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Updated: June 20, 2025
If we consider not merely the number of species but those plants which constitute the mass of the Lower Miocene vegetation, we find the European part of the fossil flora very much less prominent than in the Oeningen beds, while the foreground is occupied by American forms, by evergreen oaks, maples, poplars, planes, Liquidambar, Robinia, Sequoia, Taxodium, and ternate-leaved pines.
Then Greenland and the rest of the north abounded with oaks, representing the several groups of species which now inhabit both our Eastern and Western forest districts; several poplars, one very like our balsam poplar or balm-of-Gilead tree; more beeches than there are now, a hornbeam, and a hop-hornbeam, some birches, a persimmon, and a planer-tree, near representatives of those of the Old World, at least of Asia, as well as of Atlantic North America, but all wanting in California; one Juglans like the walnut of the Old World, and another like our black walnut; two or three grapevines, one near our Southern fox grape or muscadine, another near our Northern frostgrape; a Tilia, very like our basswood of the Atlantic States only; a Liquidambar; a magnolia, which recalls our M. grandiflora; a Liriodendron, sole representative of our tulip-tree; and a sassafras, very like the living tree.
Why does the bird keep, even in old age, the same brilliancy of plumage and the same clearness of eye? Is it because it gets the elixir vitæ from the hidden reservoir of nature? Be this as it may, there are times when I sincerely long for a ball of liquidambar or a mouthful of pungent spring buds.
But a word more about the liquidambar the name by which I hope the tree we are discussing may be talked of and thought of. Old Linnæus gave it that name, because it described euphoniously as well as scientifically the fact that the sap which exudes from this fine American tree is liquid amber. Now isn't that better than "gum" tree?
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