112 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



Nuttall's Pacific Box — The Great Flowering Cornel. 



Corn us Nuttallii.) 



'' Tiie glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, 

 The fir tree, the pine, and the box tree together, 



To adorn my sanctuary — 

 And I will make the place of my feet glorious!" 



— From the -sublime poem of Isaiah the Prophet — Sec. Ix, 13. 



" Ye nymphs of Solymy, begin the song — 

 To Him Bublimer strains belong: 



Thou my soul inspire 

 Who touched Isaiaft's lips with hallowed fire! " — Milton. 



\X TITH the great serene redwood-cypress, or colossal 

 '\l cedars of the coast, as they may well he called, grand 

 and ever-vernal fir trees, yews, spruces, pines, oaks, 

 and others together, beneath and among them all by far the 

 most magnificent sylvan bouquet of California or Oregon is 

 the great Box Tree of the Pacific. No floral denizen of the 

 forest strikes the stranger as so impressively bold, grand, and 

 gay as those chaste white blossoms, one fourth to nearly half 

 a foot across, well distributed over a tree twenty-five to sev- 

 enty-five feet high — nay, eighty to one hundred in some rare 

 instances.* Body of relatively small diameter, ranging from 

 ten inches to two feet: bark dark red, verging to black, very 

 finely and evenly cuboid-checked. The surprise when sud- 

 denly confronted by this bright sylvan bouquet is even 

 startling, save to one long familiarized to charming native 

 forest scenery; and few, if any, of these can be found so 

 indifferent to a proper sense of the beautiful as not to, ever 

 and anon, reawaken, renew, and full oft increase their admi- 

 ration at each recurring Spring. Like the bright shining 

 after May showers, so also is our own delightful experience 

 and observation of the effect of this choice tree amid the 

 wild woodlands. In general outline it is oblong-conic, and, 

 as usual, in age of more roundish top; the relatively naked 

 spreading branches with somewhat open, upturned, purplish- 

 green, rather stout twigs; they have the opposite foliage, 

 chiefly condensed, and rosulately radiating their tip ends; 

 these large — four to six or more inches long, and three and 

 a half to four wide — broadly elliptical leaves are feather- 

 veined or nerve-like, sunken above and prominent beneath, 

 the texture of the blade thin and tough, somewhat abruptly 

 sharp-pointed, often broadly wedge-form towards the short 



* Sect. 4 CK. Mendocino County, J. Clarke. 



