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Updated: May 21, 2025
Close behind the screen of Casuarinas is a magnificent specimen of a wide-spreading shrub, in form a squat dome, which commemorates the name of a French naturalist TOURNEFORTIA ARGENTA. The leaves, crowded at the ends of thick branchlets, are covered with soft, silky hairs of a silvery cast, which reflect the sun's rays.
We each made a twig or small branch, which he cleverly fixed into its place as a part of the whole. The model tree in question was constructed of wire slightly twisted together, so as to form the main body of a branch. It was then subdivided into branchlets, and finally into individual twigs.
The pruning process begins early in the life of the tree, and it continues ceaselessly until the end. To the apple-tree in the wild, strict pruning is the assurance of success. No tree can reach maturity unless more parts perish than are able to live. The young forest tree has branchlets and leaves along its side and at the top.
This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra woods, far surpassing its companion species in this respect, and easily distinguished from it by the purplish-red bark, which is also more closely furrowed than that of the white, and by its larger cones, more regularly whorled and fronded branches, and by its leaves, which are shorter, and grow all around the branchlets and point upward.
The character by which Epiphyllums are distinguished from other Cactuses, is their flattened, long, slender branches, which are formed of succulent, green, leaf-like branchlets, growing out of the ends of each other, to a length of from 3 ft. to 4 ft.
The twigs seem to be found just below the bud-rings, as the upper leaf-buds usually develop best and the lower buds are single, containing flowers only. The buds are terminal, and axillary, from the axils of the leaves of the preceding year, usually from those at the ends of the branchlets. They are covered with brown scales and contain many leaves. The leaves are needle-shaped and short.
When they come they waste almost as lavishly as the flying foxes at night, nipping off branchlets and dropping them after eating but two or three of the figs. When the grey falcon soars overhead the birds display varied forms of strategy.
All the reduced leaflets have branching nerves, and terminate in little spines, like those of the fully developed leaflets. Occasionally all the terminal branchlets of the petiole are in this condition, and we then have a true tendril. When the loop was removed, the petioles straightened themselves in about the same time.
As a tree it has been known to reach forty or fifty feet in height, with a trunk ten feet in circumference. The leaves are arranged in four rows, in alternately opposite pairs, and seem to make up the fan-like branchlets. These branchlets look like parts of a large compound, flat leaf. The bark is slightly furrowed, smooth to the touch, and very white when the tree stands exposed.
"Yes, indeed! more than we can take up this summer," replied Miss Harson. "There is the Norway pine, or red pine, which in Maine and New Hampshire is often seen in forests of white and pitch pine. It has a tall trunk of eighty feet or so, and a smooth reddish bark. The leaves are in twos, six or eight inches long, and form large tufts or brushes at the end of the branchlets.
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