old trees of both species bear some resemblance. Bigtree leaves do not
fall annually as those of bald cypress do. They are from one-eighth to
one-fourth of an inch long, and on the leading shoots they may be half
an inch in length. Cones are from two to three and a half inches long,
and they ripen their seeds the second year, but the empty cones may
adhere to the branches several years. The seeds are a quarter of an inch
long, and have wings sufficient to carry them a hundred yards or more.
The trees bear abundance of seeds, in proportion to the small number of
branches. Though shapely and well clothed with limbs when young, the
crown contracts with age, and consists of a few enormous, crooked limbs,
almost destitute of twigs and small branches. One of these trees may
actually bear more twigs when the trunk is only a foot in diameter than
will be on the same trunk when it is fifteen or twenty feet in diameter.
The old tree trunks are often without limbs to a height of 100 or 150
feet.
The Douglas squirrel is the bigtree’s greatest enemy. In proportion to
size, this little creature probably eats ten times as many tree seeds as
the most ravenous hog that roams the forest. One of the first things
that impresses a visitor in a grove of bigtrees is the rich brown of the
bark of some of the trunks. All are not brown alike, or at all seasons.
The trees on which the seed harvest is ready are the brownest, thanks to
the sharp claws, the tireless energy, and keen appetite of the Douglas
squirrel. He goes up and down the trunks for three square meals a day
among the clusters of cone-bearing branches two hundred or three hundred
feet above, and makes several extra trips for exercise; and at each
scratch of his briery foot he kicks off scales of bark, until the whole
trunk is “scratched raw.” The detached scales of bark accumulate in a
mound about the base of the tree, where they have been so accumulating
for centuries. It is fortunate that those old trees have bark from one
to two feet thick. They can afford to be scratched for a month or two
each year.
These are the heaviest trees in America, notwithstanding their wood is
light. It weighs less than northern white cedar. The largest bigtree
trunks weigh more than 2,000,000 pounds. In order to stand at all, they
must stand plumb. It is a provision of nature that the old trees are
almost branchless, otherwise the wind would force them out of plumb and
they would go down. It has been claimed that the overthrow of one of
these giants is always brought about by one of two causes. The
development of larger limbs on one side than on another unbalances them;
or the wash of gullies undermines the roots on one side, and draws the
tree that way. It is currently believed that no bigtree ever dies from
natural causes.
A good deal of pure fiction has been published regarding the size and
age of the largest of these trees. They are old enough and large enough
without drawing upon the imagination. The tree’s base is greatly
enlarged, but tapers rapidly the first few feet. There is little doubt
that some of the trunks are over forty feet in diameter, one foot above
ground, but that is not a fair measurement. The point should be five or
six feet at least. Measured thus, about twenty-five feet inside the bark
would represent the largest. With the bark added, the diameter would be
nearly thirty feet. Probably not one tree in fifty, taking them as they
occur in the whole range and counting veterans only, is fifteen feet in
diameter five feet from the ground.
There is also some extravagant guessing as to height. Too many tourists
measure with the unaided eye, or accept a guidebook’s figures. An
authentic height of 365 feet--the measurement of a fallen trunk--is
probably the greatest. Very few reach three hundred feet. Many
unreliable figures have been published concerning the age of bigtrees.
One thing can be accepted without question; size is no proof of age, in
comparing one tree with another; neither is the number of annual rings
in a block cut from the side of a tree a reliable factor to determine
age. The only sure way to determine the age of one of these trees is by
counting all the rings from the pith to bark. Care should be taken not
to count the same ring twice, as may be done when the wood is curly.
John Muir counted 4,000 rings in a bigtree stump. It is believed that no
higher age is backed by the evidence of yearly rings. It was twenty-four
feet in diameter. The count of another of like size made it 2,200 years
old; and of still another of the same size placed its age at 1,300
years. The Forest Service has made accurate measurement and record of
every ring of growth in a tree that was over twenty-four feet in
diameter, and it is shown that during certain periods of years the tree
grew three or four times as rapidly as during other periods.
The wood of bigtree is very light, soft, moderately strong, brittle,
summerwood thin and dark rendering the rings of annual growth easily
seen; the medullary rays are thin, numerous, and very obscure. The wood
is light to dark red, the thin sapwood nearly white; it works easily,
splits readily, and polishes well. It is very durable in contact with
the soil. Trunks lie in the woods long periods before decay seriously
attacks them; but forest fires hollow them, and finally burn them up.
Enormous depressions are found in the forest where logs once lay, but
which disappeared long ago, judging by the size of trees which have
since grown in the depressions. The interior of some large trunks which
have been worked up on sawmills showed the scars of forest fires
centuries ago. The annual rings which covered one such scar showed that
the burning took place 1,700 years ago.
Not much can be said for the commercial uses of bigtree. Many a species
of insignificant size is much more useful. Considerable quantities have
been cut by sawmills. The waste is great, heavy trunks crushing badly in
fall. Logs are so large that many of them are split with gunpowder to
facilitate handling them. Some of the wood has been exported for lead
pencils; other has been used for fence posts, shingles, and grapevine
stakes, while the soft bark has been worked into novelties.
MACNAB CYPRESS (_Cupressus macnabiana_) is a California tree of
limited range and little commercial value. It grows in Napa, Lake,
Mendocino, and Trinity counties; is often little more than a
branching shrub, but the largest specimens may be thirty feet high
and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and usually
of slow growth. The medullary rays are numerous but thin, and the
bands of summerwood are distinct. The cones are generally less than
one inch long, and the seeds have narrow wings. The foliage is
grayish which is due to white glands in the leaves. Forest foliage
is fragrant. The tree is known as white cedar, Shasta cypress, and
California mountain cypress.
[Illustration]
REDWOOD
[Illustration: REDWOOD]
REDWOOD
(_Sequoia Sempervirens_)
This tree’s color is responsible for its name. It is sometimes spoken of
as coast redwood to distinguish it from bigtree which grows in the
interior of California. In European markets it is known as California
redwood to distinguish it from other redwoods growing in distant parts
of the world. Its botanical name, _Sequoia sempervirens_, means
evergreen sequoia. The other species of sequoia is also evergreen. In
reality, the coast redwood is less of an evergreen than the bigtree is,
because the leaves of redwood turn brown two years before they fall, but
there are always plenty of green leaves on the branches. The leaves are
from one-quarter to one-half inch in length.
The geographical range of redwood covers about 6,000 square miles, but
the commercial range is scarcely one-fifth as much. The redwood belt
extends 500 miles along the Pacific coast from southern Oregon to
central California. It varies from ten to thirty miles in width. It is
strictly a fog belt tree, and grows poorly outside the region of ocean
fog, which seldom reaches an altitude more than 2,800 feet above sea
level. Where fog is thick and frequent, and soil is moist and otherwise
suitable, redwood forests have grown in such luxuriance that no species
in this country exceeds it. Stands running much over 100,000 feet per
acre are frequent, and it is said 1,000,000 feet have been cut from a
single acre.
Redwood cones are one inch or less in length. They ripen in one season.
Seeds are quite small, and are equipped with wings. The bark is thick,
but is much thinner than the bark of bigtrees, though it is in great
ridges like the bark of that species. The habits of the two species, as
to form of crown, are similar. Young redwoods, particularly if they grow
in the open, develop symmetrical and conical crowns which they retain
until the trunks are a foot or more in diameter. Lower limbs die and
fall off after that, and old trees have crowns so small that it would
seem impossible that they could supply the wood-building material for
trunks so large. That the growth should be slow under such circumstances
is to be expected. The ages of mature trees vary from 500 to 800 years,
but an extreme age of 1,373 years is on record. The average is,
therefore, considerably below that of bigtrees.
Redwoods grow as tall as bigtrees, but do not equal them in diameter of
trunk, though trees twenty feet in diameter occur.
A noticeable feature of the forests is that, in a given stand, nearly
all trees are of the same height, irrespective of size of trunk. The
crowns go up to the light and when they reach the common level of
others, and secure a share of light, they show no disposition to go
higher. The doctrine which they silently put into practice is to live
and let others live. That habit makes it possible for redwoods to grow
in very dense stands, which they could not do if a few trees domineered
over the others, and appropriated the light to themselves.
When old age overtakes the giant redwoods, they exhibit the first
symptoms of weakened vitality by dying at the top. Most trees over five
hundred years old are “stag-headed.” From that period they die slowly,
but usually survive two or three hundred years after the visible signs
of approaching death strike them.
Redwood has an advantage over nearly all other needle-leaf trees in that
it propagates by both seeds and sprouts. Few softwoods send up sprouts
from stumps or roots. Redwoods of large size are produced that way, and
the stumps of very old trees send up many vigorous shoots. Sometimes a
ring of large trees surrounds a depression in the ground where the
parent tree grew, died, and decayed.
Sprouts are of course confined to the immediate proximity of the parent
tree, but redwood seeds are scattered by the wind over vacant spaces.
This results in dense stands where other conditions are favorable, but
the species has never been able to establish itself far inland or high
on mountains.
In 1880 the Federal census made a rough estimate of the available
redwood, and placed it at 25,825,000,000 feet. More than twenty years
later, with heavy cutting all the time, private estimates placed the
remaining stand at over 50,000,000,000 feet. The second estimate was
unquestionably nearer correct than the first. The stand of no important
timber tree in this country is more easily estimated than redwood. The
forests are compact, the trees large, the trunks similar in form, and
the well-timbered area is comparatively small. Redwood has been called
the most important timber tree of the Pacific coast. The title probably
confers too much, though the tree’s importance is beyond question. The
annual cut of Douglas fir is nearly ten times as large as of redwood,
and the supply still in the forests is much greater than that of
redwood. The cut of western yellow pine likewise exceeds the output of
redwood, and the remaining supply is larger. The cut of western red
cedar, including shingles, is about the same, and the remaining stand of
cedar is very large. Western hemlock, too, exists in large quantity, and
its importance as a source of timber supply may be equal to redwood.
Redwood is frequently referred to as one of the lightest in this
country. Its weight per cubic foot, oven-dry, is 26.2 pounds. On the
same basis, white pine is 24, southern white cedar 20.7, northern white
cedar 19.7, and bigtree 18.2. There are woods in Florida lighter than
any of these. Redwood is very soft, yet it dulls tools quickly. It is
moderately strong, a little below white pine; it is brittle, again
ranking below white pine; it splits and works easily and polishes well.
Few, if any woods surpass this one in splitting properties. Boards
twelve feet long and a foot wide may be rived from selected logs, and
they present surfaces nearly as smooth as if cut with a saw. However,
curly and wavy redwood is not uncommon, and that, too, splits well, but
the surface is not smooth. The width of annual rings varies, usually
wide in young timber and narrow in old. The bands of summerwood are
narrow and clearly defined. The surface of redwood lumber absorbs water
quickly, yet, for some reason, creosote and other preservatives can be
forced into the wood only with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, it
is not necessary to treat this timber to prevent decay, for, in almost
any position, it wears out before it rots. Shingles, and window and door
frames of the old barracks buildings at Eureka, California, remained in
place until fifty years of wind and driven sand wore them away.
Railroads use the wood for ties until they wear out, not until they rot
out. Farmers near some of the California railroads gather up the
rejected worn ties by thousands and use them for fence posts. When
redwood is employed as city paving blocks it is wear and not decay that
puts them out of commission.
The medullary rays of redwood are thin and very obscure, but numerous.
Few woods show them to less advantage in quarter-sawing. The lack of
luster in the surface of polished panels is well known. The wood’s
beauty is in its sameness and richness of color. Except curly specimens
and burls, the wood may be said to have no figure, though in planks cut
tangentially, the contrast of spring and summerwood displays some figure
in a modest way. It is possible to wash much of the coloring matter out
of the wood, if it is first chipped fine. It washes from the surface by
ordinary exposure to weather. Red rainwater runs from a roof of new
redwood shingles, and weatherboarding, posts, and picket fences fade
perceptibly in a few months. This coloring matter when washed out in
large amounts in the process of paper making has been manufactured into
fuel gas.
A complete list of the uses of redwood is not practicable, for this
material goes into most of the large wood-using factories of this
country, and much is exported--nearly 60,000,000 feet annually going to
foreign countries. It has been much employed in California cities and
towns for picket fences, and as posts for wire and plank fences. It is,
next to western red cedar, the most important shingle wood of the
Pacific coast. One western railroad alone had in its tracks 12,000,000
redwood ties at one time. Builders of tanks, flumes, and water pipes
procure some of their best material, and large quantities of it, from
redwood sawmills. Few woods are more universally found in furniture
factories.
GOWEN CYPRESS (_Cupressus goveniana_) follows the California coast
from Mendocino county, California, to San Diego, and ascends
mountains to the height of 3,000 feet in some localities. At its
best it is fifty feet high and two feet in diameter; but it extends
as a shrub over many sandy tracts. Specimens no more than a foot
high sometimes bear cones. The Gowen cypress sheds its leaves the
third and fourth years. Cones are from one-half to one inch long,
and each bears about 100 seeds. The wood is light, soft, weak, light
brown in color, the thick sapwood nearly white. The medullary rays
are numerous but obscure. The wood is used for posts and other ranch
purposes. Woodpeckers attack the trunks, picking holes through the
bark to suck the juice from the cambium layer beneath.
DWARF CYPRESS (_Cupressus pygmæa_) was formerly supposed to be a
stunted form of Gowen cypress. The ranges of both lie in the same
region, on the coast of California in Mendocino county. The average
height of dwarf cypress is from ten to twenty feet, with trunk
diameter from six to twelve inches; but in peat swamps and on
sterile sands it may not exceed three or four feet in height. It
bears abundant cones at that size, and sometimes a tree no more than
a foot high has mature cones. They ripen the second year, but remain
a long time on the branches. The trees thrive in the most forbidding
places, and are sometimes the only occupants of bogs or sand dunes.
The wood is necessarily of little value, because of the small size
of trees. There seems to be no record of a dwarf cypress over sixty
years of age; but it is believed that much older trees have fallen
victims to fire.
[Illustration]
HEMLOCK
[Illustration: HEMLOCK]
HEMLOCK
(_Tsuga Canadensis_)
Seven hemlocks are known in the world, four of them in America. Two of
these are in the East, two in the West. The eastern species are the
Canadian and Carolinian. The former is _Tsuga canadensis_, the latter
_Tsuga caroliniana_. The western species are, mountain hemlock (_Tsuga
mertensiana_), and western hemlock (_Tsuga heterophylla_). The word
_tsuga_ is Japanese and means hemlock.
The hemlock lumber in eastern markets is practically all from one
species, which is known as hemlock in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Kentucky, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Ontario. In Vermont,
Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina; in England it is called hemlock spruce; spruce
tree in Pennsylvania and West Virginia; spruce pine in Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia; to the New York Indians it
was known as oh-neh-tah, which being interpreted means “greens on the
stick.”
The range of hemlock extends east and west more than fifteen hundred
miles, from Nova Scotia to western Wisconsin; south to Delaware and
southern Michigan, and along the Appalachian mountains to northern
Alabama and Georgia. The original quantity of timber was enormous, for
large areas were covered with dense stands. The largest trees are found
near the southern part of its range, among the mountains of Tennessee
and North Carolina; but the bulk of the timber has always been in the
North. It thrives best in well drained soil, but it likes cool
situations and often develops dense forests on northern slopes or in
deep ravines; but it maintains a foothold on ridges, on the banks of
streams, and around the borders of swamps.
The cones are very small, about a half inch in length, growing singly
from the lower side of the branchlet. Their scales are rounded and thin,
light brown in color. The seeds are winged and even when ripe the cones
do not spread apart perceptibly. The seeds escape, however, slowly
during the winter following their maturity. They are very small, and
their wings distribute them a hundred feet or more. The seeds germinate
best on leaf mold, but the seedling takes several years to thrust its
roots deep into the mineral soil. During that time, growth is very slow.
A seedling five years old may not exceed five inches in height; but when
its roots have developed, growth is fairly rapid. The distribution of
seeds is often facilitated by the activities of red squirrels, and
perhaps other small mammals, which climb the trees in winter and tear
the cones apart to get at the seeds. Many of the seeds are devoured, but
more escape and fly away on the winter winds.
Hemlock leaves are narrow and about half an inch long. Examined closely,
particularly with a magnifying glass, rows of white dots extend from end
to end on the under side. Small as these white points are separately,
when seen in the aggregate they change the color of the whole crown of
the tree. This is illustrated by looking at a hemlock from a
distance--the upper sides of the leaves on the drooping twigs being then
visible and the tree’s aspect dark green. Approach the tree, and look up
from its base--the under side of the leaves being then visible--and the
dark color changes to a light silvery tint. The whiteness is due to the
white spots on the leaves. The spots are stomata (mouths), and are parts
of the chemical laboratory which carries on the tree’s living processes.
All tree leaves have stomata, but all are not arranged in the same way
and are not visible alike. Few trees have them as prominent as the
hemlocks.
Hemlock attains a height from sixty to 100 feet and a diameter from two
to four. When it grows in the open, it is one of the handsomest and most
symmetrical evergreens of any country. Its dark, dense foliage will
permit scarcely any sunlight to filter through. When forest-grown, it
loses its lower limbs. In the forester’s language, they are “shaded
off,” and long, smooth trunks are developed; but the stubs from which
the branches fall remain buried deep inside the smoothest bole, and the
saws will find them when the logs are converted into lumber.
Reference has been made to hemlock’s slow growth during the seedling’s
first four or five years. That takes place in the dense shade of the
hemlock forest. If the seed falls on open ground, in full sunlight, the
chance is that it will not germinate; but if it does, the seedling is
doomed to an early death. It cannot endure strong light. This fact is of
great importance, for it means the end of hemlock forests. When a stand
is cut and the sunshine reaches the ground, no seedlings bring on a new
forest. White pine seeds grow in open ground, in old fields, in burnt
woods, wherever they reach soil, but hemlock must scatter its seeds in
cool, deep shade or they will do little good. Strong, vigorous, and
healthy as hemlock trees are, they are killed more easily than almost
any other. Cut a few trees from the center of a mature hemlock clump,
and the chance is that several trees next to the open space thus made
will die. The unusual light proves too much for their roots which had
always been cool and damp; but when young hemlocks are protected until
they get a start, they thrive nicely in the open.
The wood of hemlock is light, soft, not strong, brittle, coarse and
crooked grained, difficult to work, liable to windshake, splinters
badly, not durable. The summerwood of the annual ring is conspicuous;
and the thin medullary rays are numerous. The color of hemlock heartwood
is light brown, tinged with red, often nearly white. The sapwood is
darker. Lumbermen recognize two varieties, red and white, but botanists
do not recognize them.
The physical characters of hemlock are nearly all unfavorable, yet it
has become a useful and widely used wood. It is largely manufactured
into coarse lumber and used for outside work--railway ties, joists,
rafters, sheathing, plank walks, laths, etc. It is rarely used for
inside finishing, owing to its brittle and splintery character. Clean
boards made into panels or similar work and finished in the natural
color often present a very handsome appearance, owing to the peculiar
pinkish tint of the wood, ripening and improving with age.
With the growing scarcity of white and Norway pine, hemlock has become
the natural substitute for these woods for many purposes. It has never
been conceded that hemlock possesses the intrinsic merit of either of
the northern pines for structural purposes, but it has proven a suitable
substitute for a variety of uses, notably for framing and sheathing of
medium priced structures.
In 1910 hemlock lumber was cut in twenty-one states, the total output
exceeding 2,500,000,000 feet. Only four species or groups of species
exceeded it in amount. They were southern yellow pines, Douglas fir, the
oaks, and white pine. The principal cut of hemlock lumber was in the
following states in the order named: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
West Virginia, New York, Maine, Vermont, Virginia, New Hampshire,
Tennessee, and North Carolina. Ten other states produced smaller
amounts.
Hemlock possesses remarkable holding power on nails and spikes, and that
is one reason for its large use for railroad ties. It does not easily
split, and there is no likelihood that spikes will work loose; but the
wood decays quickly in damp situations, and unless given preservative
treatment, hemlock ties do not last long. They are pretty soft anyway,
and where traffic is heavy, rails cut them badly.