1875. 
THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY. 
215 
that thus they name and thus they use here the 
black, astringent berries of the low, evergreen, 
mountain barberry, sometimes called mahonia ? 
Fermented with the addition of sugar, the juice 
really makes a palatable and wholesome wine. 
Two trees only constitute the bulk of the forest 
here. The straight pine covers the upper part 
of the valley and the mountain sides from 8 500 
to about 10,500 feet altitude, and then gives 
way gradually to the mountain spruce, which 
is the prevailing tree at the last 1000 feet below 
the tree limit. 
The tree I would designate as the straight 
pine was named by its discoverer contorta—the 
crooked one—perhaps on account of the frequent¬ 
ly twisted cones. Douglas, so often mentioned, 
found it near the mouth of the Columbia River, 
whence it extends up and down the coast, and 
as well to the mountains of the Pacific States as ; 
to the Rocky Mountains, with the heavy pine— 
one of the widest-distributed Western pines, but 
a more northern tree than that, not found in 
New Mexico or Arizona. 
Look at the straight, slender trunk, covered 
with thin, scaly, light gray bark, and say 
whether straight pine is not the more appropri¬ 
ate name ? The dark green, short and stiffleaves, 
in pairs, characterize the tree not less than the 
small prickly cones which cover the branches, 
old and young, in long strings These cones do 
not drop at maturity ; they often do not even 
open their scales to cast the seeds, as if to store 
them up for future use. Thus, the branches are 
loaded with the cones of sometimes eight or 
ten years. No European pine has such a tenaci¬ 
ty ; and of our Eastern pines only one exhibits 
something like this character, and has from this 
property received the name serotina , the tardy 
one. Quite a number of Californian and Mexican 
species have the same peculiarity, the purpose of 
which is yet unexplained. The trunks of the 
trees are only one or two feet thick, but the 
wood is of excellent quality. 
The mountain spruce, A. Eagelmanni , now 
mingles with this pine at its upper limits, and 
soon takes its place completely, and forms the 
highest forest belt. You recollect that we have 
met with it in the valley, not far above Empire, 
but its true home is in the high mountains. 
Here, just below the Alpine slopes, it is the pre¬ 
vailing forest tree, and extends south to the 
mountains of Arizona, and north and west 
through Montana to Oregon; but its peculiari¬ 
ties escaped botanists until the first scientific 
explorer of Colorado, Dr. Parry, of Davenport, 
brought it to light, twelve or thirteen years ago. 
The cinnamon colored thin bark, detached in 
flakes, covers the straight trunk, on which the 
narrow top rises like a spire, densely covered 
with dark green, or sometimes paler or even 
bluish foliage. Then pretty pendulous cones of 
purplish or bronze color are crowded on the ex¬ 
tremity of the uppermost branchlets. It is a 
valu ibie tree, with soft, white, close grained 
wood, whence the mountaineers often call it a 
white pine. A gentle bridle pass leads us up 
through these woods until we reach open ground; 
a charming little park, covered with flowers, 
irrigated by springs which send off their waters 
to both oceans ; we are on the crest of the moun¬ 
tains, in one of the best passes., theeasiest and 
pleasantest in these mountains, Berthoud’s Pass 
as it is named after one of its first explorers. 
Back into the high mountains of the head of 
Clear Creek, forest clad below, bare and enclos¬ 
ing extensive snow banks higher up—the view 
opens, and forward into the wide expanse of 
Middle Park, with its grassy valleys and rocky 
pinnacles—right before us, in the distance the 
rugged forms of Long’s Peak. 
In the pass itself dense groves of the spruce 
trees two and a half and three feet in diameter, 
attract our attention. We have examined the 
age of smaller trees, just cut down, in the con¬ 
struction of a wagon road over the pass, and 
find that trunks of six or eight inches in diame¬ 
ter show 120 to 180 annual rings, so slow is their 
growth ; those largest ones must then date back 
600, perhaps 800 years. 
But the pass can not hold us long ; we hasten 
to see the last of the timber, and explore what 
we have repeatedly spoken of as timber line.!*> 
On both sides of the saddle-like pass the 
mountains rise higher. We follow the woods up 
four or five hundred feet, without noticing much 
change in the size or closeness of the trees ; the 
larger ones, to be sure, have disappeared, but 
middle-sized trees crowd around us, till suddenly 
we find ourselves ou the edge of the timber, 
and the Alpine slopes open out before us grassy 
and flowery ; or, as the case may be, stony and 
rocky, rising sometimes between 2000 and 3000 
feet higher up. But the forests do not give up 
their domain without a struggle. Between their 
boundary and the bare summits is a belt of, as 
it were, debatable ground, where, scattered, the 
hardiest pines try to encroach, gain a foothold, 
persist, perhaps for years, in constant struggle 
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Botanical 
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