Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/232

 northerly aspect, and the slopes facing the south are more often bare than wooded, and the same remark applies to the southern parts of the range where arboreal vegetation is most abundant.

The chief kinds of trees are the aspen (Populus tremula?), black birch (Betula daurica), and willow (Salix sp.), the last-named growing in bushes and trees twenty feet high; the aspen attains a somewhat greater height, while the black birch is in general of lesser size. Among other trees we noticed in these forests the white birch (Betula alba), poplar (Populus laurifolia), alder (Alnus sp.), mountain ash (Sorbus Aucuparia), and apricot (Prunus sp.); an occasional dwarf oak (Quercus Mongolica) may be seen with a trunk seven feet high, limes (Tilia sp.) of the same dimensions, juniper (Juiniperus communis), and thujas (Biota orientalis), the last-named growing only in the lowest tree-belt on the southern slopes of the mountains. The absence of the spruce fir is a notable circumstance. The commonest of the bushes is the hazel (Ostryopsis Davidiana), attaining a height of three or four feet and frequently covering the exposed mountain sides with dense brushwood. We also noticed the wild rose (Rosa acicularis), wild raspberry (Rubus Idæus), wild currant (Ribes pulchellum), guelder rose (Viburnum Opulus), dogwood (Cornus sp.), buckthorn (Rhamnus arguta), Spiræa and Lespedeza bicolor, so common in the woods of the Southern Amur.