THE TREES AND SHRUBS OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 21 



THE TREES AND SHRUBS OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 

 By F. R. S. Balfour, M.A., F.R.H.S. 



[Read April 13, 1915; Dr. F. Keeble, F.R.S., in the Chair.] 



In the time at my disposal it is only possible to speak shortly on the 

 flora of a few picked regions in that long stretch of country which 

 used to be known, rather inaccurately, as the Pacific Slope. I have 

 made several expeditions in various mountain regions from British 

 Columbia to Southern California, and I think the four districts I have 

 chosen will be fairly typical of the differences in the flora of the whole 

 region — differences brought about by rainfall, latitude, and altitude. 



First I will treat of that corner of the United States, still largely 

 unexplored, known as the Olympic Mountains. Its most remote 

 corner, Cape Flattery, was the first land sighted in Vancouver's 

 great expedition of 1792. Its mountains hardly exceed 8,000 feet ; its 

 deep valleys are clothed with dense forests and an undergrowth of 

 shrubs of many species which alone deserve a handbook to be written 

 about them. So far as I know, there is no open country at all through- 

 out the region, and consequently there are practically no inhabitants, 

 with the exception of the two or three small towns on the coast of 

 the Straits of Juan de Fuca, opposite Vancouver Island, and the few 

 Indians on the ocean or western side. 



Some years ago I made two expeditions into the main range of 

 these mountains from the south, and more lately penetrated the 

 forests from the north by following the Elwha river, which debouches 

 into the sea at Port Angeles. No tree or shrub has yet been found to 

 be peculiar to the Olympic Range, though vast areas still remain for 

 botanical exploration. 



To speak first of the few broad-leaved deciduous forest trees of the 

 region which are always in the floor of the valleys, there are only three, 

 but each is the largest member of its genus — Acer macrophyllum , 

 Populus trichocarpa, and Alnus oregona. The poplar when crowded 

 by conifers often exceeds 200 feet ; its sweetly-scented leaves always 

 recall to me the pleasures of fishing trips in that delightful country ; 

 no introduction into our British climate seems to give more promise 

 of becoming a great tree than this. Arbutus Menziesii, the madrona 

 of the Spanish settlers in California, is the finest evergreen in all that 

 country. I never found it of any size in the Olympics, though north on 

 Vancouver Island it grows 80 feet high, and far south, near San Fran- 

 cisco, there are huge hollow trunks of living trees 12 feet in circumference. 

 It is much the most striking of any Western tree, with its crimson peeling 

 bark and large leathery leaves. Cornus Nuitallii, the only tree of its 



