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Show 218 JJAR WINIAN A. exceptions already specially note~, we may sa~ that almost every characteristic ~or~ In t~e ve?etat1on of the Atlantic States is wantmg m Cahforn1a, and the characteristic plants and trees of California are want ... ing here. California has no magnolia nor tulip trees, nor star-anise tree; no· so-called papaw (Asimina); no barberry of the common single-leaved sort; no Podophyllum or other of the peculiar associated genera ; no nelumbo nor white water-lily; no prickly ash nor sumach; no loblolly-bay nor Stuartia; no basswood nor lindentrees; neither locust, honey-locust, coffee-trees (Gymnocladus) nor yellow-wood (Cladrastis); nothing answering to Hydrangea or witch-hazel, to gum-trees . (Nyssa and Liquidambar), Viburnum or Diervilla; it has few asters and golden-rods; no lobelias; no huckleberries and hardly any blueberries; no Epigtea, charm of our earliest Eastern spring, tempering an icy April wind with a delicious wild fragrance; no Kalmia nor Clethra, nor holly, nor persimmon; no catalpa-tree, nor trumpet-creeper (Tecoma) ; nothing answering to sassafras, nor to benzoin-tree, nor to hickory ; neither mulberry nor elm; no beech, true chestnut, hornbeam, nor ironwood, nor a proper birch-tree ; and the enumeration might be continued very much further by naming herb:1eeous plants and others familiar only to botanists. In their place California is filled with plants of other types-trees, shrubs, and herbs, of which I will only remark that they are, with one or two excepti.on~, as different from the plants of the Eastern Asiatic region with which we are concerned (Japan, Chinn., and SEQUOIA .ANJJ ITS HISTORY. 219 Mantchooria), as they are from those of Atlantic North ~merica. Their near relatives, when they have any m other lands, are mostly southward, on the Mexican plateau, or many as far south as Chili. The same may be said •of the plants of the intervening great Plains, except that northward in the subsaline vegetation there are s?me. close alliances with the flora of the steppes of S1bena. . And along the crests of high mountainranges the Arctic-Alpine fiora has sent southward more or less nwnerous representatives through the whole length of the country. If :ve no;v compare, as to their flora generally, the Atlantic Un1ted States with Japan, Mantchooria, and Northern China-i. e., Eastern North America with Eastern North Asia, half the earth's circumference apart-we find an astonishing similarity. The larger part of the genera of our own region, which I have enumerated as wanting in California, are present in Japan or Mantchooria, along with many other peculiar plants, divided between the two. There are · plants enough of the one region which have no representatives in the other. There are types which appear to have reached the Atlantic States from the south; and there is a larger infusion of subtropical Asiatic types into temperate China and Japan; among these there is no relationship between the two countries to speak of. There are also, as I have already said, no small number of genera and some species which, being common all round or partly round the northern temperate zone, have no special significance because of their occurrence in these two antipodal floras, although they have ~estimony to bear upon the general question of |
