1875. 
THE GARDENER’S MONTHLY. 
at Elvaston, Dropmore, Chadsworth and the 
botanic gardens of Kew and Edinborough, and 
Douglas’ spruce perpetuates his name with the 
botanist as well as with the literary public. But 
in the mountains and woods personal names do 
not seem to succeed ; they may seem to indicate a 
personal claim which, I believe, is never sanction¬ 
ed by general use, and so we may as well drop 
it and adopt or propose that of mountain hem¬ 
lock. 
p The mountain hemlock is really closely relate 1 
to that charming Eastern hemlock spruce, now 
familiar in our gardens, but it is a coarser, less 
graceful tree, which bears those pretty, bracted 
or, as it were, fringed cones, so eminently charac¬ 
teristic of the plant. Its wood is coarse, and not 
much esteemed, but nevertheless used a great 
deal, where better cannot be had. This tree is 
scattered over the mountains far and wide, and 
reaches pretty high elevations, but does not 
form entire forests, as some of the other species 
do. 
The heavy pine is one of the largest and finest 
trees of Colorado, and, as I have already stated 
throughout the West, often three feet through and 
eighty feet high in the mountains, it grows to 
much larger dimensions in more fertile and milder 
parts of the country, alway distinguished by the 
thick, red brown bark, the long and stout leaves, 
and the good sized very prickly cones. On the 
foothills, especially on the divide, as it is called, 
between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers, it con¬ 
stitutes forests, and is said to be the principal tree 
in the now famous Black Hills. It rises up the 
mountains as high as 9,000 feet, where it min- 
fgles with the true mountain pines. The heavy 
and solid resinous wood of this pine is much 
used in those regions where it is abundant and 
accessible, and for railroad $ies invaluable. 
BUT WE ARE STILL IN THE CANYON, 
as they call these gorges, with the significant 
Spanish term. There, on the water’s edge, scarce¬ 
ly in any locality but where the torrent may bathe 
its rootlets, a third conifer, the valley spruce, or, 
as botanists call it, Menzies’ spruce, sends up its 
tapering trunk. Old trees, with a gray bark that 
reminds one more of an oak than a pine, look deso¬ 
late enough, more like a skeleton of a tree, with 
their thinly covered horizontal branches, show- 
I ing only in the very top the long, pale, glistening j 
cones. 
The young trees one would scarcely believe of 
the same kind, so different looks their charming 
pale bluish foliage, agreeably contrasting with 
183 
IT 
the sombre colors of. rocks and of trees about 
them. In many yards about Denver these bluish 
spruce bushes may be seen in cultivation. 
Menzies, after whom this spruce has been named, 
was also a Scotch explorer, who discovered it 
about eighty years ago, on the shores of the 
Pacific, where it extends even up to Alaska. 
But, extensive as is its geographical range, 
it is no forest tree, and at least in Colorado it is 
only scattered along the streams. 
The wild Clear Creek canyon is passed. It 
now expands into a valley, of narrow dimensions 
yet, but mostly with less abrupt mountain slopes. 
The same trees continue yet, here and there 
gathered into groves or small woods. The warm 
springs of Idaho have the same vegetation, and 
we continue in the valley up to 8,000 or 8,500 
feet above the sea before we meet with any other 
species of our coniferous friends. On the upper 
branches of Clear Creek, in the neighborhood of 
the town of Empire, with its abandoned gold 
tunnels, and of Georgetown, with its rich and 
prosperous silver mines penetrating deep into 
the dark and forbidding rocky faces of its ever- 
opposed Republican and Democratic mountains 
—there, where the mountain sides tower higher, 
where their summits attain Alpine elevations, 
other conifers replace those seen below. But 
this dreary yet romantic, bustling yet desolate, 
valley of Georgetown is not the place for us to 
study and to admire the forests ; they have dis¬ 
appeared, whatever there was of them, into the 
hungry maws of those roasting and smelting 
works. 
Follow me rather to that sad and quiet vil¬ 
lage with the proud name, which expresses the 
excited hopes of a few years ago, perhaps to be 
realized a few years hence. South of us, 
as we stand in the sloping streets of Empire 
City, expands 
A LOYELY YALLEY OF NATURAL MEADOWS, 
and some attempts at agriculture, closed in by 
Lincoln Mountain (not the higher and better 
known Mount Lincoln on the headwaters of 
the Arkansas) on our right, and Douglas Moun¬ 
tain on our left, names which, like those of the 
Georgetown Mountains, ever will designate the 
period when these wildernesses were first coloniz¬ 
ed, and the land marks named, by a people who 
brought with them the political interests and the 
political strifes of their Eastern homes. 
This valley is shut by a low rocky barrier, the 
abrupt and dangerous Georgetown Pass, which 
leads towards the valley of that name. Behind 
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7 8 9 10 Missouri 
Botanical 
copyright reserved garden 
