Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/292

286, hoops, and similar uses. The wood of the larger variety is used for making staves, and the bark for tanning.

Of all the trees growing along water-courses, the Oregon ash (Fraxinus Oregona) is the most beautiful. In size, it compares closely with the white maple. Its foliage is of a light yellow-green, the leaves being a narrow oval. Like the maple, it has clusters of whitish-yellow flowers, which add greatly to its grace and delicacy of coloring. The wood is fine-grained, and is useful for manufacturing purposes

A little back from the river, yet quite near it, we find the Oregon dogwood (Cornus Nuttalii). It is a much handsomer tree than the dogwood of the Atlantic States, making, when in full flower and in favored situations, as fine a display of broad, silvery-white blossoms as the magnolia of the Southern States. As an ornamental tree, it can not be surpassed; having a fresh charm each season, from the white blossoms of spring, to the pink leaves of late summer, and the scarlet berries of autumn. Its ordinary height is thirty or forty feet, but, in moist ravines and thick woods, it stretches up toward the light until it is seventy feet high.

A poplar not found near the coast, is the American aspen (P. Tremuloides). Small groves of this beautiful tree are found about ponds on the high ground, especially where water stands through the rainy season, in hollows which arc dry in summer.

A very ornamental wild cherry, peculiar to Oregon—a species of choke-cherry—is found near water-courses. The flowers are arranged in cylindrical racimes, of the length of three or four inches, are white, and very fragrant. It flowers early in the spring,