Volume 12 Number 1 1 



The Plant World 



A Magazine of General Botany 

 NOVEMBER, 1909 



THE BOTANICAL ASPECTS OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY. 

 By George J. Peirce. 



Stanford University has appealed to a great variety of 

 people. Founded as an expression of parental affection, and for 

 the perpetual benefit of the children of others, it attracts the 

 sympathy of all who are capable of high and tender sentiment. 

 Its rich endowment, exaggerated by irresponsible report, as- 

 tonishes those who hear of it. Its buildings charm the visitor. 

 The chief events of its brief history have continued it in public 

 attention. Although more written about aheady than is good 

 for it, I am asked to add to the descriptions of Stanford Uni- 

 versity one more, namely of the botanical aspects of its situation. 



A glance at the map of California shows that Stanford 

 University is situated about thirty miles south of San Francisco, 

 at the western edge of a great flat valley bounded on the east and 

 west by mountain ranges, some of the peaks in which are con- 

 siderably over 3,000 feet above sea level. In this valley is the 

 Bay of San Francisco, which receives from the east the waters of 

 central California and from the west the tides of the Pacific 

 Ocean. The latitude of Stanford University is approximately 

 that of Richmond, Virginia, its elevation about 100 feet above 

 sea. Between the quadrangles, into which most of the Univer- 

 sity buildings are grouped, and the Bay of San Francisco, a little 

 more than four miles away, the land is flat, slowly sloping through 

 the Arboretum and the town of Palo Alto to the marshy shore. 

 In the opposite direction the elevation, at less than twice the 

 distance, is over 2,700 feet. Between this range and the ocean 

 is another of nearly 2,000 feet elevation, and the intervening 

 country is much broken. 



The differences in topography within short distances pro- 

 duce and are equalled by the differences in precipitation and 



