Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 164, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1910 — THE TORREY PINES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE TORREY PINES

THAT which is rare in the world of nature is always richly prized by man, be it some strange fantastic form, some exotic growth, or some very beautiful bloom. The stonecrop, the sage-brush and the ‘ cactus have claimed California for their own, spreading out into the desert-lands which lie to the eastward, and climbing up over the foothills of the Sierras, where they mark the boundary of fertility and clothe the nakedness of sand-dune and soil-serac with a spurious vegetation ; thus by the artemisias, salvias, audibertias, dudleyas, opuntlas and mamillarias is the wilderness made to bloom. But it was not th revel in the marvels on the mesas, nor the charms of the chapparral that I journeyed one afternoon to Del Mar, a tiny wayside station near San Diego, perched on the top of a high cliff above the wash of the blue Pacific waves. For days I had steeped my soul in the delights of the woods and wastes, found companionship with birds and things that creep, and gathered here and there fragile fragrant flowers. But now the rarest tree in the whole wide world had called to me from its isolation; the report of its marvelous characteristics, its rugged beauty, its picturesque habitat had all been detailed, and so one glorious day, when the California sky was domed like lapis lazuli, I traveled to Del Mar to see the famous Torrey pines.

It is enthralling to think how nature has set this handful of conifers on a Californian cliff, the only specimens of their kind ever found on earth, save for a few on the near by Island of Santa Rosa. It was not until the year 1850 that these trees were discovered by Mr. J. L. Le Conte, who forthwith named them Pinus torreyana, after Dr. John Torrey of New York, and since then many botanists and nature-lovers have made a pilgrimage to this lonely shrine on the summit of the windswept bluffs, among them Engelmann, Asa Gray, Bayard Taylor and Charles F. Holder. Leaving the station at Del Mar, I followed the railroad for a mile or so, emerging out of a cutting on to a strip of track which skirted a deep ravine chiseled and channeled like the Grand Canon of Colorado in miniature; thence rounding a rampart of rock I came upon a mass of quarried quarts shimmering in the sunlight, such as is used for the foundation of roads in this vicinity. The shining pyramid was my signpost to leave the steel rails and turn towards the sea.

A steep, sandy trail led down to join the oiled road which skirted the shore as far os the foot of the southerly headland, and then wound away among the hills behind the cliffs. From this point I gained my first view of the Torrey pines, a cluster of tortured trunks and twisted branches covered with, fascicles of immensely long leaves outlined against the sky several hundred feet above me. To scramble up the dry banks covered with manzanita, masses of pinkish buckwheat and all manner of cacti and stonecrops mingled with the inflated pods of the locoweed and the aromatic plants of the Yerba santa, or mountain balm, was but the work of a few’ moments, and there on the top stood the little groves of rare trees, sheltered for the most part in small ravines, some specimens, however, growing at the extreme edge of the bluffs where the nooks and crannies offered but scant foothold or nourishment for vegetation. Some of the trees are as much as four feet In circumference and rise to a height of from five to fifty feet, those standing in exposed places being more bent and fantas-

tlcally formed than those growing in the dells. Most remarkable are the dark green tufted leaves and abundant cones of these Torrey pines; the former grow in fascicles of five in close sheaths, and are the largest pine leaves known to the world, being from nine to thirteen inches long; while the cones are five to six inches long and ten to fourteen inches in circumference, oval, with thick scales terminating in stout recurring beaks. The nuts are flattened and have a black wing, the shells being hard and thick and the seeds edible. The pollen-bear-ing flowers are terete, about three inches long and half an inch in diameter.

The habitat of the Torrey pine covers some four hundred acres, owned for the most part by the clty of San Diego, though recently the finest groves have been purchased by Miss Scripps of La Jolla, who, realizing the immense scientific value and importance of these trees, has determined to do everything possible to preserve them from mutilation and possible extermination.

No words can describe the wonderful beauty of the surroundings of these Torrey pine woods. The scenery in California always exercises a fasciinatlon by reason of its Individuality, for It is a land in which man and the desert are ever waging relentless war; where the desert has proved impregnable the cacti forbid encroachment and flaunt their flaming red and yellow flowers in the face of defeated toll; but where man has conquered, wielding the silver scepter of irrigation and annexing the territory thus torn from the prickly fingers of the opuntla, there grows a garden whose luxuriance overpowers and whose productiveness is amaiing. Encircling the valley stood queer honeycombed cliffs, whose strata of burnt sienna and chalk white stono formed bands of startling contrast, and beyond them rose the grim gray mountains of San Bernardino! On the other side of the point of pines the cliffs fell away in sheer declivity to the sea, across whose waves, now stilled by the sunset peace, the level rays of light were painting paths of purple, rose and amethyst. Over the rim of this ocean of color the sun like a golden galleon sailed down into the west, the light turned pale, beryl and primrose usurped the place of fire and flame, then gray vapors drifted softly up to the zenith and Venus shone out between the points of an ashen aurora, cool breezes sprang to life, dusk blotted out the-underbrush and the southern day was over.

JULIA W. HENSHAW.