The principal trees are the yellow and sugar pines, digger pine, incense
cedar, Douglas spruce, silver fir, the California and golden-cup oaks,
balsam cottonwood, Nuttall's flowering dogwood, alder, maple, laurel,
tumion, etc. The most abundant and influential are the great yellow or
silver pines like those of Yosemite, the tallest over two hundred feet
in height, and the oaks assembled in magnificent groves with massive
rugged trunks four to six feet in diameter, and broad, shady,
wide-spreading heads. The shrubs forming conspicuous flowery clumps and
tangles are manzanita, azalea, spiraea, brier-rose, several species of
ceanothus, calycanthus, philadelphus, wild cherry, etc.; with abundance
of showy and fragrant herbaceous plants growing about them or out in the
open in beds by themselves--lilies, Mariposa tulips, brodiaeas, orchids,
iris, spraguea, draperia, collomia, collinsia, castilleja, nemophila,
larkspur, columbine, goldenrods, sunflowers, mints of many species,
honeysuckle, etc. Many fine ferns dwell here also, especially the
beautiful and interesting rock-ferns--pellaea, and cheilanthes of
several species--fringing and rosetting dry rock-piles and ledges;
woodwardia and asplenium on damp spots with fronds six or seven feet
high; the delicate maiden-hair in mossy nooks by the falls, and the
sturdy, broad-shouldered pteris covering nearly all the dry ground
beneath the oaks and pines.
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