THE CONE-BEARING EVERGREENS
The Pines--The Spruces--The Firs--The Douglas Spruce--The
Hemlocks--The Sequoias--The Arbor-vitaes--The Incense
Cedar--The Cypresses--The Junipers--The Larches, or Tamaracks
The cone-bearers, or conifers, are a distinct race that we commonly
call evergreens. They include pines, hemlocks, spruces, firs,
sequoias, cypresses, cedars, and junipers. Besides these, the
tamaracks and the bald cypress must be included, although their
leaves are shed in the autumn. The term "evergreen" applies equally
well to magnolias, laurels, and many oaks. Birches and alders and
magnolias bear cone-like fruits. Notwithstanding such exceptions,
the cone-bearing trees are mostly evergreen, and their family traits
are so strongly marked that even the beginner in tree study
eliminates the exceptional instances early in his studies.
The pines and their relatives in the coniferous group are an ancient
race, composed of proud old "first families." Along the shores of
the Silurian seas they stood up, straight and tall, their only
companions that stood erect, the giant horse-tails and tree ferns.
This was long before modern tree families had any existence. There
were no broad-leaved trees. In the coal measures are found the
mummied remains of these prehistoric conifers. The cycads in the
Everglades of Florida are some of their surviving representatives.
These are facing extinction, and the conifers, too, are declining.
They had reached their prime as a race when the broad-leaved trees
appeared upon the earth. The vigor of the new race enabled it to
seize the richest, well-watered regions. They drove the conifers to
seek the swamps, the exposed seacoasts, the barren and rocky
mountain slopes. Man has ruthlessly destroyed for timber the
coniferous forests of this country and much of the territory denuded
by the axe is either devoted to agriculture or has been seized by
broad-leaved species of trees, more tenacious of life and with seeds
more quick and sure to germinate than those of the conifers. The
time is not far distant, geologically speaking, when this ancient
and declining family of trees will exist only as man fosters it by
cultivation.
The conifers have resinous wood, with stiff, needle-like or
scale-like leaves, and inconspicuous flowers of two sorts, borne in
clusters like catkins. The pistillate catkin matures into a woody
cone made of overlapping scales attached to a central stem. On each
scale are borne one or more winged seeds.
The one character which is constant in the whole coniferous group
and sets it apart from the rest of the plant kingdom, is expressed
in the name _Gymnosperm_, applied to this botanical grand division.
It means "naked seed." There is no ovary in the flower. The naked
ovules are borne on the scales of the fertile spike or catkin, which
is held apart and erect in blossoming time. They are pollinated by
the wind, which sifts them with golden pollen dust, abundant in the
staminate catkins clustered on the same tree. Contact of pollen
grains and naked ovules is followed by their coalescence--the
"setting of seeds."
The distinguishing trait of the higher plants that form the grand
division known as _Angiosperms_, is that the ovules are borne in a
closed ovary, and the pollen lodges on the end of a stigma. "Pollen
tubes" grow down through the long style, finally reach the hidden
ovule, and seed is set. This complicated process is found in the
majority of flowers one studies in botany classes. Gymnosperms, and
the still lower groups of flowerless ferns and mosses, are merely
glanced at by amateur botanists. The more primitive plant forms are
too difficult for beginners.
The habit of the conifers is a character upon which we may depend.
With rare exceptions, there is a central shaft, "the leader," and
short horizontal branches in whorls forming platforms. The side
branches, also whorled, are generally flattened into a horizontal
spray. The leaves are narrow, needle-like, or scale-like, and waxy
or resinous. The tough fibre of the wood enables the conifers to
resist damage by wind and by ice. Snowflakes sift to the ground
instead of accumulating upon the branches and breaking them by their
cumulative weight. The wind, which pollinated the fertile flowers of
coniferous forests long before nectar-gathering insects came upon
the earth, is the harvester of their seeds. It scatters them far and
wide; each seed has a wing that adapts it to long journeys in front
of a gale.
The resinous sap that courses through the veins of coniferous wood
seals up the bark, leaves, and cones against the invasion of
enemies, and acts as an antiseptic dressing for wounds. Without
these special adaptations to a life of hardship, the conifers would
never have held their own as they have done. They inhabit regions
where conditions discourage all but a few of the broad-leaved trees.
THE PINES
In a forest of needle-leaved evergreens it is perfectly easy to
distinguish the pines by their leaves. Look along the twigs and you
will find the needles arranged in bundles, with a papery, enclosing
sheath at the base. Follow farther back and these sheaths are
missing, but on long stretches between the growing tip and the
leafless part of the branch the characteristic sheathed
needle-bundles declare this evergreen to be a pine. No other conifer
has this trait, no pine grows but shows it every day in the year.
One half of the eighty known species of pines grow in North America.
Pure forests of great extent are found in the Southern states, in
the Great Lakes region, and on the mountain slopes in the western
and northern parts of the continent. Smaller areas occur in the
Eastern states. Very soon these forests must be spoken of in the
past tense, for a century of destructive lumbering has almost
cleared the Northeast of pine timber, and though the exploitation of
the pine forests of the South and about the Great Lakes came later,
as population increased in the Middle West, the work has progressed
much more rapidly. The idea of forest conservation, crystallized
into federal law by popular demand, has come too late to save from
wasteful exploitation the superb pine forests west of the Rockies.
Yet thousands of acres of forests are now under government control
and here a great object lesson in rational methods of forest
maintenance is being given. The pineries of the future depend upon
the success of methods there employed.
The uses of pines are not all counted in terms of the lumberman.
There are pines for every situation, soil, and climate. On low
seaboard plains they come down to the highwater mark. They wade into
inundated swamps and climb to the timber line on arid, rocky
mountain-sides. The bravest species go out into the desert. Almost
as brave are those which survive the smoke and dust of cities like
Pittsburg and St. Louis, though theirs is a losing fight with
sulphurous fumes and cramped root space in the smoky town. As
shelter belts, as wind-breaks, as shade and ornamental trees, there
are pines in cultivation in all parts of the country, their winter
usefulness and beauty making them universally the choice of
home-makers, rich and poor.
By-products of pine wood are chiefly turpentine, pitch, resin, and
oil, derived from the resinous sap. "Naval stores" these products
are called, for their consumption is greatest in shipyards.
Turpentine is extensively used in the arts and industries. If the
Southern pine forests are allowed to dwindle, the deficit in lumber
will not affect world commerce as disastrously as the cutting off of
the naval stores production.
The lumberman's division of the pines is a convenient one. "Soft
pines" have soft, light wood, not heavily impregnated with resin. It
is the delight of wood-workers. "Hard pines" have heavy,
dark-colored wood, full of resin, which is a nuisance to the
carpenter, because it "gums up" his tools. The one little sign
enables us to distinguish hard and soft pines without examination
of the wood. Soft pines shed the papery sheath of their leaf bundles
before the leaves themselves begin to fall. Hard pines retain the
leaf sheath until the leaves are shed. A glance at any leafy pine
branch will enable us to determine to which of the two classes a
given tree belongs.
THE SOFT PINES
The outward and visible sign of a soft pine is the loose, deciduous
sheath of its leaf bundles. The scales of its cones are usually
unarmed with horns or prickles. The wood is soft, light colored,
close-grained. The number of leaves in a bundle is the principal key
to the species.
=The White Pine=
_Pinus Strobus_, Linn.
The white pine (_see illustrations, pages 214-215_) is the only pine
east of the Rocky Mountains that bears its leaves in bundles of
five. This semi-decimal plan is found in three western soft pines
and two western hard pines; but in the East, a native tree with
needles in fives, leaves no doubt as to its name. From a distance
this plan of five can be seen in the five branches that form a
platform each year around the central shaft.
Study a sapling pine and you see in its vigorous young growth the
fulfillment of nature's plan, before storms have broken any of the
branches and changed the mathematics of the pattern. Stroke the
flexible, soft leaves that sway graceful and lithe in the wind. If
it is spring, note that the terminal bud has pushed out, and around
it five-clustered buds are forming a circle of shoots. In autumn,
after the season's growth is finished, each twig ends in a single
bud, with a whorl of five buds around it. From the ground upward,
count the platforms of branches. Each whorl of five marks a year in
the tree's growth. The terminal bud carries the height a foot or two
upward, and its surrounding five buds grow in the horizontal plane,
forming the last and smallest platform of leafy shoots. Each branch
is a year younger than the shoot that bears it. Note throughout this
little tree the plan of five, from leaf cluster to largest branch.
Now go to the largest white pine in your neighborhood, study the
plan of five in this tree, and find out the reason for any failures.
Notice the conflict between the branches in the close platforms.
Find branches where this conflict is in progress. Pick out the
winner. Read the age of the tree by the platforms of branches on the
trunk.
No evergreen is more beautiful than a white pine grown in rich soil
in a situation sufficiently sheltered to defend its supple branches
from breakage by severe winds. Its soft, plume-like twigs are dark
blue-green, with pale lines lining each individual leaf. The young
shoots are yellowish green, and they lighten in a wonderful manner
the sombre coloring of the older foliage. At the bases of the new
shoots cluster the staminate catkins, in early June. Yellow and
becoming loose and pendulous as the wind shakes them, they are soon
empty of their abundant pollen, which drifts like gold dust and
fills the air. Among the youngest leaves, toward the end of the
shoot, the purplish rosy lips of the erect pistillate cone-flowers
catch the dust from neighbor trees, and their naked ovules absorb
it and set seed. Close shut are the lips again, against any other
invasion, while these ovules mature. We shall find them standing
erect until autumn, but next season they hang down with their added
weight, and at the end of the second summer the scales change from
green to brown, open and give their ripe winged seeds to the wind
for distribution. Because the tree is biennial-fruited, it always
carries two sizes of cones. The large ones are one year older than
the small ones. Ripe cones are five to ten inches long, with thin,
broad, unarmed scales, squarish at the tips.
The most hopeful phase of the white pine problem to-day is the fact
that new forests are coming up naturally where the early lumbering
deforested great tracts in the Eastern states. Careful forestry
improves upon nature's method, and so the pines are being restored
on land unfit for agricultural crops. White pine is one of the most
profitable timber crops to plant at the present time.
=The Mountain Pine=
_P. monticola_, D. Don.
The mountain pine is scattered through mountain forests from the
Columbia River Basin in British Columbia to Vancouver Island, along
the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains to northern Montana and
Idaho, and south along the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges in
Washington and Oregon, well into California. From the bottom lands
of streams, where it is most abundant and reaches a height of one
hundred to one hundred and fifty feet, and a trunk diameter of five
to eight feet, it climbs to elevations of eight to ten thousand feet
on the California Sierras. The bark of young trees and on the
branches of old ones is smooth and pale-gray. The leaves, five in
the bundles, range from one to four inches in length, stiff,
blue-green, whitened by two to six stripes on the inner side. The
cones are twelve to eighteen inches long, with thickened, pointed
scales ending in an abrupt beak. The larger cone, denser, stiffer
foliage, and the white bark make this white pine of the western
mountains a great contrast to the Eastern white pine.
Unlike many trees whose size diminishes with increase in altitude,
this white pine grows to majestic size at altitudes of nearly two
miles, its noble figure more striking and impressive because of the
dwindling size of its companions on the mountain-sides. The
lumberman looks with despair upon these giant white pines, quite out
of his reach.
In the Arnold Arboretum in Boston a fine seedling specimen of this
western silver pine fruited when but twelve feet high, and proves
vigorous and altogether happy in this absolutely changed climatic
environment. In Europe the same success attends the cultivation of
these trees, which have become very popular in parks and private
grounds. Their introduction into our Eastern states can now be
assured of success.
=The Sugar Pine=
_P. Lambertiana_, Dougl.
The sugar pine (_see illustration, page 231_) belongs in the class
with those tree giants, the sequoias, with which it grows in the
mountain forests of Oregon and California. John Muir calls it "the
largest, noblest, and most beautiful of all the pine trees in the
world." Trees two hundred feet high, with trunk diameter of six to
eight feet, are not uncommon. The maximum given by Sargent is twelve
feet across the stump. The head of a sugar pine is rounded and
broad, with pendulous branches, tufted with stout, dark green
leaves, three to four inches long. The cones are the largest known,
reaching eighteen inches in length, rarely longer. The black or dark
brown seeds are one to five inches long, including the flat, blunt
wings. Indians, bears, and squirrels gather the abundant harvest of
these cones, which are rich in nutriment and pleasant to the taste.
Crystals of sugar form white masses like rock candy, but with a
taste of maple sugar, wherever a break in the bark of a sugar pine
permits the escape of the sweet sap. This gives the tree its name.
No other pine has sap with such a noticeable sugar content.
Fortunately, these gigantic soft pines belong to the high Sierras
and do not go down to the sea, where lumbermen could sacrifice them
without effort. Nature has fenced them in by many barriers, and the
government, by reservation in national parks, insures the
preservation of some of the finest sugar pine groves, for the use
and inspiration of all the people.
A visit to Yosemite is the experience of a lifetime to any American.
Here grow the most gigantic trees in the world, and the sugar pines
are nobler even than the giant "big trees," for the latter are often
decrepit, while the sugar pines are hale and youthful by comparison.
Leaving behind the scrawny gray digger pines on the foothills, the
traveler enters the belt of the yellow pines, on the higher
elevations, and passing these he comes to the grand sugar pines
along the highest level of the stage road that leads into the
National Park. The road is no wider than the broad stumps of sugar
pines, scattered here and there. The standing trees amaze one with
their height and girth.
It is impossible to shake off the impression that some magic has put
magnifiers in our eyes; for trees, beetling cliffs, and rushing
cataracts are bigger than their counterparts in other regions of the
world far-famed for their scenery. The sugar pine trunks seem like
great builded columns, too large for any real tree to grow, and the
"big trees" in the Mariposa Grove intensify this impression of
unreality. In a day or two the traveler becomes accustomed to his
surroundings. He goes out of the Park and down into the world of men
and affairs, his soul enlarged, his life enriched by an experience
he can never quite forget. He is a bigger, better man for his brief
association with Nature in her noblest manifestations.
The wood of the sugar pine is soft, golden, satiny, fragrant,
inviting the woodworker through every one of his senses. A single
tree often yields five thousand dollars' worth of marketable lumber,
the finest, straight-grained soft pine in the world.
The shame of the century is the wanton destruction of sugar pine
trees by vagrant shingle-makers and thieving mill-owners, who
despoiled the grandest trunks of their choicest wood, wastefully
leaving the bulk to cumber the ground and invite forest fires. Late
and slowly, but surely also is the popular mind awakening to the
fact that forests belong to the nation and should be conserved and
maintained for the whole people--not wasted for the temporary
enrichment of private owners, as forest wealth has been squandered
in past years.
=Rocky Mountain White Pine=
_P. flexilis_, James
The Rocky Mountain white pine inhabits mountain slopes from Alberta
to Mexico, including the Sierra Nevada range. In northern New Mexico
and Arizona it occasionally reaches eighty feet in height, but
ordinarily does not exceed fifty. Its rounded dome, as broad as an
oak, bravely dares the wind on exposed cliffs, and crouches as a
stunted shrub at altitudes of twelve thousand feet. The "limber
pine" it is called, from the toughness of its fibre, which alone
enables its long limbs to sustain the whipping they get. The leaves
form thick, beautiful dark-green tufts, which are not shed until the
fifth or sixth year. The cones are three to ten inches long,
purplish; scales rounded, abruptly beaked at the apex; narrow wings
entirely surround the seeds, which fall in September.
This is the lumber pine of the semi-arid ranges of "The Great
American Desert"; the main dependence of builders, too, on the
eastern slopes of the Rockies in Montana.
=The White-bark Pine=
_P. albicaulis_, Engelm.
The white-bark pine is a rippled, gnarled, squatting tree, whose
matted branches, cumbered with needles and snow, make a platform on
which the hardy mountain-climber may walk with safety in midwinter.
It offers him a springy mattress for his bed, as well. The trunk is
covered with snowy bark that glistens like the icemantle that lies
on the treeless mountain-side just above the timber line.
From a twelve-thousand-foot elevation on the Rocky Mountains, in
British Columbia and south to the Yellowstone, the tree clambers
down to the five-thousand-foot line, where it sometimes attains
forty feet in height; its dark green, rigid leaves persist from five
to eight years, always five in a bundle, and never more than two and
a half inches long. The cones, horny-tipped, dark purple, one to
three inches long, are ripe in August; the large sweet seeds are
gathered and eaten by Indians. In California the tree's range
extends into the San Bernardino Mountains.
THE TWO "FOXTAIL" PINES
Two Western pines are distinguished by the common name "foxtail
pine," because the leaves are crowded on the ends of bare
branchlets. _P. Balfouriana_, M. Murr., has stiff, stout dark green
leaves with pale linings. The tree is wonderfully picturesque when
old, with an open irregular pyramid, on the higher foothills of the
California mountains, or crouching as an aged straggling shrub at
the timber-line. Its cones are elongated, the scales thickened and
minutely spiny at tip.
The second five-leaved foxtail pine is _P. aristata_, Engelm., also
called the "prickle-cone pine," from the curving spines that arm the
scales of the purplish brown fruits. This is a bushy tree, with
sprawling lower branches and upper ones that stand erect and are
usually much longer, giving the tree a strange irregularity of form.
The leaves are short and crowded in terminal brushes. From a stocky
tree forty feet high, to a shrub at the timber line, this tree is
found near the limit of tree growth, from the outer ranges of the
mountains of Colorado to those of southern Utah, Nevada, northern
Arizona and southeastern California. In Eastern parks it is
occasionally seen as a shrubby pine with unusually interesting,
artistic cones.
THE NUT PINES
The nut pines, four in number, supply Indians and Mexicans of the
Southwest with a store of food in the autumn, for the seeds are
large and rich in oils and they have keeping qualities that permit
their hoarding for winter. The four-leaved _P. quadrifolia_, Sudw.,
scattered over the mountains of southern and Lower California, has
four leaves in a cluster, as a rule. A desert tree, its foliage is
pale gray-green, harmonizing with the arid mesas and low mountain
slopes, where it is found. The cones are small with few scales, but
the nut is five-eighths of an inch long and very rich.
_P. cembroides_, Zucc., with two to three leaves, is the "piA+-on,"
that covers the upper slopes of Arizona mountains with open forests
fifteen to twenty feet high. The leaves are one to two inches long,
dark green with pale lines, the branchlets orange-colored and matted
with hairs. The large nuts are very oily, and so abundant in the
mountains of northern Mexico that they are sold in large quantities
in every town.
[Illustration: _See page 276_
EASTERN RED CEDARS AND HICKORY]
[Illustration: _See page 225_
THE SUGAR PINE
"The largest, noblest, and most beautiful of all pine trees in
the world"]
The piA+-on (_P. edulis_, Engelm.) ranges from the eastern foothills
of the Colorado Rockies to western Texas and westward to the eastern
borders of Utah, southwestern Wyoming, central Arizona and on into
Mexico, often forming extensive open forests, and reaching an
elevation of seven thousand feet. Short, stiff leaves in clusters of
two or three, dark green, ridged, stout, often persist for eight or
nine years. The tree is a broad compact pyramid; in age, dense,
round-topped, with stout branchlets and abundant globose cones. Each
scale covers two seeds, wingless, about the size of honey locust
seeds, oily, sweet, nutritious and of delicious flavor. This is the
pine nut _par excellence_, whose newest market is among
confectioners and fancy grocers throughout the states.
The one-leaved nut pine (_P. monophylla_, Torr.), spreads like an
old apple tree, and forms a low, round-topped, picturesque head, its
lower limbs drooping to the ground. The reduction of the leaves in
the clusters to lowest terms, gives the tree a starved look, and the
eighteen or twenty rows of pale stomates on each leaf give the
tree-top a ghostly pallor. The vigor of the tree is expressed in its
abundant fruit, short, oblong, one to two inches in length, with
rich plump brown seeds upon which the Indians of Nevada and
California have long depended. The wood supplies fuel and charcoal
for smelters; and this stunted tree, rarely over twenty feet in
height, forms nut orchards for the aborigines and the scattered
population of whatever race, between altitudes of five and seven
thousand feet. From the western slopes of the Wasatch Mountains of
Utah, it ranges to the eastern slopes of the southern Sierra Nevada,
to their western slopes at the head waters of King's River, and
southward to northern Arizona and to the mountains of southern
California.
John Muir says:
"It is the commonest tree of the short mountain ranges of the
Great Basin. Tens of thousands of acres are covered with it,
forming bountiful orchards for the red man. Being so low and
accessible, the cones are easily beaten off with poles, and
the nuts are procured by roasting until the scales open. To
the tribes of the desert and sage plains these seeds are the
staff of life. They are eaten either raw or parched, or in the
form of mush, or cakes, after being pounded into meal. The
time of nut harvest is the merriest time of the year. An
industrious, squirrelish family can gather fifty or sixty
bushels in a single month before the snow comes, and then
their bread for the winter is sure."
THE PITCH PINES
Pitch pines have usually heavy coarse-grained, dark-colored wood,
rich in resin--a nuisance to the carpenter. The leaf-bundles have
persistent sheaths. The cone scales are thick and usually armed.
"Hard pine" is a carpenter's synonym. The group includes some of the
most valuable timber trees in American forests.
=The Longleaf Pine=
_P. palustris_, Mill.
The longleaf pine is preA"minent in importance in the lumber trade
and in the production of naval stores. It stretches in a belt about
one hundred and twenty-five miles wide, somewhat back from the
coast, all the way from Virginia to Tampa Bay and west to the
Mississippi River. Isolated forests are scattered in northern
Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas.
The trees are tall, often exceeding one hundred feet in height; with
trunks slender in proportion, rarely reaching three feet in
diameter. The narrow, irregular head is formed of short stout
twisted limbs on the upper third of the trunk. The leaves are from
twelve to eighteen inches long, forming dense tufts at the ends of
the branches. Being flexible they droop and sway on the ends of
erect branches like shining fountains, their emerald lightened by
the silvery sheaths that invest each group of three.
Sapling longleaf pines have recently entered the market for
Christmas greens in Northern cities. This threatens the renewal of
longleaf forests that have fallen to the axe of the lumberman.
Unless Federal restriction comes to the rescue, there is little hope
of saving this young growth, for nothing can exceed in beauty a
three-foot sapling of longleaf pine as a Christmas decoration.
The lumber of this species is the "Southern pine" of the builder.
Heavy, strong, yellowish brown, durable, it has a tremendous vogue
for flooring and the interior finish of buildings. It is used in the
construction of railway cars. Its durability in contact with water
accounts for its use in bridge-building, and for masts and spars of
vessels. A great deal of this lumber is exported for use in European
shipyards. It has replaced the dwindling supply of white pine for
building purposes throughout the North, and the strong demand for it
has been followed by lumbering of the most destructive and wasteful
type, because the forests are owned privately.
In the early days the American colonists in Virginia tapped the
longleaf pine, collected the resin from the bleeding wounds, and
boiled it down for pitch and tar. These crude beginnings established
an industry now known as the "orcharding" of the longleaf pine.
After a century of wastefulness and wanton destruction of the trees,
it has become patent to all that scientific methods must be resorted
to in the production of turpentine and other products derived from
the living trees. Otherwise the dwindling industry will soon come to
an end.
Resin is the sap of the tree. The first problem is to draw it in a
manner least wasteful of the product, and least dangerous to the
life of the tree. The second process is the melting of the collected
resin in a still and the drawing off of the volatile turpentine.
What is left solidifies and is known as _rosin_.
"Boxing" the trees was the cutting of a grooved incision low on the
trunk, with a hollow at the base of the vertical trough to hold the
discharge of the bleeding sap-wood. Resin-gatherers visited the
tapped trees and emptied the pockets into buckets by means of a
ladle. They also scraped away the hardened sap and widened the
wounds to induce the flow from new tissues. This method cost the
life of the tree in two or three years, and it became a prey to
disease and a menace to the whole forest, as fuel for fires
accidentally started. Nowadays, all reasonable owners of longleaf
pine have discarded the old-fashioned boxing and installed methods
approved by the Department of Forestry.
Tar was formerly derived from the slow burning of wood in a
clay-lined pit. The branches, roots and other lumber refuse, cut in
small sizes were heaped in a compact mound and covered with sods and
earth. Smoldering fires soon induced a flow of smoky tar, thick as
molasses, in the bottom of the pit. In due time the flow ceased, the
fires went out, and charcoal was the result of this slow burning.
Removing the charcoal, the tar became available for various
purposes; boiled until it lost its liquid character, it became tough
sticky _pitch_. This primitive pit method of extracting tar and
making charcoal has been abandoned wherever intelligence governs
the industry, and distillation processes have been installed.
=The Shortleaf Pine=
_P. echinata_, Mill.
The shortleaf pine ranks second to the longleaf in importance to the
lumber industries of the East and South. It ranges from Staten
Island, New York, to north Florida, and west through West Virginia,
eastern Tennessee, southern Missouri, Louisiana and eastern Texas.
It reaches its largest size and greatest abundance west of the
Mississippi River, where great forests, practically untouched thirty
years ago, have become the centre of the "yellow pine" industry, out
of which vast fortunes have been made. The wood is preferred by
builders, because it is less rich in resin, softer and therefore
more easily worked. Young trees yield turpentine and pitch, and with
the longleaf and the Cuban pine much forest growth has suffered
destruction in the production of these commodities.
The slender tree equals the longleaf in height and bears its dark
green leaves in clusters of twos and threes, scattered on short
branches that form a narrow loose head. The pale green, stout
branchlets are lightened by the silvery sheaths of the young leaves
(_see illustrations, pages 214-215_) which are short only in
comparison with the companion species, the longleaf. The cones are
abundant; the seeds numerous, winged for flight, retaining their
vitality longer than most pine seeds. The tree is less sensitive to
injuries and has the propensity, unusual in the pine family, of
throwing up suckers from the roots. In open competition, this pine
will hold its own against the invasion of other trees, if only
allowed to do so. Much of the deforested territory, let alone, will
cover itself with a ripe crop of shortleaf pine lumber in a hundred
years.
=The Cuban Pine=
_P. Caribaea_, Morelet
The Cuban pine stands third in the triumvirate of lumber pines of
the South. This is the "swamp pine" or "slash pine," found in the
coast regions from South Carolina throughout Florida, and along the
Gulf Coast to the Pearl River in Louisiana. It is a beautiful
pine--tall, with dense crown of dark green leaves, in twos and
threes, eight to twelve inches long, falling at the end of their
second season, before they lose their brightness. A large part of
the turpentine of commerce has been derived from these coast
forests, as well as lumber, which takes its place in the Northern
market with the longleaf and the shortleaf.
Natural reforestation has taken place in the Southeast, and a large
part of the turpentine exported by Georgia and South Carolina
to-day, is from second-growth Cuban pine, on land from which the
lumber companies have stripped the virgin growth.
=The Loblolly Pine=
_P. Taeda_, Linn.
The loblolly or old field pine chooses land generally sterile and
otherwise worthless. It grows in swamps along the Atlantic coast,
from New Jersey through the Carolinas, and follows the Gulf from
Tampa Bay into Texas. Inland, it is found from the Carolinas to
Arkansas and Louisiana. It has remarkable vitality of seed and
seedlings, which do equally well on sterile uplands, on water-soaked
ground, or where soil is light and sandy. It is very apt to take
possession of land once cleared for agriculture. The young trees
crowd together and grow with tremendous vigor the first years of
their lives, successfully holding large tracts in pure forests. The
limbs are short, thick, matted, forming a compact rounded head; the
leaves slender, stiff, twisted, pale-green, six to nine inches long,
in groups of threes. The wood is rich in resin, but differs greatly
in quality with age and the fertility of the soil. "Rosemary pine"
was heavy, hard, close-grained, with a thin rim of soft sap-wood.
This famous lumber, preferred by shipbuilders of many countries for
masts, grew in the virgin forest of the Carolinas. Giants were cut
in the rich marsh lands back from the Sounds. But the small loblolly
pine, grown on sandy soil, is but third-grade lumber, the
sap-wood three times as thick as the heart-wood and exceedingly
coarse-grained. One merit has recently been discovered in this
lumber, that formerly blackened before it was seasoned, by the
invasion of a fungous growth. It quickly absorbs creosote, which
renders it immune from decay. It is used in the building of docks,
cars, boats, and locally in house-building. Its wood makes a sharp,
quick heat when dried. It is used in bakeries and brick kilns, and
in charcoal-burning.
=The Pitch Pine=
_P. rigida_, Mill.
The pitch pine goes down to the very water's edge on the sand-dunes
along the New-England Coast, and spreads on worthless land from New
Brunswick to Georgia and west to Ontario and Kentucky. Occasionally
in cultivation the tree is symmetrical, and grows to considerable
size. In the most favorable situations, however, it rarely exceeds
fifty feet in height, with gnarled rough branches, oftenest
irregular in form and becoming painfully grotesque with age. The
persistence of its clustered black cones adds to the tree's
ugliness; and the tufted, scant foliage has a sickly yellowish-green
color when new, and becomes darker and twisted the second year. The
cones are armed with stout thorns and often remain on the trees ten
or twelve years. The knots, particularly, are rich in resin--the
delight of camping parties. "Pine-knots" and "candlewood" are
household necessities in regions where these trees are the
prevailing species of pine.
Starved as is its existence, the pitch pine springs up with amazing
vigor after a fire. Suckers are sent up about the roots of the
fire-killed trees, and the wind scatters the seeds broadcast for a
new crop. The chief merit of the tree is that it grows on worthless
land, and holds with its gnarled roots the shifting sand-dunes of
the New-England Coast better than any other tree.
=The Gray Pine=
_P. divaricata_, Sudw.
The gray pine goes farther north than any other pine, following the
McKenzie River to the Arctic Circle. From Nova Scotia to the
Athabasca River, it covers barren ground, reaching its greatest
height, seventy feet, in pure forests north of Lake Superior. In
Michigan it forms the "jack-pine plains" of the Lower Peninsula. As
a rule it is a crouching, sprawling tree, its twigs covered with
scant short dingy leaves in twos, averaging an inch in length. The
wood is a great boon to the regions this tree inhabits. It is light,
soft, weak, and close-grained; used for posts, railroad ties,
building material and fuel. Its seeds germinate better from cones
that have been scorched by fire.
=The Digger Pine=
_P. Sabiniana_, Dougl.
The digger pine is a western California tree of the semi-arid
foothill country. Gray-green, sparse foliage on the gnarled branches
gives the tree a forlorn starved look, as it stands or crouches,
singly or in scattered groups, along the gravelly sun-baked slopes.
The great cones, six to ten inches long, fairly loading the
branches, express most emphatically the vigor of the tree. The
thickened scales protrude at a wide angle from the central core, and
each bears a strong beak, triangular, flattened like a shark's
tooth, but curved. The rich oily nuts, as big as lima beans, furnish
a nourishing food to the Indians. The Digger tribe harvested these
nuts, and the pioneer gave the tree the tribal name.
=The Western Pitch Pine=
_P. Coulteri_, D. Don.
The Western pitch pine, most abundant in the San Bernardino and San
Jacinto Mountains, at elevations of about a mile above the sea, has
cones not unlike those of the digger pine, in the armament of their
scales. These are notable by being the heaviest fruits borne by any
pine tree. Occasionally they exceed fifteen inches in length and
weigh eight pounds. The seeds are one-half an inch in length, not
counting the thin wing, which is often an inch long.
The leaves of this "big-cone" pine match the cones. They are stout,
stiff, dark blue-green, six to sixteen inches long, three in a
bundle, which has a sheath an inch or more in length. Crowded on the
ends of the branches, these leaves would entitle this tree to
qualify as a "foxtail" pine, except for the fact that the foliage
persists into the third and fourth year, which clothes the branches
far back toward the trunk and gives the tree a luxuriant crown. The
dry slopes and ridges of the Coast Ranges of California are
beautified by small groves and scattered specimens of this striking
and picturesque pine, so unlike its neighbors. Its wood is used only
for fuel. In European countries this is a popular ornamental pine,
planted chiefly for its great golden-brown cones.
=The Knob-cone Pine=
_P. attenuata_, Lemm.
The knob-cone pine inhabits the Coast Ranges from the San Bernardino
Mountains northward on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and
Cascade Mountains, into southwestern Oregon, where it forms pure
forests over large areas, its altitude limit being four thousand
feet. It is a tall slim tree of the hot dry fire-swept foothills,
and it comes again with absolute certainty after forest fires. The
clustered cones, three to six inches long, are amazingly hard and do
not open at maturity, but wait for the death of the tree. Leaves
three to seven inches long, in clusters of three, firm, rigid, pale
yellow or bluish green, cover the tree with a sparse thin
foliage-mass; but the branches, new and old, are covered with cones,
many of which are being swallowed up by the growth of wood on trunk
and limb. Thirty or forty years these cones may hang, their seeds
never released and never losing their vitality, until fire destroys
the tree. Then the scales open and the winged seeds are scattered
broadcast. They germinate and cover the deforested slopes with a
crop of knob-cone pine saplings that soon claim all standing room
and cover the scars of fire completely.
=The Monterey Pine=
_P. radiata_, D. Don.
The Monterey pine, like its companion, the Torrey pine, is
restricted to a very narrow area. They grow together on Santa Rosa
Island. At Point Pinos, south of Monterey Bay, this tree stands a
hundred feet in height, with trunks occasionally five to six feet in
diameter, its branches spreading into a round luxuriant, though
narrow, head. From Pescadero to San Simeon Bay, in a narrow belt a
few miles wide, and on the neighboring islands, this tree finds its
limited natural range; but the horticulturist has noted the silvery
sheen of its young growth and the rich bright green that never dulls
in its foliage. Its quick growth and handsome form in cultivation
make it the most desirable pine for park and shade planting in
California. Indeed it is a favorite park tree north to Vancouver
along the Coast. It has been introduced into Europe and is
occasionally met in parks in the Southeastern states.
=The Western Yellow Pine=
_P. ponderosa_, Laws.
The Western yellow pine forms on the Colorado Plateau the most
extensive pine forests of the American continent. Mountain slopes,
high mesas, dry canyon sides, even swamps, if they occur at
elevations above twenty-five hundred feet, furnish suitable habitats
for this amazing species, in some of its varying forms. From British
Columbia and the Black Hills it follows the mountains through the
Coast Ranges, Sierras, and the Great Continental Divide, to the
highlands of Texas and into Mexico, forming the most extensive pine
forests in the world. All sorts of construction work draw upon this
wonderful natural supply of timber, from the droughty western
counties of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Texas, to the Pacific Coast.
The typical tree has thick plates of cinnamon-red bark, a massive
trunk, five to eight feet in diameter, one hundred to two hundred
feet high, with many short, thick, forked branches in a spire-like
head. In arid regions the trunk is shorter and the head becomes
broad and round-topped. Near the timber line and in swamps, the
trees are stunted and the bark is nearly black.
The leaves of this pine tree are two or three in a bundle, stout,
dark yellow-green, five to eleven inches long, deciduous during
their third season. Their color has given the name to the species,
for the wood is not yellow, but light red, with nearly white
sap-wood.
On the way to the Yosemite, the traveler meets the yellow
pine--splendid tracts of it--with the giant sugar pine, in open
park-like areas, where each individual tree has room to manifest the
noble strength of its tall shaft.
The flowers appear in May, brightening the even color of the shiny
leaves with their pink or brown staminate clusters two or three
inches wide. The crimson pistillate cones hide at the ends of the
branches, lengthening into fruits three to ten inches in length, and
half as wide. Strong, recurving tips, armed with slender prickles,
are seen in the scales of the reddish-brown cones that fall soon
after they spread and liberate the winged seeds. These are produced
in abundance, are scattered widely by the wind, and accomplish the
renewal of these mountain forests.
The bark is usually very thick at the bases of the trunks, reaching
eighteen inches on the oldest trees. With this cloak wrapped about
its living cambium, the yellow pine is able, better than most trees,
to survive a sweeping forest fire.
Botanists have found _P. ponderosa_ extremely variable, and they
quarrel among themselves about species and variety, for the tree
endures many climates, adapts itself to varying conditions and
develops a type for each habitat and region. In old lake basins on
the Sierra slopes, "variety _Jeffreyi_, Vasey," is the name given to
the gigantic yellow pine, which there finds food and moisture in
abundance and reaches its finest proportions and its greatest lumber
value.
In the Rocky Mountains, "variety _scopulorum_, Engelm.," is the
type. "But all its forms can be traced to a common origin and so the
parent species stands; and despite man's devastating axe the yellow
pine flourishes in the drenching rains and fog of the northern coast
at the level of the sea, in the snow-laden blasts of the mountains,
in the white glaring sunshine of the interior plateaus and plains,
and on the borders of mirage-haunted deserts, volcanoes, and lava
beds,--waving its bright plumes in the hot winds undaunted, blooming
every year for centuries, and tossing big ripe cones among the
cinders and ashes of nature's hearths." (_John Muir._)
=The Scrub Pine=
_P. contorta_, Loud.
The scrub pine is the humble parent of one of the splendid Western
lumber pines, whose description comes under its varietal name. Down
the coast of Alaska, usually in sphagnum bogs, on sand-dunes, in
tide-pools and deep swamps to Cape Mendocino, the indomitable,
altogether-admirable scrub pine holds its own against cold, salt air
and biting arctic blasts. No matter how stunted, gnarly and
round-shouldered these trees are, one thing they do, often when only
a few inches high: _they bear cones_, and keep them for years; and
each season add more. Up from the sea the scrub pine climbs,
ascending the Coast Ranges and western slopes of the Cascade
Mountains, changing its habit to a tree twenty to thirty feet tall
with thick branches and dark red-brown bark, checked into oblong
plates. Gummy exudations of this pitch pine make it peculiarly
liable to running fires. Thousands of acres are destroyed every
summer, but they seize the land again and soon cover it with the
young growth. This happens because the burned trees drop their
cones, which open and set free the seeds which have never lost their
vitality.
In all the vast region over which this vagrant tree swarms, it
furnishes firewood and shelter. The pioneer blesses it, and a great
multitude of wild things, both plant and animal, maintain their
lives in comfort and security because of its protection.
The lodge-pole pine or tamarack pine is but a variety (_Murrayana_)
of _P. contorta_, that grows in forests on both slopes of the Rocky
Mountains of Montana and Wyoming, at elevations of from seven to
eight thousand feet, and stretches away into British Columbia and
Alaska, and southward to the San Jacinto Range. Between eight
thousand and nine thousand five hundred feet in altitude, along the
Sierra Nevada in California, it reaches its greatest size and
beauty, and forms extensive dense forests. The young trees have very
slender trunks, and often stand crowded together like wheat on the
prairie. An average forest specimen is five inches in diameter, when
thirty or forty feet in height. No wonder the Indian in Wyoming and
Colorado called it "the lodge-pole pine," for their supple trunks
fitted these trees, while yet saplings, to support the lodge he
built.
Richer, moister ground nourishes this fortunate offspring of the
scrub pine. The two-leaved foliage, usually about two inches long,
wears a cheerful yellow-green, while the parent tree is dark and
sombre, with leaves an inch in length. The hard, strong, brown wood
of _contorta_ contrasts strikingly with that of its variety, which
is light yellow or nearly white--soft, weak, straight-grained and
easily worked. Its abundance in regions where other timber is
scarce, brings it into general use for construction work. It also
furnishes railroad ties, mine timbers and fuel, with the minimum of
labor, since trunks of proper sizes can easily be selected.
The Indians, whose food supply was always precarious, gathered
branches and made a soft pulp of the inner bark, scraped out in the
growing season. This they baked, after shaping it into huge cakes,
in pit ovens built of stones, and heated for hours by burning in
them loads of firewood. When the embers were burned out, the oven
was cleaned and the cakes put in. Later they were smoked with a damp
fire of moss, which preserved them indefinitely. "Hard bread" of
this type provisioned the Indian's canoe on long trips. Inedible
until boiled, it was a staple winter food at home and on long
expeditions, among various tribes of the Northwest.
=The Red Pine=
_P. resinosa_, Ait.
The red pine, also called the "Norway pine" for no particular
reason, is something of an anomaly. Its wood is soft like that of
the white pine with which it grows, and though _resinosa_ means
"full of resin," it is not so rich as several other pitch pines. Its
paired leaves and red bark reveal its kinship with the Scotch pine,
a European species, very common in cultivation in America.
Seemingly intermediate between soft and hard pines, _P. resinosa_
appeals to lumbermen and landscape gardeners because it embodies the
good points of both classes. No handsomer species grows in the
forests, from New Brunswick to Minnesota and south into
Pennsylvania. The sturdy red trunk makes a bright color contrast
with the broad symmetrical pyramid of boughs clothed in abundant
foliage. The paired, needle-like leaves, dark green and shining, are
six inches in length. The flowers are abundant and bright red, more
showy than is ordinary in the pine family. Brown cones one to three
inches long with thin unarmed scales, discharge their winged seeds
in early autumn, but cling to the branches until the following
summer.
[Illustration: _See page 259_ _See page 248_
LEAVES AND CONES OF HEMLOCK (_left_) AND OF NORWAY SPRUCE (_right_)]
[Illustration: _See page 248_
THE SPINY FOLIAGE AND FAST-CLINGING CONES OF THE BLACK SPRUCE]
The wood of red pine is pale red, light in weight, close-grained
with yellowish or nearly white sap-wood. Logs a hundred feet and
more in length used to be shipped out of Canadian woods to England.
Singularly free from large knots and other blemishes, they made huge
spars and masts of vessels, as well as piles for dockyards, bridges,
etc. Other woods have proved more durable, and the largest red pine
timber has been harvested. So its importance in the lumber trade has
declined.
But in cultivation the red pine holds its own for its quick growth,
its hardiness, its lusty vigor and its beauty of color contrasts. It
grows on sterile ground exposed to the sea, forming groves of great
beauty where other pines would languish and die. For shelter belts,
inland, it is equally dependable, and as specimen trees in parks and
gardens it has few equals. At no season of the year does it lose its
fresh look of health. Young trees come readily from seed, and
throughout their lives they are unusually free from injuries by
insects and fungi.
THE SPRUCES
The distinguishing mark of spruce trees is the woody or horny
projection on which the leaf is set. Look at the twigs of a tree
which you think may be a fir or a spruce. Wherever the leaves have
fallen, the spruce twig is roughened by these spirally arranged
leaf-brackets. Leaf-scars on a fir twig are level with the bark,
leaving the twig smooth. Spruce twigs are always roughened, as
described above.
Most spruce trees have distinctly four-angled leaves, sharp-pointed
and distributed spirally around the shoot, not two-ranked like fir
leaves. They are all pyramidal trees with flowers and fruits of the
coniferous type. The cones are always pendent and there is an annual
crop. The wood is soft, not conspicuously resinous, straight-grained
and valuable as lumber.
The genus picea comprises eighteen species, seven of which belong to
American forests. These include some of the most beautiful of
coniferous trees.
=The Norway Spruce=
_Picea excelsa_, Link.
The Norway spruce (_see illustration, page 246_) is the commonest
species in cultivation. It is extensively planted for wind-breaks,
hedges and shelter belts, where its long lower arms rest on the
ground and the upper limbs shingle over the lower ones, forming a
thick leafy shelter against drifting snow and winds.
=The Black Spruce=
_P. Mariana_, B. S. & P.
The black spruce is a ragged, unkempt dingy tree, with short
drooping branches, downy twigs, and stiff dark blue-green foliage,
scarcely half an inch long. Its cones, least in size of all the
spruce tribe, are about one inch long and they remain on the
branches for years (_See illustration, page 247_).
Rarely higher than fifty feet, these scraggly undersized spruces are
ignored by horticulturists and lumbermen, but the wood-pulp man has
taken them eagerly. The soft weak yellow wood, converted into paper,
needs very little bleaching. From the far North the species covers
large areas throughout Canada, choosing cold bogs and swamp borders,
or well-drained bottom lands. In the United States it extends south
along the mountains to Virginia and to central Wisconsin and
Michigan.
=The Red Spruce=
_P. rubens_, Sarg.
The red spruce forms considerable forests from Newfoundland to North
Carolina, following the mountains and growing best in well-drained
upland soil. This Eastern spruce is more deserving of cultivation
than the one just described, for its leaves, dark yellow-green and
shining, make the tree cheerful-looking. The slender downy twigs are
bright red, and there is a warm reddish tone in the brown bark. The
winter buds are ruddy; the flowers purple; and the glossy cones, one
to two inches long, change from purple to pale reddish brown before
they mature and drop to pieces. Even in crowded forests this spruce
keeps its lower limbs and looks hale and fresh by the prompt casting
of its early ripening cones.
The pale red wood is peculiarly adapted for sounding-boards of
musical instruments. It has been used locally in buildings, but of
late the wood-pulp mills get most of this timber.
=The Engelmann Spruce=
_P. Engelmanni_, Engelm.
The Engelmann spruce is the white spruce of the Rocky Mountains and
the Cascade Range of Washington and Oregon, which forms great
forests on high mountain slopes from Montana and Idaho to New Mexico
and Arizona. Always in damp places, this thin-barked beautiful tree
is safest, from fire. The leaves are blue-green, soft and flexible
but with sharp callous tips. The cones are about two inches long,
their thin scales narrowing to the blunt tips. Each year a crop of
seeds is cast and the cones fall. Running fires destroy the seed
crop with the standing trees, making renewal of the species
impossible in the burnt-over tracts. For this reason, this beautiful
spruce tree is oftenest found on the higher altitudes, or where wet
ground and banks of snow defend it from its arch enemy. The tree is
satisfactory in cultivation, but never equal to the wild-forest
specimens. The wood is used locally for building purposes, for fuel
and charcoal.
=The Blue Spruce=
_P. Parryana_, Sarg.
The blue spruce well known in Eastern lawns as the "Colorado blue
spruce," is a crisp-looking, handsome tree, broadly pyramidal, with
rigid branches and stout horny-pointed leaves, blue-green to silvery
white, exceeding an inch in length. At home on the mountains of
Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, it reaches a hundred to a hundred and
fifty feet in height and a trunk diameter of three feet, and
becomes thin and ragged at maturity. The same fate overtakes the
trim little lawn trees, so perfect in color and symmetry for a few
years.
=Tideland Spruce=
_P. Sitchensis_, Carr.
The tideland spruce is the most important lumber tree in Alaska. It
inhabits the coast region from Cape Mendocino, in California,
northward; and is abundant on wet, sandy and swampy soil. The
conspicuous traits of this tree are its strongly buttressed trunk,
one hundred to two hundred feet tall, often greatly swollen at the
base; the graceful sweep of its wide low-spreading lower limbs; and
the constant play of light and shadows in the tree-top, due to the
lustrous sheen on the bright foliage. It is a magnificent tree, one
of the largest and most beautiful of the Western conifers,
indomitable in that it climbs from the sea-level to altitudes three
thousand feet above, and follows the coast farther north than any
other conifer.
THE FIRS
In a forest of evergreens the spire form, needle leaves, and some
other traits belong to several families. To distinguish the firs
from the spruces, which they closely resemble in form and foliage,
notice the position of the cones. All fir trees hold their ripe
cones erect. No other family with large cones has this striking
characteristic. All the rest of the conifers have pendent cones,
except the small-fruited cypresses and arbor-vitaes.
All fir trees belong to the genus _abies_, whose twenty-five species
are distributed from the Far North to the highlands of tropical
regions in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. All are tall
pyramidal trees, with wide-spreading horizontal limbs bearing thick
foliage masses, and with bark that contains vesicles full of
resinous balsam. The branches grow in whorls and spread like fern
fronds, covered for eight or nine years with the persistent leaves.
Circular scars are left on the smooth branches when they fall.
The leaves are the distinguishing character of the genus when cones
are lacking. They are usually flat, two-ranked on the twig, without
stems, and blunt, or even notched at the tip. For these typical
leaves one must look on the lower sterile branches of the tree, and
back of the growing shoots, where leaves are apt to be crowded and
immature. The cones are borne near the tops of the trees, and on
these branches the leaves are often crowded and not two-ranked as
they are below. The flowers of fir trees are abundant and showy, the
staminate clusters appearing on the under sides of the platforms of
foliage; the pistillate held erect on platforms higher up on the
tree's spire. Always the flowers are borne on the shoots of the
previous season. The cone fruits are cylindrical or ovoid, ripening
in a single season and discharging their seeds at maturity. The
stout tapering axis of the cone persists after seeds and scales have
fallen.
The bark of fir trees is thin, smooth, and pale, with abundant resin
vesicles, until the trees are well grown. As age advances the bark
thickens and becomes deeply furrowed. The wood is generally pale,
coarse-grained, and brittle.
=The Balsam Fir=
_Abies balsamea_, Mill.
The balsam fir is probably best known as the typical Christmas tree
of the Northeastern states and the source of Canada balsam, used in
laboratories and in medicine. Fresh leaves stuff the balsam pillows
of summer visitors to the North Woods. In the lumber trade and in
horticulture this fir tree cuts a sorry figure, for its wood is
weak, coarse, and not durable, and in cultivation it is short-lived,
and early loses its lower limbs.
Throughout New England, northward to Labrador, and southward along
the mountains to southwestern Virginia, this tree may be known at a
glance by its two-ranked, pale-lined leaves, lustrous and dark green
above, one half to one and one half inches long, sometimes notched
on twigs near the top of the tree. Rich dark purple cones, two to
four inches long, with thin plain-margined, broad scales, stand
erect, glistening with drops of balsam, on branches near the top of
the tree. The same balsam exudes from bruises in the smooth bark. By
piercing the white blisters and systematically wounding branch and
trunk, the limpid balsam is made to flow freely, and is collected as
a commercial enterprise in some parts of Canada. "Oil of fir" also
is obtained from the bark.
=The Balsam Fir=
_A. Fraseri_, Poir.
This balsam fir, much more luxuriant in foliage, and worthier of
cultivation as an ornamental tree, is native to the Appalachian
Mountains of southwestern Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina.
The purple cones are ornamented by pale yellow cut-toothed bracts
that turn back over the edge of the plain scale. Limited in range,
but forming forests between the limits of four and six thousand feet
in altitude, this tree is confined to local uses as lumber and fuel.
All the other firs of America are Western, and among these are some
of the tree giants of the world.
=The Red Fir=
_A. magnifica_, A. Murr.
The magnificent red fir is called by John Muir "the noblest of its
race." In its splendid shaft that reaches two hundred and fifty feet
in height, and a trunk diameter of seven feet, there is a symmetry
and perfection of finish throughout that is achieved by no other
tree. One above another in graduated lengths the branches spread in
level collars, the oldest drooping on the ground, the rest
horizontal, their framework always five main branches that carry
luxuriant flat plumes of silvery needles. Each leaf is almost
equally four-sided, ribbed above and below, with pale lines on all
sides, so wide as to make the new growth silvery throughout the
season. Later these leaves become blue-green, and persist for about
ten years. Only on the lower side of the branch are the leaves
two-ranked.
The bark of this fir tree is covered with dark brown scales, deeply
divided into broad rounded ridges, broken by cross fissures when
old. Out toward the tips of the branches the bark is silvery white.
In mid-June the flowers appear, the staminate in profuse clusters
against the silvery leaf-linings, bright red, on the under sides of
the platforms. It is a blind or stupid person who can travel in fir
woods and fail to notice this wonderful flower pageant, that may be
viewed by merely looking upward. The pistillate flowers, greenish
yellow, tipped with pink, are out of sight as a rule, among the
needles in the tree-tops. They ripen into tall cylindrical cones,
six to eight inches long and half as wide, that fall to pieces at
maturity, discharging their broad thin scales with the purple
iridescent winged seeds.
Pure forests of this splendid fir tree are found in southern Oregon
among the Cascade Mountains, between five and seven thousand feet
above the sea. It is the commonest species in the forest belt of the
Sierra Nevada, between elevations of six thousand and nine thousand
feet. From northern California, it follows the western slope of the
Sierra Nevada, climbing to ten thousand feet in its southernmost
range. A variety, _Shastensis_, Lemm., is the red fir with bright
yellow fringed bracts on its stout cones. This ornament upon its
fruits seems to be the chief distinguishing character of the form
which occurs with the parent species on the mountains in Oregon and
northern California, and recurs in the southern Sierra Nevada.
The best defense of this superb red fir is the comparative
worthlessness of its soft, weak wood. Coarse lumber for cheap
buildings, packing cases and fuel makes the only demands upon it. In
European parks it is successfully grown as an ornamental tree, and
has proved hardy in eastern Massachusetts.
=The Noble Fir=
_A. nobilis_, Lindl.
The noble fir or red fir is another giant of the Northwest. On the
western slopes of the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon it
reaches occasionally two hundred and fifty feet in height, differing
from _magnifica_ in being round-topped instead of pyramidal before
maturity. Its red-brown wood, furrowed bark and the red staminate
flowers justify its name. The twigs are red and velvety for four or
five years. The leaves are deeply grooved above, rounded and
obscurely ribbed on the lower surface, blue-green, often silvery
through their first season, crowded and curved so that the tips
point away from the end of the branch.
The oblong cylindrical cones, four to five inches long, are velvety,
their scales covered by bracts, shaped and notched like a scallop
shell, with a forward-pointing spine, exceeding the bract in length.
Forests of this tree at elevations of twenty-five hundred to five
thousand feet are found in Washington and northern Oregon, from
which limited quantities of the brownish-red wood enter the lumber
trade under the name of "larch."
=The White Fir=
_A. grandis_, Lindl.
The white fir is a striking figure, from its silvery lined, dark
green foliage, its slender pyramidal form that reaches three hundred
feet in height, and the vivid green of its mature cones that are
destitute of ornament and slenderly cylindrical. From Vancouver
Island southward to Mendocino County in California, this tree is
common from the sea level to an elevation of four thousand feet.
Eastward it extends into Idaho, climbing to seven thousand feet, but
choosing always moist soil in the neighborhood of streams. Various
uses, woodenwares, packing cases, and fuel consume its soft, coarse
wood to a limited extent. The delicate grace of its sweeping
down-curving branches makes it one of the most beautiful of our
Western firs. It grows rapidly, and is a favorite in European parks.
=The White Fir=
_A. concolor_, Lindl. and Gord.
This white fir is a giant of the Sierras, but a tree of medium
height in the Rocky Mountains. Its leaves are often two to three
inches long, very unusual for a fir tree, curving to an erect
position, pale blue or silvery at first, becoming dull green at the
end of two or three years.
On the California Sierras, this silver fir tree lifts its narrow
spire two hundred and fifty feet toward the sky and waves great
frondlike masses of foliage on pale gray branches. As a much smaller
tree, it is found in the arid regions of the Great Basin and of
southern New Mexico and Arizona, territory which no other fir tree
invades. In gardens of Europe and of our Eastern states this is a
favorite fir tree, often known as the "blue fir" and the "silver
fir" from its pale bark and foliage, whose blue cast is not always
permanent. Eastern nurseries obtain their best trees from seeds
gathered in the Rocky Mountains.
THE DOUGLAS SPRUCE
The Douglas spruce (_Pseudotsuga mucronata_, Sudw.), ranks with the
giant arbor-vitaes, firs, and sequoias in the forests of the Pacific
Coast. Thousands of square miles of pure forest of this species
occur in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Here the trees
stand even, like wheat in a grain field, the tallest reach four
hundred feet, the redwood its only rival. Nowhere but in the redwood
forests is there such a heavy stand of timber on this continent. No
forest tree except sequoias equals the Douglas spruce in massiveness
of trunk and yield of straight-grained lumber.
The genus _pseudotsuga_ stands botanically in a position
intermediate between firs and hemlocks. Our tree giant is as often
called the Douglas fir as Douglas spruce. The lumberman sells the
output of his mills under the trade name, "Oregon pine." This is
perhaps the best known lumber in all the Western country. It has a
great reputation abroad, where timbers of the largest size are used
for masts, spars, piles for wharves and bridges, and for whatever
uses heavy timbers are needed. The wood is stronger in proportion to
its weight than that of any other large conifer in the country. It
is tough, durable, and elastic. Its only faults are its extreme
hardness and liability to warp when cut into boards. These faults
are noted only by carpenters who use the wood for interior finish of
houses. "Red pine" it is called in regions of the Great Basin, where
the trees grow smaller than on the Coast, and are put to general
lumber purposes. It is variable in quality, but always pale yellow,
striped with red, and handsomely wavy when quarter-sawed;
distractingly so in the "slash grain," oftenest seen in the interior
finish of the typical California bungalow.
The living tree is a superb, broad-based pyramid, bearing a load of
crowded drooping branches, where it has a chance to assume its
normal habit. A delicate lace-like drooping spray of yellowish or
bluish green leaves, flat, spreading at right angles from the twig,
gives the Douglas spruce its hale, abundant vigor. The dark red
staminate flowers glow in late winter against the yellow foliage
mass of the new leaves; but even the flowers are not so showy as the
drooping cones, two to four inches long, their plain scales adorned
with bracts, notched and bearing a whip that extends half an inch
beyond the scales. Blue-green, shading to purple, with red-lipped
scales and bright green bracts, these cones are truly the handsomest
ornaments worn by any tree.
Finally, this paragon of conifers surprises Eastern nurserymen by
outstripping other seedlings in vigor and quickness of growth. Rocky
Mountain seed does best. The Oregon trees furnish seed to European
nurseries and seedlings from Europe grow quickly into superb
ornamental trees.
THE HEMLOCKS
Unlike any other conifer, the hemlock mounts its evergreen leaves on
short petioles, jointed to projecting, horny brackets on the twig.
At any season this character determines the family name of a
group of exceptionally graceful pyramidal conifers. The Eastern
hemlocks have their leaves arranged in a flat spray, silvery
white underneath, by pale lines on the underside of the flat
blunt-pointed blade (_See illustration, page 246_). An abundance
of pendent cones is borne annually. The wood of hemlocks is
comparatively worthless but the bark is rich in tannin, and so the
tree is important in the leather trade.
=The Hemlock=
_Tsuga Canadensis_, Carr.
The hemlock lifts its dark green, feathery spray above the sturdy
trunk into a splendid broad pyramid. In all rocky uplands from Nova
Scotia to Alabama and west to Minnesota, the drooping lower branches
sweep the ground, and the tree is often half buried in snow. But in
spring every twig is dancing and waving yellow plumes of new
foliage, the picture of cheerfulness as the sunlight sifts through
the tree-tops. In May the new blossoms sprinkle all the leafy
twigs--the staminate, yellow; the pistillate, pale violet. Looking
up from below, one sees a charming iridescent effect when the
blossoms add their color to the shimmering silver which lines the
various platforms of foliage. The little red-brown cones cling to
the twigs all winter, slowly parting their scales to release the
winged seeds. Squirrels climb the trees in the fall and cut off
these cones to store away for winter use.
"Peelers" go into the woods in May, when the new growth is well
started and the bark will peel readily. They fell and strip hemlock
trunks and remove the bark in sheets, which are piled to dry and be
measured like cord-wood, and later shipped to the tanneries. The
cross-grained coarse wood is left to rot and feed forest fires.
Locally, it is useful for the timbers of houses and barns, because
it is rigid and never lets go its hold upon a nail or spike.
=The Western Hemlock=
_T. heterophylla_, Sarg.
The Western hemlock is a giant that dominates other trees in the
Western mountain forests, famous for their giants of many different
names. It is a noble pyramidal tree that reaches two hundred feet in
height and a maximum trunk diameter of ten feet. Its heavy
horizontal branches droop and hold out feathery tips as light and
graceful in the adult monarch as in the sapling of a few years'
growth. The characteristic hemlock foliage, lustrous green above and
pale below, is two-ranked by the twisting of the slender petioles.
From southeastern Alaska, eastward into Montana and Idaho, and
southward to Cape Mendocino in California, this tree climbs from the
lowlands to an altitude that exceeds a mile. Wherever there are rich
river valleys and the air is humid, this hemlock is superb, the
delight of artists and lumbermen. At its highest range it becomes
stunted, but always produces its oval, pointed cones in abundance.
Its wood, the strongest and most durable in the hemlock family, is
chiefly used in buildings, and the bark for tanning.
=The Mountain Hemlock=
_T. Martensiana_, Sarg.
The mountain hemlock of the West is called by John Muir "the
loveliest evergreen in America." Sargent endorses this judgment with
emphasis. It grows at high altitudes, fringing upland meadows,
watered by glaciers, with groves of the most exquisite beauty. The
sweeping, downward-drooping branches, clothed with abundant
pea-green foliage, silver-lined, resist wind storms and snow burdens
by the wonderful pliancy of their fibres. In early autumn the trees
are bent over so as to form arches. Young forests are thus buried
out of sight for six months of the year. With the melting of the
snow they right themselves gradually, and among the new leaves
appear the flowers, dark purple cones and staminate star-flowers,
blue as forget-me-nots. Three-angled leaves, whorled on the twig,
and cones two to three inches long, set this hemlock apart from its
related species, but the leaf-stalk settles once for all the
question of its family name.
[Illustration: _See page 268_
THE FLAT, FROND LIKE SPRAY OF THE ORNAMENTAL ARBOR-VITAE]
[Illustration: _See page 278_
FRUIT AND LEAVES OF THE AMERICAN LARCH]
THE SEQUOIAS
Nowhere else in the world are conifers found in such extensive
forests and in such superlative vigor and stupendous size as in the
states that border the Pacific Ocean. California is particularly the
paradise of the conifers. All of the species that make the forests
of the Northwest the wonder of travelers and the pride of the states
are found in equally prodigal size and extent in California. To
these forests are added groves of sequoias--the Big Tree and the
redwood, the former found nowhere outside of California, the latter
reaching into Oregon. Once the sequoias had a wide distribution in
the Old and the New World. With magnolias and many other luxuriant
trees found in warm climates, five species of sequoia extended over
the North Temperate zone in both hemispheres, reaching even to the
Arctic Circle. The glacial period transformed the climate of the
world and destroyed these luxuriant northern forests under a
grinding continuous glacier. The rocks of the tertiary and
cretaceous periods preserved in fossils the story of these
pre-glacial forests. Two of the species of sequoia escaped
destruction in tracts the ice sheet did not overwhelm. For ten
thousand years, perhaps, the sequoia has held its own in the
California groves. Indeed, both species are able to extend their
present range if nature is unhindered. The three enemies that
threaten sequoia groves are the axe of the lumberman, the forest
fire kindled by the waste about sawmills, and the grazing flocks
that destroy seedling trees.
=The Big Tree=
_Sequoia Wellingtonia_, Seem.
The Big Tree is the most gigantic tree on the face of the earth, the
mightiest living creature in existence. Among the giant sugar pines
and red firs it lifts a wonderfully regular, rounded dome so far
above the aspiring arrow-tips of its neighbors as to make the best
of them look like mere saplings. The massive trunk, clothed with
red-brown or purplish bark, is fluted by furrows often more than a
foot in depth. The trunk is usually bare of limbs for a hundred or
two hundred feet, clearing the forest cover completely before
throwing out its angular stout arms. These branch at last into
rounded masses of leafy twigs, whose density and brilliant color
express the beauty and vigor of eternal youth in a tree which counts
its age by thousands of years already.
To see this Big Tree in blossom one must visit the high Sierras
while the snow is eight to ten feet deep upon the buttressed base of
the huge trunk. It is worth a journey, and that with some hardship
in it, to see these trees with all their leafy spray, gold-lined
with the multitude of little staminate flowers that sift pollen
gold-dust over everything, and fill the air with it. The pistillate
flowers, minute, pale green, crowd along the ends of the leafy
sprays, their cone scales spread to receive the vitalizing dust
brought by the wind.
When spring arrives and starts the flower procession among the lower
tree-tops, the spray of the Big Tree is covered with green cones
that mature at the end of the second season. They are woody, two to
three inches long, and spread their scales wide at a given signal,
showering the surrounding woods with the abundant harvest of their
minute winged seeds. Each scale bears six to eight of them, each
with a circular wing that fits it for a long journey. The cones hang
empty on the trees for years.
The leaves of the Big Tree are of the close, twig-hugging, scaly
type, never exceeding a half inch in length on the most
exuberant-growing shoots. For the most part they are from one fourth
to one eighth of an inch in length, sharp pointed, ridged, curved to
clasp the stem, and shingled over the leaves above.
John Muir believes there is no absolute limit to the existence of
any tree. Accident alone, he thinks, not the wearing out of vital
organs, accounts for their death. The fungi that kill the silver fir
inevitably before it is three hundred years old touch no limb of the
Big Tree with decay. A sequoia must be blown down, undermined,
burned down, or shattered by lightning. Old age and disease pass
these trees by. Their heads, rising far above the spires of fir and
spruce, seem not to court the lightning flash as the lower, pointed
trunks do; and yet no aged sequoia can be found whose head has not
suffered losses by Jove's thunderbolts. Cheerfully the tree lets go
a fraction of its mighty top, and sets about the repair of the
damage, with greatly accelerated energy, as if here was an
opportunity to expend the tree's pent-up vitality. It is strange to
see horizontal branches of great age and size strike upward to form
a part of a new, symmetrical dome to replace the head struck off or
mangled by lightning. With all the signs of damage lightning has
done to these tree giants of the Sierras, but one instance of
outright killing of a tree is on record.
The wood of the Big Tree is red and soft, coarse, light, and
weak--unfit for must lumber uses. It ought, by all ordinary
standards, to be counted scarcely worth the cutting; but the vast
quantity yielded by a single tree pays the lumberman huge profits,
though he wastes thousands of feet by blasting the mighty shaft into
chunks manageable in the sawmill. Shingles, shakes, and fencing
consume more of the lumber than general construction--ignoble uses
for this noblest of all trees.
The best groves of Big Trees now under government protection are in
the grand Sequoia National Park. Near the Yosemite is the famous
Mariposa Grove that contains the "grizzly giant" and other specimen
trees of great age and size. More than half of the Big Trees are in
the hands of speculators and lumber companies. Exploitation of
nature's best treasure is as old as the human race. The idea of
conservation is still in its infancy.
The ruin by the lumbering interests of a sequoia grove means the
drying up of streams and the defeat of irrigation projects in the
valleys below. Big Trees inhabit only areas on the western slopes
of the Sierras. Wherever they grow their roots have made of the deep
soil a sponge that holds the drainage of melting snowbanks and doles
it out through streams that flow thence to famishing, hot,
wind-swept plains and valleys. When the trees are gone, turbulent,
short-lived spring floods exhaust the water supply and do untold
damage in the lowlands.
Big Trees have not succeeded in cultivation in our Eastern states,
but for many years have been favorites in European gardens and
parks. In the native groves the seedlings do not show the virility
of the redwoods, though to the south the range of the species is
being gradually extended. No tree is more prodigal in seed
production and more indifferent, when mature, to the ills that beset
ordinary forest trees; yet government protection must be
strengthened, private claims must be bought, and scientific forestry
maintained in order to prevent the extinction of the species, with
the destruction of trees that are, as they stand to-day, the
greatest living monuments in the world of plants.
=The Redwood=
_S. sempervirens_, Endl.
The redwood comes down to the sea on the western slopes of the Coast
Range, from southern Oregon to Monterey County in California,
tempting the lumberman by the wonderful wealth and accessibility of
these groves of giant trees. The wood is soft, satiny, red, like the
thick, fibrous, furrowed bark that clothes the tall, fluted trunks.
Redwoods are taller than Big Trees, have slenderer trunks and
branches and a more light and graceful leaf-spray. The head is
pyramidal in young trees, later becoming irregular and narrow, and
exceedingly small in forests by the crowding of the trees and the
death of lower branches. The leaves on the terminal shoots spread
into a flat spray, two-ranked, like those of a balsam fir. Each
blade is flat, tapering to both ends, and from one fourth to one
half an inch in length. Awl-shaped and much shorter leaves are
scattered on year-old twigs, back of the new shoots, resembling the
foliage of the Big Tree.
The cones are small and almost globular, maturing in a single
season, scarcely an inch long, with three to five winged seeds under
each scale. Seedling redwoods come quickly from this yearly sowing,
and thrive under the forest cover, unless fire or the trampling feet
of grazing flocks destroy them. After the lumberman, the virile
redwood sends up shoots around the bleeding stumps, thus reinforcing
the seedling tree and promising the renewal of the forest groves in
the centuries to come.
Redwood lumber is the most important building material on the
Pacific Coast. The hardest and choicest wood comes in limited
quantities from the stumps which furnish curly and bird's-eye wood,
used by the makers of bric-A -brac and high-priced cabinet work.
Shingles, siding, and interior finish of houses consume quantities
of the yearly output of the mills. Demand for fence posts, railway
ties and cooperage increases. Quantities of lumber are shipped east
to take the place of white pine no longer obtainable.
In cultivation the redwood is a graceful, quick-growing, beautiful
evergreen, successful in the Southeastern states, and often met in
European parks and gardens. Weeping forms are very popular abroad.
Government and state protection has made sure the safeguarding for
coming generations of some groves of redwoods, containing trees
whose size and age rival those of the most ancient Big Trees. But
the fact that the redwood, restricted on the map to such a limited
territory, is the most important timber tree on the Coast, is a blot
upon our vaunted Democracy, which has allowed the cunning of a few
small minds to defeat the best interests of the whole people and rob
them of forest treasure which might yield its benefits continuously,
if properly managed. Government purchase of all sequoia-bearing
land, followed by rational methods of harvesting the mature lumber
and conserving the young growth, is the ideal solution of the
problem. Such a plan would assure the saving of the monumental
giants.
THE ARBOR-VITAES
Minute, scale-like leaves, four-ranked, closely overlapping, so as
to conceal the wiry twig, mark the genus _thuya_, which is
represented in America by two species of slender, pyramidal
evergreen trees, whose intricately branched limbs terminate in a
flat, open spray (_see illustration, page 262_). "Tree of Life" is
the English translation, but the Latin name everywhere is heard.
=Eastern Arbor-vitae=
_Thuya occidentalis_, Linn.
The Eastern arbor-vitae, called also the white cedar, is found in
impenetrable pure forest growth, from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
northwestward to the mouth of the Saskatchewan River, always in
swampy regions, or along the rocky banks of streams. In the East it
follows the mountains to Tennessee, and from Lake Winnipeg it
extends south to middle Minnesota and northern Illinois. In
cultivation it is oftenest seen as an individual lawn and park tree,
or in hedges on boundary lines. It submits comfortably to severe
pruning, is easily transplanted, and comes readily from seed.
Plantations grow rapidly into fence posts and telegraph poles. The
wood is durable in wet ground, but very soft, coarse, and brittle.
=The Red Cedar=
_T. plicata_, D. Don.
The red cedar or canoe cedar is the giant arbor-vitae of the coast
region from British Columbia to northern California and east over
the mountain ranges into Idaho and northern Montana. Its buttressed
trunk is a fluted column one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet
high in western Washington and Oregon, along the banks of mountain
streams and in the rich bottom land farther seaward. The leaves in a
flat spray at once distinguish this tree from any other conifer, for
they are pointed, scale-like, closely overlapping each other in
alternate pairs.
The clustered cones, with their six or eight seed-bearing scales,
seem absurdly small fruits on so huge a tree. None exceeds one half
an inch in height, but their number makes up for size deficiency and
the seed crop is tremendous.
The Alaskan Indian chooses the tall bole of a red cedar for his
totem pole, and from the massive butt hollows out the war canoe and
"dug-out" which solve his problems of transportation in summer.
Durability is the chief merit of this soft, brittle wood, which is
easily worked with the Indian's crude tools. The bark of the tree
furnishes the walls of the Indian huts and its inner fibre is the
raw material of his cordage--the harness for his dog team, his nets
and lines for fishing; and it is the basis of the squaw's
basket-weaving industry.
This is the best arbor-vitae for ornamental planting. Its success in
Europe is very striking, and from European nurseries it has been
successfully re-introduced into the United States, where it is hardy
and vigorous. But it fails when taken directly into the North
Atlantic states. It must come in via Europe, as nearly all West
Coast trees have to do in order to succeed.
THE INCENSE CEDAR
One tree, so magnificent in proportions that it ranks among the
giants in our Western forests, stands as the sole American
representative of its genus. Its nearest relatives are the
arbor-vitaes, sequoias, and the bald cypress of the South.
The incense cedar (_Librocedrus Decurrens_, Torr.) has its name from
its resinous, aromatic sap. The tree, when it grows apart from
others, forms a perfect tapering pyramid, with flat, plume-like
sprays that sweep downward and outward with wonderful lightness and
grace. The leaves are scale-like, closely appressed to the wiry
twigs, in four ranks, bright green, tinged with gold in late winter,
by the abundance of the yellow staminate flowers. The cones are
small, narrowly pointed, made of few paired scales, each bearing
two seeds. The bark is cinnamon-red in color. The trees occur
scattered among other species in open forests from three thousand to
six thousand feet above the sea, reaching a height of two hundred
feet and a trunk diameter of twelve feet on the Sierra Nevada
glacial moraines.
The lumber resembles that of arbor-vitae, and is used for the same
purposes. In cultivation the tree is hardy and thrives in parks in
the neighborhood of New York. In Europe it has long been a favorite.
THE CYPRESSES
Three genera of pyramidal conifers, with light, graceful leaf-spray,
and small woody cones, held erect, compose the group known as
cypresses. All have found places in horticulture, for not one of
them but has value for ornamental planting. Some species have
considerable lumber value.
=The Monterey Cypress=
_Cupressus macrocarpa_, Cord.
The Monterey cypress is now restricted to certain ocean-facing
bluffs about Monterey Bay in California. These trees are derelicts
of their species. Wind-beaten into grotesqueness of form, unmatched
in any other tree near the sea-level, their matted and gnarled
branches make a flat and very irregular top above a short, thick,
often bent and leaning trunk. Clusters of globular cones stud the
twigs behind the leafy spray composed of thread-like wiry twigs,
entirely covered with scaly, four-ranked leaves.
In cultivation this cypress grows into a luxuriant, pyramidal tree,
often broadening and losing its symmetry, but redeeming it by the
grace of its plume-like, outstretched branches. One by one the
native cypresses on the crumbling bluffs will go down into Monterey
Bay, for the undermining process is eating out their foundations.
Wind and wave are slowly but surely sealing their doom. But the
species is saved to a much wider territory.
=The European Cypress=
_C. sempervirens_, Linn.
A tall, narrow pyramid of sombre green, the European cypress is
found in cemeteries in south Europe and everywhere, planted for
ornament. This is the classic cypress, a conventional feature of
Italian gardens, the evergreen most frequently mentioned in
classical literature. Slow-growing and noted for its longevity, it
was the symbol of immortality. It is hardy in the South-Atlantic and
Pacific-Coast states, and is a favorite evergreen for hedges in the
Southwest.
Three other members of the genus occur on mountain foothills--one in
Arizona, two in California--all easily recognized by their
scale-like leaves and button-like woody cones, which require two
years to mature.
=The White Cedar=
_Chamaecyparis Thyoides_, Britt.
The genus _chamaecyparis_ includes three American species, of tall,
narrow pyramidal habit and flat leaf-spray like that of the
arbor-vitae. Annual erect globular cones of few, woody scales,
produce one to five seeds under each.
This white cedar is the swamp-loving variety of the Atlantic
seaboard--its range stretches from Maine to Mississippi. The
durability of its white wood gives it considerable importance as a
lumber tree. It is particularly dependable when placed in contact
with water and exposed to weather. Cedar shingles, fence posts,
railroad ties, buckets, and other cooperage consume quantities each
year. The trees are important ornamental evergreens, planted for
their graceful spray and their dull blue-green leaves. Their maximum
height is eighty feet.
=The Lawson Cypress=
_C. Lawsoniana_, A. Murr.
The Lawson cypress lifts its splendid spire to a height of two
hundred feet, on the coast mountains of Oregon and California,
forming a nearly continuous forest belt twenty miles long, between
Point Gregory and the mouth of the Coquille River. Spire-like, with
short, horizontal branches, this species bears a leaf-spray of
feathery lightness, bright green, from the multitude of minute
paired leaf-scales, and adorned with the clustered pea-sized cones,
which are blue-green and very pale until they ripen.
The wood of this giant cypress is used in house-finishing and in
boat-building; for flooring, fencing, and for railroad ties.
=The Bald Cypress=
_Taxodium distichum_, Rich.
The bald cypress is the one member of the cypress group that sheds
its foliage each autumn, following the example of the tamarack. In
the Far South, river swamps are often covered with a growth of
these cypresses whose trunks are strangely swollen at the base, and
often hollow. The flaring buttresses are prolonged into the main
roots, which form humps that rise out of the water at some distance
from the tree. These "cypress knees" are not yet explained, though
authorities suspect that they have something to do with the aA"ration
of the root system.
Inundated nine or ten months of the year, these cypress swamps are
often dry the remaining time, and it is a surprise to Southerners to
find these trees comfortable and beautiful in Northern parks.
Cleveland and New York parks have splendid examples.
The leaves of the bald cypress are of two types. They are scale-like
only on stems that bear the globular cones. On other shoots they
form a flat spray, each leaf one half to three-fourths of an inch
long, pea-green in the Southern swamps, bright yellow-green on both
sides in dry ground, turning orange-brown before they fall. The
twigs that bear these two-ranked leaves are also deciduous, a unique
distinction of this genus.
Cypress wood is soft, light brown, durable, and easily worked.
Quantities of it are shipped north and used in the manufacture of
doors and interior finishing of houses, for fencing, railroad ties,
cooperage, and shingles.
THE JUNIPERS
The sign by which the junipers are most easily distinguished from
other evergreens, is the juicy berries instead of cones. In some
species these are red, but they are mostly blue or blue-black.
Before they mature it is easy to see the stages by which the
cone-scales thicken and coalesce, instead of hardening and remaining
separate, as in the typical fruit of conifers.
Juniper leaves are of two types: scale-like in opposite pairs,
pressed close to the twig, as in the cypresses; and stiff, spiny,
usually channelled leaves, which stand out free from the twig in
whorls of threes.
The wood is red, fragrant, durable, and light.
=The Dwarf Juniper=
_Juniperus communis_, Linn.
The dwarf juniper departs from the pyramidal pattern and forms a
loose, open head above a short, stout trunk. The slender branchlets
are clothed with boat-shaped leaves which spread nearly at right
angles from the twigs in whorls of three. Each one is pointed and
hollowed, dark green outside, snowy white inside, which is really
the upper side of the leaf. It requires three years to mature the
bright blue berries, and they hang on the tree two or three years
longer. Each fruit contains two or three seeds, and these require
three years to germinate.
It is plain to see that time is no object to this slow-growing dwarf
juniper, found in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, covering
vast stretches of waste land. From Greenland to Alaska it is found
and south along the highlands into Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and
California. Its hardiness gives it importance as a cover for waste
land on seashores and for hedges and wind-breaks in any exposed
situation. It is a tree reaching thirty feet in height on the
limestone hills of southern Illinois. In other situations it is
usually a sprawling shrubby thing, the cringing parent of a race of
dwarf junipers, known in many and various horticultural forms.
=The Western Juniper=
_J. occidentalis_, Hook.
The giant of its race is the Western juniper, one of the
patriarchial trees of America, ranking in age with the sequoias.
Never a tall tree, it yet attains a trunk diameter of ten feet, and
an age that surely exceeds two thousand years. At elevations of
seven to ten thousand feet this valiant red cedar is found clinging
to the granite domes and bare glacial pavements where soil and
moisture seem absolutely non-existent. Sunshine and thin air are
abundant, however, and elbow room. Upon these commodities the tree
subsists, crouching, stubbornly clinging, while a single root offers
foothold, its gnarled branches picturesque and beautiful in their
tufts of gray-green leaves. Avalanches have beheaded the oldest of
these giants, but their denuded trunks throw out wisps of new
foliage with each returning spring. When they succumb, their trunks
last almost as long as the granite boulders among which they are
cast by the wind or the ice-burden that tore them loose.
The stringy bark is woven into cloth and matting by the Indians, and
the fine-grained, hard, red wood finds no better use than for the
mountaineer's fencing and fuel.
=The Eastern Red Cedar=
_J. Virginiana_, Linn.
The Eastern red cedar is a handsome, narrow pyramid in its youth,
often becoming broad and irregular, or round-topped above a
buttressed, twisted trunk, as it grows old. The scale-like leaves
are four-ranked, blue-green when young, spreading, and sometimes
three fourths of an inch long, on vigorous new shoots. The dark blue
berries are covered with a pale bloom and have a resinous, sweet
flesh. This juniper is familiar in abandoned farms and ragged
fence-rows, becoming rusty brown in foliage to match the stringy red
bark in winter time. The durable red wood is used for posts and
railroad ties, for cedar chests and pencils. The tree is profitably
planted by railroad companies, as cedar ties are unsurpassed. In
cultivation the tree forms an interesting, symmetrical specimen,
adapted to formal gardens. (_See illustration, page 230_.)
=The Red Juniper=
_J. Barbadensis_, Linn.
The red juniper, much more luxuriant than its close relative of the
North, is the handsomest juniper in cultivation. Its pyramid is
robbed of a rigid formal expression by the drooping of its fern-like
leaf-spray. The berries are silvery white and abundant. The wood is
used principally for pencils. This species grows in the Gulf states.
THE LARCHES, OR TAMARACKS
The notable characteristic of the small genus, _larix_, is that the
narrow leaves are shed in the autumn. Here is a tall pyramidal
conifer which is not evergreen. It bears an annual crop of small
woody cones, held erect on the branches, and the leaves are borne
in crowded clusters on short lateral spurs, except upon the terminal
shoots, where the leaves are scattered remotely but follow the
spiral plan. Larch wood is hard, heavy, resinous, and almost
indestructible. The tall shafts are ideal for telegraph poles and
posts.
=The Tamarack=
_Larix Americana_, Michx.
The tamarack or American larch (_see illustration, page 263_) goes
farther north than any other tree, except dwarf willows and birches.
Above these stunted, broad-leaved trees pure forests of tamarack
rise, covering Northern swamps from Newfoundland and Labrador to
Hudson Bay and west across the Rocky Mountains, the trees dwindling
in size as they approach the arctic tundras, the limit of tree
growth. The wood of these bravest of all conifers is a God-send over
vast territories where other supply of timber is wanting. The tough
roots of the larch tree supply threads with which the Indian sews
his birch canoe.
In cultivation the American species is too sparse of limb and
foliage to compete with the more luxuriant European larch, yet it is
often planted. Its fresh spring foliage is lightened by the pale
yellow of the globular staminate flowers and warmed by the rosy tips
of the cone flowers. In early autumn the plain, thin-scaled cones,
erect and bright chestnut-brown, shed their small seeds while the
yellow leaves are dropping, and the bare limbs carry the empty cones
until the following year.
=The Western Larch=
_L. occidentalis_, Nutt.
The Western larch is the finest tree in its genus, reaching six feet
in trunk diameter and two hundred feet in height, in the Cascade
forests from British Columbia to southern Oregon and across the
ranges to western Montana. This tree has the unusual distinction of
exceeding all conifers in the value of its wood, which is heavy,
hard, strong, dense, durable, of a fine red that takes a brilliant
polish. It is used for furniture and for the interior finish of
houses. Quantities of it supply the demand for posts and railroad
ties, in which use it lasts indefinitely, compared with other
timber.