Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/30

26 Associated with the giant sequoias are to be found some of the best specimens of other Sierran conifers. Of these the sugar pine is the most magnificent. It is the king of pines. It attains a height of two hundred to two hundred and twenty feet, with a bole eight to twelve feet in diameter and often eighty feet to the first limb. The huge cones eighteen to twenty-six inches long hanging pendent from the tips of the widely spreading branches are a striking feature that marks the sugar pine as far as the eye can see.

In the redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) the giant sequoia (Sequoia gigantea) has a strong rival for first honors. The redwood is the highest known tree, the giant sequoia the greatest in diameter. Comparatively they stand about three hundred and fifty to three hundred and twenty-five feet in height, and twenty-two to thirty feet in diameter. The redwood is more abundant than the giant sequoia, and in the Humboldt forests it forms magnificent stands of timber from which over one million feet of lumber have been cut from one acre.

The distribution of the redwood is an excellent illustration of the delicate balance held between vegetation and climatic environment. It forms a distinct belt along the coast ranges of central and northern California, never extending inland more than twenty or thirty miles and conforming with striking significance to the coastal fog belt. The heavy summer fogs that frequent the coast ranges of central and northern California lower the temperature and increase the atmospheric humidity. Furthermore, the minute fog particles are collected on the forest trees and precipitated to the ground. The writer has tramped through fog in midsummer chilled to the marrow, with the trail muddy and slippery wherever it passed beneath a tree. Indeed, so great was the precipitation of the fog by trees that little rivulets formed and ran several yards down the mountain trail. Fifteen minutes' walk away the hot August sun was shining on a road inches thick in dust. Here were climatic differences as great as those of England and Spain.

Associated with the redwoods, but of more extended range are a number of other trees of special interest. The tanbark oak (Pasania densiflora) is the only representative in North America of that large Asiatic genus. Its acorns resemble those of an oak, but the staminate flowers are in dense erect catkins as in the chestnut, and with the same disagreeable odor. The California laurel, the only member of the genus Umbellularia, is a beautiful evergreen tree with smooth dark green lance-shaped leaves that emit the odor of bay. The madroñe (Arbutus menziesii), with its smooth polished trunks of a rich mahogany color, is one of the most striking trees in the California forests. It has attractive foliage of large, smooth, glossy, oval leaves, and bears open clusters of deep red berries that persist until Christmas.

In addition to the great forests of the Sierra Nevada and the