It Is
Found Sparsely Scattered Along The Shores Of The Sound And Back In The
Forests Also On Open Margins, Where The Soil Is Not Too Wet, And
Extends Up The Coast On Vancouver Island Beyond Nanaimo.
But in no
part of the State does it reach anything like the size and beauty of
proportions that it attains in California, few trees here being more
than ten or twelve inches in diameter and thirty feet high.
It is,
however, a very remarkable-looking object, standing there like some
lost or runaway native of the tropics, naked and painted, beside that
dark mossy ocean of northland conifers. Not even a palm tree would
seem more out of place here.
The oaks, so far as my observation has reached, seem to be most
abundant and to grow largest on the islands of the San Juan and
Whidbey Archipelago. One of the three species of maples that I have
seen is only a bush that makes tangles on the banks of the rivers. Of
the other two one is a small tree, crooked and moss-grown, holding out
its leaves to catch the light that filters down through the close-set
spires of the great spruces. It grows almost everywhere throughout
the entire extent of the forest until the higher slopes of the
mountains are reached, and produces a very picturesque and delightful
effect; relieving the bareness of the great shafts of the evergreens,
without being close enough in its growth to hide them wholly, or to
cover the bright mossy carpet that is spread beneath all the dense
parts of the woods.
The other species is also very picturesque and at the same time very
large, the largest tree of its kind that I have ever seen anywhere.
Not even in the great maple woods of Canada have I seen trees either
as large or with so much striking, picturesque character. It is
widely distributed throughout western Washington, but is never found
scattered among the conifers in the dense woods. It keeps together
mostly in magnificent groves by itself on the damp levels along the
banks of streams or lakes where the ground is subject to overflow. In
such situations it attains a height of seventy-five to a hundred feet
and a diameter of four to eight feet. The trunk sends out large limbs
toward its neighbors, laden with long drooping mosses beneath and rows
of ferns on their upper surfaces, thus making a grand series of richly
ornamented interlacing arches, with the leaves laid thick overhead,
rendering the underwood spaces delightfully cool and open. Never have
I seen a finer forest ceiling or a more picturesque one, while the
floor, covered with tall ferns and rubus and thrown into hillocks by
the bulging roots, matches it well. The largest of these maple groves
that I have yet found is on the right bank of the Snoqualmie River,
about a mile above the falls. The whole country hereabouts is
picturesque, and interesting in many ways, and well worthy a visit by
tourists passing through the Sound region, since it is now accessible
by rail from Seattle.
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