This tree frequently lives more
than a thousand years and is well worthy its place beside the great
pines and the Douglas spruce.
The two largest specimens I know of the Douglas spruce, about eight feet
in diameter, are growing at the foot of the Liberty Cap near the Nevada
Fall, and on the terminal moraine of the small residual glacier that
lingered in the shady Illilouette Canyon.
After the conifers, the most important of the Yosemite trees are the
oaks, two species; the California live-oak (Quercus agrifolia), with
black trunks, reaching a thickness of from four to nearly seven feet,
wide spreading branches and bright deeply-scalloped leaves. It occupies
the greater part of the broad sandy flats of the upper end of the
Valley, and is the species that yields the acorns so highly prized by
the Indians and woodpeckers.
The other species is the mountain live-oak, or goldcup oak (Quercus
chrysolepis), a sturdy mountaineer of a tree, growing mostly on the
earthquake taluses and benches of the sunny north wall of the Valley.
In tough, unwedgeable, knotty strength, it is the oak of oaks, a
magnificent tree.
The largest and most picturesque specimen in the Valley is near the foot
of the Tenaya Fall, a romantic spot seldom seen on account of the rough
trouble of getting to it.
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