Let's Know Some Trees 



13 



are two great fan palras that must be 

 100 feet high; they are said to have 

 been planted by the fathers 200 years 

 ago. There is no need for a descrip- 

 tion of the Desert Palm, with its 

 plaited fans of circular leaves, its 

 thornlike leaf stems, and its dead- 

 drooping-leaf-clothecl trunks, " like a 

 dirty apron tied over a silk gown," as 



Fig. 12. 



-Desert Palm (Neowashing- 

 tonia filifera) 



some one aptly said. But everyone 

 who can take the time should cer- 

 tainly manage a trip to Palm Canyon 

 to see the tree in its native habitat. 



THE MADRONA 



We Californians boast of having the 

 biggest coniferous trees in the world, 



and of growing the biggest pumpkins — 

 even of having the tallest and finest 

 tarweed. But not all of us happen to 

 know that we might also boast of the 

 greatest heather. The " Madrona " 

 is a heath ; each white blossom of 

 the great clusters one sees away up 

 overhead is an urn, like the rest of 

 the heather blooms, and what a great 

 heath it is — 20 to 125 feet high, with 

 a trunk 6 inches to 5 feet in diameter ! 



While found only on the Pacific 

 coast, it is not confined to California 

 by any means, occurring in British 

 Columbia, Washington, and Oregon as 

 well. In California it grows as far 

 south as the South Fork of the Tuo- 

 lumne River in the Stanislaus Na- 

 tional Forest, in the Sierra Nevadas; 

 and in the Coast Range canyons as 

 far south, though rarely, as San Ber- 

 nardino County. 



This beautiful evergreen tree, with 

 smooth, terra-cotta colored bark 

 (darker and rougher in the lower part 

 of the trunk of old trees), and its 

 deep-green 4 to 6 inch smooth-edged 

 leaves, brilliantly glossy above and 

 somewhat fuzzy underneath, is com- 

 mon in Santa Cruz County, in Sonoma, 

 and in Mendocino. The Ukiah (Men- 

 docino County) parks are full of it. 

 The town camp ground has many 

 wonderful specimens, and a large ma- 

 jority of the homes have one to half 

 a dozen of these trees in their grounds, 

 so that the town seems set in a grove 

 of Madronas, white and fragrant in 

 blooming season and brilliant with 

 round red berries in December or No- 

 vember. Each berry is about a third 

 of an inch through and is rough like 

 an orange, not smooth and glossy like 

 the leaves of the tree or the berry of 

 the California Holly. 



THE CALIFORNIA WALNUT 



The joy of the early comers to Cali- 

 fornia in the fifties upon finding wal- 

 nuts growing along the creeks, from 

 the lower Sacramento clear south, 

 soon gave way to disgust as the nut 

 meats were found to be meager and 

 the trees so small and limby as to 

 render the wood almost useless for 

 cabinet work. To this day it is used 

 in its native habitat mainly as a soil 

 holder or to furnish firewood, though 

 nurserymen find that seedlings of the 

 California Walnut form the finest 

 disease-resistant stock on which to 

 graft the soft-shell " English " sorts. 

 It grows along many streams 20 to 40 

 miles from the coast and occasionally 

 occurs in the Sierra foothills. In the 

 coast canyons — along Walunt Creek in 



