28 MISC. CIRCULAR 31, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
The Douglas maple is much less brilliant, though becoming some- 
what colored. Its leaves are like those of the Japanese maple in 
shape, and it is a pretty thing, found at 3,000 to 6,000 feet elevation, 
along streams, not very abundantly. 
The California bexelder is botanically of the same genus as the 
maples, and if one looked only at the seeds, which are distinctly 
maple “keys,” there would be no doubt about it. But most of us 
nonbotanists judge a tree by its leaves, and the California boxelder 
leaf is-parted into three’ (occasionally five) leaflets instead of being a 
single incut leaf. The tree haunts the stream bottoms, where one 
finds it with willows and sycamores. It is not large (20 to 50 feet 
high and 10 to 30 inches in diameter), but helps make the good green 
along the creeks. 3 
None of the Pacific maples within the California range make good 
lumber, not even very good firewood. If their wood is ever used 
at all commercially, it will be as pulpwood. In Oregon and Wash- 
ington, however, the bigleaf maple becomes a large tree and is cut 
for lumber and fuel. 
THE ALDERS AND A BIRCH 
When camping near a stream have you noticed a rather smooth- 
barked tree with round open head, its lower branches drooping, and 
the tips bearing odd clusters of tiny cones? This is one of the alders, 
the two larger sorts being rather hard to distinguish. In both, the 
leaf veins are conspicuous for their straightness, the side veins 
running from the mid vein straight to the edge of the 3-inch leaf, 
giving it the effect of a “ permanent wave.” The red alder has 
somewhat darker foliage than the white alder, and smoother gray 
bark. White alders, when large, are rather rough and scaly toward 
the base of their trunks. 
While generally taller than the willows and maples, with which 
they associate along our streams, they are still medium-sized trees, 
seldom attaining a height of even 90 feet. Sometimes, growing 
close together and excluding other species, they form straight, clean 
stems bending at the top over the water. 
The leaves do not color at all in the fall; indeed, they drop while 
still green, leaving the tree bare for a long season. But the alders 
are the earliest of all the stream-side trees to bloom when they put | 
out their pendant catkins, known as “tags,” strung along a stem. 
The Sierra species, the mountain alder (fig. 18), would almost meet 
the description given above for the two that grow at lower elevations, 
except that it is only 6 to 25 feet in height, is more markedly and 
beautifully toothed, and has more reddish color on the early stems 
that hold the tags. The main value of this mountain alder.is as 
protection for the headwaters of streams—unless it be a credit to 
this dwarf tree that it trains one’s patience by catching and holding 
one’s fishline. 
Even higher up than the mountain alder, and over on the eastern 
slopes of the Sierra, is found red birch, the only tree birch growing 
naturally in California. Its shining “old copper-colored bark,” as 
Sudworth describes it, distinguishes it at once from other stream-side 
