74 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



gorges it lias both a long body and grows to one hundred 

 feet in height, and that near San Francisco; in those more 

 open, the huge crooked secondary bodies and their branches 

 how lowly; in fact, almost kneel, full oft, resting their far 

 elbows upon the ground. Here and there they wend along. 

 barely above the canon-side. They thus present a broad 

 tented circumference of shade, rarely over one hundred to 

 one hundred. and fifty feet or so spread, the outer and lower 

 sprays of which a man may quite overreach, and a child 

 often step out upon the boughs or safely recline in the spacious 

 moss-cushioned forks of the branches. The somewhat tufted 

 spray, in dropping masses, forms a pleasing picture for the 

 eye to rest upon, and as they often hang out freely over the 

 precipice, produce a charming effect on the lateral perspec- 

 tive. The uneven outline and salient little curves only add 

 variety and grace, and lend peculiar woodland beauty to the 

 wild scenery. 



The color of the bark corresponds to the dark glen, and 

 becomes lighter as it is more exposed, and is more flaky and 

 evenly chinked. As it is a matter of unusual interest to 

 discriminate well the true type from its varieties of the same 

 name, and from similar Live Oaks, altogether distinct, a few 

 careful details are needful. The ever-green leaves are thick 

 and leathery, a little oblong egg-shaped, sharp and awl- 

 pointed, margins entire, or with rarely a few teeth: but let 

 it be understood, on the contrary, that the leaves of young- 

 trees and suckers are prickly-toothed, like the Holly — indeed, 

 often of the brightest shining-green, varnished, as brilliant 

 and beautiful as an emerald, altogether unsurpassed by any 

 known foliage of the West. Yet in age the general green 

 becomes sobered by a delicate unpronounced riper yellowish 

 tint, or, as in trees farther away from the coast, often with 

 the slightest, almost invisible, twilight of gray. On old or 

 well grown trees, when the young spring shoots put forth, 

 they are clad with golden glands and gland-tipt jointed 

 hairs throughout, but chiefly the lower surface of the leaves, 

 the slightly pappillose roughened surface of the leaves like 

 one's tongue : subsequently, if these fall away somewhat, still 

 the scars abide, or the lingual roughness remaining, it simply 

 bleaches out, and so changing color, becomes bluish bloom- 

 tinted, and on hills starry-hairy. These leaves, with some 

 latitude of variation, are usually one to three inches long by 

 an inch or more broad; all the young parts, it should be 

 noted, are also more or less starry-haired. The thick leath- 

 ery leaves are finely netted-veined above and below, the 

 leaf-stipules linear-lance-spatulate-pointed, often bristly- 

 herbaceous, plumy-hairy, one fourth to one half an inch 

 long, or usually" longer than the leaf-stems to the base of 

 which they are attached. The catkins of male blossoms are 



