214 
THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY. 
July, 
J. virginiana. —Up to 9000 or 9500 feet; over 
the territory in the southern part (Colorado 
Springs to the Arkansas) in very unusual forms, 
short trunks, broad flat heads, &c. 
J. occidentalis. —Only from Pike’s Peak south¬ 
ward with Pinus edulis, especially on the Upper 
Arkansas River.—Gardener's Chronicle. _ , 
QUERIES- 
JUANULLOA PAiustTrCX^ refer- 
re#^01nT!ml>^lb'wing from D. G., Poughkeepsie, 
N. Y. : ‘- Will you please and see if you can 
; — 
give rs the right name of the enclosed lower ; it 
is one of to old greenhouse plants; most of them 
are getting all f^fgotten/now a days, and even good 
gardeners do not knptf'them, not even our neigh¬ 
bor, Mr. F. W. Poppey. I tVofeJt for a Brug- 
mansia ; it lowers mostly in the fall; perhaps 
you have the name, and will give it in the 
M&ntlily, and oblige.” 
,Name of WiXTTOtv.— TTdfflftg gardener, Great 
Barrington, Mass. It is but a chance that one 
can name a willow from a sm«tl sprig with any 
certainty, y^fours appears to be Salix purpurea. 
-Sifevafutre, travels Sc 'UPev&oruxl QTlafcs. 
COMMUNICATIONS. 
THE CONIFER® OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 
BY DR. GEO. BNG ELM ANN - . 
Lecture before the Washington University * 
{Continued from page 184 ) 
The stateliest, most striking of all, is the rooun- 
k { f0 C * tain balsam or mountain fir : Abies grandj?.,, 
i the great fir, our old friend Douglas named 
it, when he met with it on the waters of the 
Columbia River. There it has a right to the 
name ; there trees of five or eight feet in diame¬ 
ter and 200 feet high are said to be not rare. 
The severer climate of Colorado never permits 
them to reach such dimensions. The largest I 
have seen were scarcely three feet in diameter, 
and 100 or 120 feet high. But a stately tree it 
is, nevertheless; look at the smooth, white, 
column like trunk ; the regular pyramid of the 
head, tapering to the very top with spreading 
branches; and spreading foliage, lighter green 
than the sombre spruces, with a paler tinge on 
the lower surface, and in the top, on the upper¬ 
most branches, those deep purple cones of cylin¬ 
der form, rising perpendicularly up like huge 
tapers of a Christmas tree. Its wood is coarse 
and light, and of no more value than that oi 
most firs is. We do not find forests of it, but 
meet with it in suitable damp localities, almost 
up to the timber line, and cannot help always a 
welcome to its form, as graceful as it is ma¬ 
jestic. 
The valley is narrower, the creek wilder, the 
mountains higher; now perpendicular cliffs jut 
out from the mountain side, with here and there 
a lonely pine, like a sentinel, on an inaccessible 
pinnacle ; yonder the more even, I can not say 
the more gentle slope, bears the thickest of those 
grand pine forests, which for miles and miles 
clothe with eternal verdure the flanks of those 
giant mountains as high up as physical causes 
will permit them, to 11,500 feet altitude—above 
that elevation no trees can live. 
But we are in the valley yet, and can not leave 
it without noticing the numerous flowers which 
spring up in the gloom of the forest. Above all 
the abundance of low rose bushes is striking, 
such as we have not met with in the lower val¬ 
leys, covered with fragrant flowers in one season, 
and not less beautiful in autumn when their 
large, bright pendulous pods glisten in the sun, 
brighter than the finest corals; nor must we 
forget the red raspberries, the most delicious 
and most plentiful fruit of the mountains, and the 
blue and red huckleberries, which for acres and 
acres cover the soil under the pines. Several kinds 
of gooseberries and tw r o of strawberries are also 
tound here, but not in sufficient quantity. Other 
ruits, cultivated fruit, are unknown in this cli¬ 
mate, unless they are brought from California, 
'vhich they often are. Another humble, but 
luite interesting, berry of these higher moun¬ 
tain woods is what they call the mouotain grape. 
What botanist, what pomologist could guess 
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