82 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



etc., with their spreading branches quite in contact with 

 their dwarf's when a lee amphitheatre guards and shelters the 

 one and exposes the other. While we must pass by unnum- 

 bered lichens, mosses, and kindred plants, it would be too 

 great an omission not to notice a few of the most conspicuous. 

 Of all the epiphytes that gem or grace the oaks none can be 

 more interesting then the elegant Lace Lichen (Ramalina 

 Retiformis). This festoons the branches from a few inches to 

 several feet in length ; the meshes of this lace or net work, 

 vary from half an inch down to the finest possible little 

 knit mits or glove-like expansions — often perfectly bewilder- 

 ing for multitude and for masses; color, gray verging to bluish, 

 here and there studded with white shield plates, or tiny 

 saucer-like discs, on which the spore-seed is ripened. Although 

 no spell of natural oak may now capture the fair ones to 

 dwell therein all their days together, as in legendary lore, 

 now literally rendered — yet no f ai r 3^ fingers ever wove pret- 

 tier lace to while the passing hours, or hung on the outspread- 

 ings of the oaks choicer emblems of genuine interlacing 

 scientific truths, for these are, after all, supereminently, the 

 real interwoven garments, needle, and lace work of the soul. 

 On half shady hill tops and wind ridges the great bat-winged 

 Sticta (Sticta Menziesii) stands out from the bark half or 

 nearly rounded, often hollowed and somewhat pitted and 

 plaited — vaulted like an ear, studded with dark shield-like 

 fruit. Mosses also abound, but one only must suffice — we 

 allude to the exquisitely beautiful Golden Chenille Moss 

 (Hypnum Nuttallii) in softest, closely clinging broad cushion- 

 clad patches, the flattened feathery spray spanning abroad 

 in long radiating lines during the wet season, fruiting earliest 

 in winter, and during the long dry season rising, in-curving 

 and involuting its leaves into the brightest golden chenille 

 cords you ever saw, fit to garnish the dress or gild the crown 

 of a queen. 



This half evergreen oak sometimes partially dismantles, a 

 portion of the leaves falling off in Winter, or becoming nearly 

 quite bare in Spring just before the young leaves appear; 

 others altogether retain their old leaves, without any flowers or 

 young shoots, i. e., resting over an extra season to mature and 

 nurse the young fruit already set the previous year. This 

 agrifolian oak — probably a printer's immortalized mistake 

 for aquifolia, or Holly-leaf Oak (?) — extends along the coast 

 southward through Southern California into Mexico. Some 

 of these trees in the southern part of the State are enormous 

 for size and horizontal spread. 



