BIG TKEES OF CALIFORISriA. 21 



to be cut down, and should this happen, the reproduction noted will 

 avail little in perpetuating the species, without the protecting influence 

 of the mother forest. 



BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BIG TREE. 



The following technical description of the Big Tree is taken from 

 Prof. C. S. Sargent's --Silva of North America:" 



The average height of Sequoia AYellingtonia is about 275 feet, and its trunk diameter 

 near the ground 20 feet, although individuals from 300 to 320 feet tall, with trunks 

 from 25 to 35 feet thick, are not rare. During four or five centuries the tapering stem 

 is clothed with slender, crowded branches, which are erect above and horizontal near 

 the middle of the tree, and below sweep toward the ground in graceful curves, thus 

 forming a dense narrow strict pyramid. Gradually the loAver branches disappear, 

 and those at the top of the tree lose their aspiring habit; the trunk, which is much 

 enlarged and buttressed at the base, and fluted with broad low rounded ridges, 

 tecomes naked for 100 or 150 feet; and the narrow, rounded crown of short horizon- 

 tal branches loses its regularity, and gains picturesqueness from the eccentric devel- 

 opment of some of the branches or the destruction of others. (See Pis. Ill, VII, 

 and VIII.) 



The bark of old trees is from 1 to 2 feet in thickness, and is divided into flat 

 rounded lobes 4 or 5 feet wide, corresponding to the lobes of the trunk, and sepa- 

 rating into loose-fibrous scales; it is light cinnamon-red, and the outer scales are 

 slightly tinged with purple, which is more conspicuous on the much thinner bark of 

 young trees. The leading branchlets are stout, pendulous, and furnished with 

 numerous slender crowded much-divided rather closely appressed lateral branch- 

 lets, forming dense masses of spray; dark blue-green, like the leaves when they first 

 appear, at the end of two or three years and after the disappearance of their leaves 

 the branchlets are reddish-ljrown, more or less tinged with purple, and covered with 

 thin close or slightly scaly bark. 



The leaves are ovate, acuminate, or lanceolate, rounded and thickened on the lower 

 surface, concave on the upper surface, and marked with Ijands of stomata on both 

 sides of the obscure midribs, rigid and sharp pointed, decurrent below, spreading or 

 closely appressed above the middle, and from one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch, 

 or on stout leading shoots often one-half an incii in length; on young seedling plants 

 they are linear-lanceolate, short-pointed, thin, sprearling, i)ilose, often ciliate on the 

 margins, and from one-half to three-fourths of an inch in length. 



The flowers, which open late in the winter or in early spring, are produced in great 

 profusion, esj^ecially the staminate, which often cover the wdiole tree, and dust the 

 forest and the ground lx;low it with their golden pollen. The staminate flower, which 

 isu.sually terminal, varies from one-sixth to one-third of an inch in length, with ovate 

 acute or acuminate denticulate connectives, and is subtended by broadly ovate scales 

 rounded or acute at the apex, keeled on the back, concave on the inner surface, and 

 slightly erose on the margins. The pistillate flower is about one-third of an inch 

 long, with from 25 to 30, or rarely from 35 to 40 psde yellow scales, slightly keeled 

 on the back, gra/lually narrowed into long slender points, and bearing from 3 to 7 

 ovules under each scale. 



The fruit is ovate-oblong, from 2 to 3^ inches in length, from one-half inch to 2J 

 inches in width, and dark red-brown; the scales are furnished on the upper side, near 

 the base, with two or three large deciduous dark resin-glands, and are gradually thick- 

 ene<\ uynvard from the ba.se to the apex, which is only slightly dilated, and is from 

 three-fourths of an inch to 1\ inches long, and from one-fourth to one-half of an 

 inch wide, deeply pitted in the middle, which is often furnished with an elongated 

 reflexed mucro, and frequently transversely ridged; at maturity they remain straight 

 and rigid and open only slightly, the cone retaining its original form even when dry. 

 From 3 to 7 seeds are produced under each scale; they are linear-lanceolate, com- 

 preasefl, from one-eighth to one-fourth inch in length, light brown, and surrounded 

 by lateral united wings broader than the body of the seed, apiculate at the apex, 

 and often unequal. 



The Big Tree is the largest inhabitant of the American forests, and the most massive- 

 .-temme<l although not the tallest tree in the world. It grows in an uninterrupted 

 Ijelt, chiefly associated with the Sugar Pine, the Douglas Fir, and tlie Incense Cedar, 

 from the middle fork of the American Kiver southward along the western flank of 

 the California Sierras for a distance of about 260 miles to the head of Deer Creek, 

 the northeni limit of thia belt being near the thirty-ninth and itsaoutliern just south 



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