Lower California. It is a mountain species, and it faces the Pacific
ocean in most of its range. In the North it occupies the western slope
of the Cascade mountains in southern Oregon and northern California; and
it grows on the western slope of the Sierras for five hundred miles, at
altitudes of from 4,000 to 8,000 feet, where it is mixed with sugar
pine, western yellow pine, white fir, and sequoias.
It is a fine, shapely tree, except that the butt is much enlarged. It
has the characteristic form of a deep swamp tree, but it has nothing to
do with swamps. Its best development is on the Sierra Nevada mountains,
where swamps are few, and the incense cedar avoids them. It occupies dry
ridges and slopes, but not sterile ones. It must have as good soil as
the sugar pine demands. Its height when mature ranges from seventy-five
to 125 feet, diameter four feet from the ground, from three to six feet,
but some trees are larger. It is not a rapid grower, but it maintains
its vigor a long time. As an average, it increases its diameter an inch
in from seven to ten years.
The wood is dense. It contains no pores large enough to be seen with an
ordinary reading glass. The medullary rays are so small as to be
generally invisible to the naked eye, but when magnified they are shown
to be thin and numerous. The summerwood forms about one-fourth of the
annual ring. The wood is nearly as light as white pine, is moderately
strong, is brittle, straight grained, the heartwood is reddish, the
thick sapwood nearly white. It is an easy wood to work, and in contact
with the soil it is very durable.
The incense cedar is the only representative of its genus in the United
States. It has many relatives in the pine family, but no near ones. Its
kin are natives of Formosa, China, New Zealand, New Guinea, and
Patagonia.
The name incense cedar refers to the odor of the wood rather than of the
leaves. Those who work with freshly cut wood are liable to attacks of
headache, due to the odor; but some men are not affected by it.
The forest grown tree is of beautiful proportions. Unless much crowded
for room, it is a tall, graceful cone, the branches drooping slightly,
and forming thick masses. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, within the
range of this cedar, the winter snows are very heavy. It is not unusual
for two or three feet of very wet snow to fall in a single day. The
incense cedar’s drooping branches shed the snow like a tent roof, and a
limb broken or seriously deformed by weight of snow is seldom seen. Deer
and other wild animals, when surprised by a heavy fall of snow, seek the
shelter of an incense cedar, if one can be found, and there lie in
security until the storm passes.
It is a tree which does fairly well in cultivation, and several
varieties have been developed. It lives through the cold of a New
England winter. Its cones are about three-fourths inch in length, and
ripen in the autumn.
Incense cedar has filled an important place in the development of the
great central valley of California, where it has supplied more fence
posts than any other tree. Posts of redwood have been its chief
competitor, but generally the region has been divided, and each tree has
supplied its part. The redwood’s field has been the coast, the cedar’s
the inland valley within reach of the Sierras. It has been nothing
unusual for ranchmen to haul cedar posts on wagons forty or fifty miles.
The manufacture of posts from incense cedar has entailed an enormous
waste of timber. The thick sapwood is not wanted, and in the process of
converting a trunk into posts, the woodsman first splits off the sap and
throws it away. In trunks of small and medium size, the sapwood may
amount to more than the heartwood, and is a total loss.
The tree’s bark is thick and stringy, and it is generally wasted; but in
some instances it is used as a surface dressing for mountain roads. It
wears to pieces and becomes a pulpy mass, and it protects the surface of
the road from excessive wear, and from washing in time of heavy rain.
Approximately one-half of the incense cedar trees, as they stand in the
woods, are defective. A fungus (_Dædalia vorax_) attacks them in the
heartwood and excavates pits throughout the length of the trunks. The
galleries resemble the work of ants, and as ants often take possession
of them and probably enlarge them, it is quite generally believed that
the pits are due to ants. The excavations are frequently filled with
dry, brown dust, sometimes packed very hard and tight. The cedar thus
affected resembles “pecky cypress,” and it is believed that the same
species of fungus, or a closely related species, is responsible for the
injury to both cypress in the South and incense cedar on the Pacific
coast. It is not generally regarded by users of cedar posts that the
honey-combed condition of the wood lessens the service which the post
will give, unless by weakening it and causing it to break, or by
rendering it less able to hold the staples of wire fences, or nails of
plank and picket fences.
Post makers often prefer fire-killed timber. If a tree is found with the
sapwood consumed, as is not unusual, it is nearly always free from
fungous attack. The reason it stands through the fire which burns the
sapwood off, is that the heart is sound--if it were not sound, the whole
tree would be consumed.
The wood of the incense cedar is serviceable for many purposes. The
rejection of the sapwood by so many users is the most discouraging
feature. The heart, when free from fungus, is a fine, attractive
material that does not suffer in comparison with the other cedars,
though it may not equal some of them for particular purposes. Tests show
it fit for lead pencils, and recent purchases of large quantities have
been made by pencil makers. Clothes chests and wardrobes are
manufactured from this wood on the assumption that the odor will keep
moths out of furs and other clothing stored within. It has been used for
cigar boxes, but has not in all instances proven satisfactory. The odor
of the wood is objected to by some smokers. Another objection and a
somewhat peculiar one, has been filed against incense cedar as a cigar
box material. It is claimed that the boxes are attacked voraciously by
rats which gnaw the wood, to which they are doubtless attracted by the
odor.
Sawmills turn out incense cedar lumber which is worked into frames for
doors and windows, and doors are made of it, and also interior finish.
Shipments of inch boards are sold in New York and Boston, and exports go
to London, Paris, and Berlin.
The long period during which incense cedar has been used and wasted, has
reduced the supply in most regions, but there is yet much in the forest.
It is never lumbered separately, but only in connection with pine and
fir; but post makers have always gone about picking trees of this
species and passing by the associated species.
ALLIGATOR JUNIPER (_Juniperus pachyphlœa_) is so named from its bark
which is patterned like the skin of an alligator. It is called
oak-barked cedar in Arizona, mountain cedar in Texas, and
checkered-barked juniper in other places. Its range lies in southwestern
Texas, about Eagle pass and Limpia mountains, and westward on the desert
ranges of New Mexico and Arizona, south of the Colorado plateau, and
among the mountains of northern Arizona. Its range extends southward
into Mexico. It is one of the largest of the junipers, but only when
circumstances are wholly favorable. It is then sixty feet high, and four
or five feet in diameter; but it is generally small and of poor form for
lumber, because of its habit of separating into forks near the ground.
It does best at elevations of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet in bottoms of
canyons and ravines. The grayish green color of the foliage is due to
the conspicuous white glands which dot the center of each leaf. The
berries are small and blue, of sweetish taste which does not
particularly appeal to the palate of civilized man, but the Indians of
the region, whose normal state is one of semi-starvation, eat them with
relish. The line separating heartwood from sap in alligator juniper is
frequently irregular and vague, and like some of its kindred junipers of
the West, patches of sap are sometimes buried deep in the heartwood,
while streaks of heartwood occur in the sap. This heartwood is usually
of a dirty color, suggesting red rocks and soil of the desert where it
grows. Small articles which can be made of wood selected for its color
are attractive. They may be highly polished, and the surface takes a
satiny finish; but the wood does not show very well in panel or body
work where wide pieces are used. The best utilization of alligator
juniper appears to lie in small articles. It is fine for the lathe, and
goblets, napkin rings, match safes, and handkerchief boxes are
manufactured from the wood in Texas. Its rough uses are as fence posts
and telephone poles. It is durable in contact with the soil.
CALIFORNIA JUNIPER (_Juniperus californica_) is called white cedar,
juniper, sweet-fruited juniper, and sweet-berried cedar. Its range is in
California south of Sacramento, among the ranges of the coast mountains,
and the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Its height runs from twenty to
forty feet, diameter one to two. The leaves fall in the second or third
year. This tree is of poor form and size for lumber. Trunks frequently
divide into branches near the ground. The wood resembles that of other
western junipers, and usually the fine color which distinguishes the red
cedar of the East is wanting, and in its stead is a dull brown, tinged
with red. The wood is soft and durable, and is strongly odorous. The
sapwood is thin and is nearly white. Fuel and fence posts are the most
important uses of the California juniper. Indians eat the berries raw or
dry them and pound them to flour.
[Illustration]
WESTERN RED CEDAR
[Illustration: WESTERN RED CEDAR]
WESTERN RED CEDAR
(_Thuja Plicata_)
In the eastern markets the lumber from this tree is usually called
western cedar without further description, but that name does not always
sufficiently identify it. There are other western cedars, notably
incense and yellow; but they have not generally appeared in eastern
markets. Western red cedar is the name given it when the purpose is to
separate it from other western cedars. It is the only red cedar in the
far West, except the scarce junipers which are totally unknown as its
competitors in lumber centers. Gigantic cedar is a name which takes size
into account. It is the largest of American cedars. Trunks fifteen feet
in diameter and 200 feet high are sometimes seen, but the usual size is
100 high, from two to four in diameter. Canoe cedar is a name bestowed
upon this western tree for the same reason that canoe wood is one of the
yellow poplar’s names in the East. It is one of the best woods for
dugout canoes. Botanists have called the tree giant arborvitæ, but the
name never got beyond books. When the people of Washington and Oregon
speak of cedar without a qualifying term, they mean this species. It is
widely known as shingle wood or shingle cedar, because more shingles are
made of it than of all other kinds of timber in the United States
combined.
The western red cedar’s range covers 300,000 square miles, not counting
regions of small or scattered growth. For a timber tree, that range is
large, but not nearly as large as some others. It exceeds one-hundred
fold the commercial range of redwood, and probably a thousand fold that
of Port Orford cedar, but its range is not one-third that of the eastern
red cedar, though in total quantity of available lumber it surpasses the
eastern tree a hundred fold. Its range begins in Alaska on the north,
and follows the coast to northern California, and extends eastward into
Idaho. The best development occurs in the regions of warm, moist Pacific
winds, but not in the immediate fog belts. The largest quantity of this
wood, and probably the largest trees also, are in Washington. Abundant
rainfall is essential to western red cedar’s development. It would be
difficult to approximate the amount of the remaining stand. This cedar
does not form pure forests, and estimates of so many feet per acre or
square mile cannot be based on fairly exact information as may be done
with redwood, and some of the southern pines. Though the drain upon the
cedar forests is heavy, it is generally believed there is enough of this
species to meet demands for a long period of years.
Nature made ample provision for the spread and perpetuation of this
tree. The seeds are fairly abundant, are light, have good wing power,
and are great travelers in search of suitable places to germinate and
take root. The tree’s greatest enemy is fire. The cedar’s bark is thin,
even when trunks are mature, and a moderate blaze often proves fatal to
large trees; but small ones, with all their branches close to the
ground, have no chance when the fire burns the litter among them. Some
tree seeds germinate readily on soil bared by fire--such as lodgepole
pine, wild red cherry, and paper birch--but the western red cedar’s do
not, if the humus is sufficiently burned to lessen the soil’s capacity
to retain moisture. For that reason, this cedar seldom follows fire, and
the result is that it constantly loses ground. Under normal conditions,
it is not exacting in its requirements; but anything that disturbs
natural conditions is more likely to harm than help this cedar. In that
respect it is like beech and hemlock, which suffer when forest
conditions are disturbed.
Trunks are large but not shapely. They are generally fluted, and greatly
swelled at the base. These deformities develop rather late in the tree’s
life; at least, they are not prominent in young timber. Western cedar
poles of large size are beautiful in outline; but when maturity
approaches, the trunk grows faster near the ground than some distance
above; the annual rings are wider near the base than twenty feet above,
resulting in great enlargement near the ground. At the same time ribs
and creases slowly develop, and by the time the tree is old, it is as
ungainly as one of the giant sequoias. Its appearance is hurt by
characteristics other than the swelled base and the buttresses. While
the tree is small, the limbs ascend, and maintain a graceful upright
position. Toward middle life they begin to droop, and the limbs of old
trees hang down the trunks--the reverse of their attitude in early life.
The western red cedar lives to an old age, from 600 to 1,000 years. The
oldest are liable to be hollow near the ground. The tree is remarkable
for what happens after it falls. Often the trunk crashes down in a bed
of moss, which in a few years buries it from sight. The moss holds so
much water that the buried log is constantly too wet for fungous attack.
Consequently decay does not take place. Fallen trees have lain for
hundreds of years--as much as 800 having been claimed in one
instance--and at the end of that time they are sound enough for
shingles. The position of living trees growing upon buried logs
furnishes the key to the length of time since the trunks fell. The long
period during which the moss-buried wood has remained sound has led to
the claim that western red cedar is the most enduring wood in America.
Such is not necessarily the case. A good many others would probably last
as long if protected in the same way.
Western red cedar is strong and stiff but falls from twenty to thirty
per cent below white oak in these factors. It is light, and the texture
of the wood is rather coarse. The springwood and summerwood are
distinct, the latter constituting one-half or less of the annual ring.
The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood’s color is dull
brown, tinged with red. The thin sapwood is nearly white.
The ease with which western red cedar may be worked led the Indians to
use it in their most ambitious woodcraft. The gigantic totem poles which
have excited the curiosity and admiration of travelers near the coast in
Alaska and southward have nearly all been of this wood. Some of them are
the largest single pieces of wood carving in the world. Trunks three or
four feet in diameter and forty or fifty feet long have been hewed and
whittled in weird, uncouth, and fantastic forms, decorated with eagle
heads, bear mouths, and with various creatures of the forest or sea, or
from the realms of imagination. Before the northern Pacific coast
Indians procured tools from white men they executed their carving by
means of bone, stone, shell, and wooden tools, assisted by fire.
The making of canoes was in some ways a work more laborious for the
Indians than the manufacture of totem poles. Their canoes were dugouts
of all sizes, from the small trough which carried one or two persons, to
the enormous canoe which carried fifty warriors with all their
equipment. Such a canoe, now in the National Museum at Washington, D.
C., is fifty-nine feet long, seven feet, three inches deep at the bow,
five feet three inches at the stern, and three feet seven inches in the
middle, and eight feet wide. It was made on Vancouver island, and is
capable of carrying 100 persons. The capacity of the canoe is
thirty-five tons. Civilized man has produced no vessel with lines more
perfect than are seen in some of these canoes made by savages; but all
the canoes are not alike: some are crude and clumsy. It is claimed that
large cedar canoes of Indian manufacture were early carried from the
Pacific coast by fur traders, and New York and Boston shipbuilders took
them as models in constructing the celebrated clipper ships which
formerly sailed between New York and San Francisco.
The Indians formerly made much use of western red cedar bark which they
twisted into ropes and cords, braided for mats, wove for cloth, used in
making baskets, roofing wigwams, constructing fish nets and bird snares,
ladders for climbing cliffs, and they even pulped the inner bark by
pounding it in mortars, and mixed it with their food.
White men have put western red cedar to many uses, as shingles, lumber,
cooperage, poles, posts, piles, car siding and roofing, boat building
from skiffs to ships, and general furniture and interior finish.
WESTERN JUNIPER (_Juniperus occidentalis_) is a high mountain tree with
all the characteristics belonging to that class of timber. The trunks
are short and strong, the limbs wide-spreading, the wood of slow growth,
and dense. The tree attains a diameter of ten inches in about 130 years.
Trunks ten feet in diameter have been reported, but trees that large
would be hard to find now. John Muir said that the western juniper lives
2,000 years, and that the tree is never uprooted by wind. The trunk is
usually short, six or eight feet being a fair average, and very knotty.
However, when a block of clear wood is found, it is high class, the
heaviest of the cedars, straight grain, soft, compact, brittle. The
summerwood is so narrow that it resembles a fine, black line. The
medullary rays are numerous and very obscure. The wood is slightly
aromatic, splits easily, works nicely, and in color is brown, tinged
with red. In appearance, the sapwood suggests spruce. The average height
of the trees is from twenty-five to forty-five feet, diameter two to
four feet. The range of this tree is in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and
through the Cascades and Sierras to southern California. It seldom
occurs below an altitude of 6,000 feet, and ascends to 10,000 or more.
On the highest summits it is deformed and stunted. Its fruit is eaten by
Indians, and it furnishes fuel for mountain camps and ranches, timber
for mines, and sometimes a little lumber. The crooked limbs and trunks
are made into corral fences where better material cannot be had. The
wood has been found suitable for lead pencils, but that of proper
quality is too scarce to attract manufacturers. Other names for this
tree are juniper cedar, yellow cedar, western cedar, western red cedar,
and western juniper. Some of these names are applied to other species of
the same region.
[Illustration]
PORT ORFORD CEDAR
[Illustration: PORT ORFORD CEDAR]
PORT ORFORD CEDAR
(_Chamæcyparis Lawsoniana_)
Port Orford cedar of the northwestern coast is an interesting member of
the cedar group with a very limited range. Specimens are found
throughout an area of about 10,000 square miles, but the district
moderately heavily timbered does not exceed 300 or 400 miles in area. It
lies near Coos bay in southwestern Oregon. The tree is found as far
south in California as the mouth of Klamath river, and it was once
reported on Mt. Shasta, but it is very scarce there if it exists at all.
In the best of its range Port Orford cedar runs 20,000 feet to the acre,
and a single acre has yielded 100,000 feet. Trees run from 135 to 175
feet in height and three to seven in diameter. The largest on record
were about 200 feet high and twelve in diameter. Few trees of any
species have smaller leaves. They often are only one-sixteenth of an
inch in length. They die the third year and change to a bright brown.
The cones are about one-third of an inch in diameter. Two or four seeds
lie under each fertile cone scale, and ripen in September and October.
The seeds are one-eighth inch in length, and are winged for flight. The
bark of the tree is much thicker than of most cedars, being ten inches
near the base of large trees. This ought to protect the trunks against
fire but it falls short of expectations. About sixty years ago much of
the finest timber was killed by a great fire which swept the region.
Some of the dead trunks stood forty years without exhibiting much
evidence of decay, and those that fell remained sound many years.
The whole history of this interesting tree, from its first announced
discovery by white men until the present time, is embraced in the memory
of living men. It had not been heard of prior to 1855. Though fire and
storm have destroyed large quantities, it has been estimated that
4,000,000,000 feet of merchantable timber remain, an average of 15,000
feet per acre for an area of 400 square miles. The wood is moderately
light, is nearly as strong as white oak, and falls only sixteen per cent
below it in stiffness. The annual rings are generally narrow, but
distinct. The summerwood is narrow, but dark in color in the heartwood.
The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood abounds in odorous
resin. The odor persists long after the wood has ceased to be fresh.
Workmen in mills where this cedar is cut, and on board of vessels
freighted with it, are sometimes seriously affected by the odor. It is
reputed to repel insects, and is made into clothes chests, wardrobes,
and shelves, with the expectation that moths will be kept at a distance.
Several other cedars bear similar reputations.
One of the first uses to which the people of the Pacific coast put Port
Orford cedar was boat building. The industry was important at Coos bay
at an early day, and vessels constructed there sailed the seas thirty or
forty years. Trunks of this cedar turn out a high percentage of clear
lumber. The wood takes a good polish, and is manufactured into
furniture, doors, sash, turnery, and matches. The latter article is
esteemed by many persons for the peculiar odor of the burning wood. It
has been found practicable to finish this cedar in imitation of
mahogany, oak, and several other cabinet woods. In its natural state it
sometimes bears some resemblance to yellow pine, and sometimes to
spruce, there being considerable variation in the appearance of wood
from different trees. When the visible supply of Port Orford cedar has
been cut, the end will be reached, for not much young growth is coming
on. Sixty-eight varieties of Port Orford cedar are recognized in
cultivation.
YELLOW CEDAR (_Chamæcyparis nootkatensis_) describes this tree quite
well. The small twigs are of that color, and so is the heartwood. Many
give it the name yellow cypress. Others know it as Alaska cypress,
Alaska ground cypress, Nootka cypress, or Nootka sound cypress. The name
of the species, _nootkatensis_, was given it by Archibald Menzies, a
Scotch botanist who discovered it on the shore of Nootka sound in
Alaska.