influence of moisture upon the 

 growth of forests. The scenery which will unfold before 

 his eyes as he mounts the eastern slopes will well repay 

 the fatigue and trouble of such a journey; and a more 

 comprehensive and satisfactory idea of the Sierra Nevada 

 and its forests will be obtained than can be acquired in the 

 conventional, and now somewhat hackneyed, journey into 

 the Yosemite from the California lowlands. 



The hot, dry barren foot-hills which stretch along the 

 eastern base of the mountains do not offer much that is 

 beautiful or attractive, but when these have been crossed 

 and the real ascent of the mountains begins, a wonderful 

 forest of Pine-trees will be entered. The lowest limit of 

 this forest is rather below 6,000 feet above the sea-level, 

 and it is necessary to climb 3,000 or 4,000 feet higher to 

 see its upper limits. To the person coming from the east 

 for the tirst time this forest will appear marvelous. Its 

 floor is bare of vegetation, except where here and there a 

 Ceanothus has gained a foothold and spread into a low 

 broad mass of spiny branches, or where taller shrubs oc- 

 cupy the abrupt sides and the bottoms of narrow canons. 

 The trees stand sometimes close together, and sometimes 

 at considerable distances apart ; they are often 250 or 300 

 feet tall, their great trunks ten or twelve feet in diameter 

 and free of branches, except near the top of the trees. 

 These trunks are splendid ; there are not many things 

 more impressive or more beautiful. The bark is immensely 



thick, and is broken by deep fissures into great cinnamon- 

 red armor-like plates, across which the sunlight, as it flick- 

 ers down through the scanty canopy above, casts long 

 shadows. The branches are few and small in proportion 

 to the trunks, and bear at their ends great brush-like clus- 

 ters of pale blue-green foliage and immense quantities of 

 large chestnut-brown cones, which, in early autumn, some- 

 times completely cover the ground under the trees. 



This tree is Jeffrey's Pine, the Pinus Jeffreyi of botanists. 

 It is a so-called Yellow or Pitch Pine, and, botanically, is 

 very closely related to the California Yellow Pine (Pinus 

 ponderosa). It belongs to a small group of western Amer- 

 ica Pines, to which the name of "Broken-cone Pines " has 

 been applied, from the fact that when the cones ripen and 

 fall their bases, with a few scales attached, remain on the 

 branches. Jeffrey's Pine, probably, never grows to such 

 an enormous size as the California Yellow Pine, but it is a 

 handsomer tree, one of the noblest of all Pines as it is seen 

 in its native forests, and one of the largest, for only two of 

 the genus grow larger, the Sugar Pine and the Yellow Pine. 



Jeffrey's Pine may be recognized by its stout, pale blue- 

 green leaves, which are seven or eight inches long, and 

 produced sometimes in twos and sometimes in threes on 

 the same branch ; by the pale glaucous shoots, which 

 sometimes become orange-colored during their first winter, 

 and which, when broken, exhale a pleasant aromatic per- 

 fume like that possessed by some plants of the Rue family. 

 The cones, too, distinguish it from its nearest ally, the 

 California Yellow Pine ; they are elliptical, purple at first, 

 and only become brown as they approach maturity, when 

 they are from six to ten inches in length, and four or five 

 inches in breadth after the stout scales, armed with slender, 

 strongly recurved prickles, have opened. The seeds are an 

 inch long, with long, rather narrow wings, and usually con- 

 tain more cotyledons than the allied species. 



Jeffrey's Pine, like most trees of wide distribution, varies 

 considerably in habit and in general appearance in different 

 parts of the country. The form, which may be considered 

 a type of the species, as it was the first one known to 

 science, is a comparatively low tree, with a trunk four or six 

 feet in diameter covered with dark bark, and with rather 

 pendulous branches. This is a common tree on the high 

 mountains west of Mount Shasta in northern California, 

 and occurs on the southern and south-eastern flanks of 

 several of the high Sierra peaks in the northern and central 

 parts of the state. On the eastern slopes of the Sierras, 

 where Jeffrey's Pine is found, from northern California to 

 the San Jacinto Mountains, Jeffrey's Pine becomes a larger 

 tree, with red bark and larger cones. For this form Mr. 

 Lemmon, who gives an excellent account of the California 

 Pines in his two reports upon the Pacific coast conifers, 

 proposes the name of Red Bark Pine ; in a Pine of lower 

 California he recognizes another form of our species, which 

 he designates as var. peninsularis. "It forms," he tells us, 

 "east of Todos Santos Bay, at an elevation of about 4,000 

 feet, an extensive forest upon loose debris of white 

 granite, seemingly to cover the region where this rock 

 prevails." 



Economically and commercially, Jeffrey's Pine is a tree 

 of the first importance. The wood which it produces, 

 when it has been developed under favorable conditions, is 

 strong and light, although rather hard and coarse-grained. 

 It has been manufactured in immense quantities on the 

 eastern slope of the Sierras, especially in the neighborhood 

 of Donner's Lake and other points convenient to the line 

 of the Central Pacific Railroad. It is this tree which has 

 supplied the timber for the mines at Virginia City and 

 Eureka, and at hundreds of less-important mining-camps. 

 Three-quarters of the buildings which have been erected 

 during the last twenty-five years in Nevada and western 

 Utah are built of the wood of this tree. The demand has 

 swept the mountains bare in many places, and it is still 

 increasing. The climate in which Jeffrey's Pine has 

 grown to its greatest size is one of excessive summer dry- 

 ness. Trees in such a climate grow very slowly, and 



