The Forest Trees in General
For the use of the ever-increasing number of Yosemite visitors who make
extensive excursions into the mountains beyond the Valley, a sketch of
the forest trees in general will probably be found useful. The
different species are arranged in zones and sections, which brings the
forest as a whole within the comprehension of every observer. These
species are always found as controlled by the climates of different
elevations, by soil and by the comparative strength of each species in
taking and holding possession of the ground; and so appreciable are
these relations the traveler need never be at a loss in determining
within a few hundred feet his elevation above sea level by the trees
alone; for, notwithstanding some of the species range upward for
several thousand feet and all pass one another more or less, yet even
those species possessing the greatest vertical range are available in
measuring the elevation; inasmuch as they take on new forms
corresponding with variations in altitude. Entering the lower fringe of
the forest composed of Douglas oaks and Sabine pines, the trees grow so
far apart that not one-twentieth of the surface of the ground is in
shade at noon. After advancing fifteen or twenty miles towards Yosemite
and making an ascent of from two to three thousand feet you reach the
lower margin of the main pine belt, composed of great sugar pine,
yellow pine, incense cedar and sequoia. Next you come to the
magnificent silver-fir belt and lastly to the upper pine belt, which
sweep up to the feet of the summit peaks in a dwarfed fringe, to a
height of from ten to twelve thousand feet. That this general order of
distribution depends on climate as affected by height above the sea, is
seen at once, but there are other harmonies that become manifest only
after observation and study. One of the most interesting of these is
the arrangement of the forest in long curving bands, braided together
into lace-like patterns in some places and out-spread in charming
variety. The key to these striking arrangements is the system of
ancient glaciers; where they flowed the trees followed, tracing their
courses along the sides of cañons, over ridges, and high plateaus. The
cedar of Lebanon, said Sir Joseph Hooker, occurs upon one of the
moraines of an ancient glacier. All the forests of the Sierra are
growing upon moraines, but moraines vanish like the glaciers that make
them. Every storm that falls upon them wastes them, carrying away their
decaying, disintegrating material into new formations, until they are
no longer recognizable without tracing their transitional forms down
the Range from those still in process of formation in some places
through those that are more and more ancient and more obscured by
vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial weathering. It appears,
therefore, that the Sierra forests indicate the extent and positions of
ancient moraines as well as they do belts of climate.
One will have no difficulty in knowing the Nut Pine (_Pinus
Sabiniana_), for it is the first conifer met in ascending the Range
from the west, springing up here and there among Douglas oaks and
thickets of ceanothus and manzanita; its extreme upper limit being
about 4000 feet above the sea, its lower about from 500 to 800 feet. It
is remarkable for its loose, airy, wide-branching habit and thin gray
foliage. Full-grown specimens are from forty to fifty feet in height
and from two to three feet in diameter. The trunk usually divides into
three or four main branches about fifteen or twenty feet from the
ground that, after bearing away from one another, shoot straight up and
form separate summits. Their slender, grayish needles are from eight to
twelve inches long, and inclined to droop, contrasting with the rigid,
dark-colored trunk and branches. No other tree of my acquaintance so
substantial in its body has foliage so thin and pervious to the light.
The cones are from five to eight inches long and about as large in
thickness; rich chocolate-brown in color and protected by strong,
down-curving nooks which terminate the scales. Nevertheless the little
Douglas Squirrel can open them. Indians climb the trees like bears and
beat off the cones or recklessly cut off the more fruitful branches
with hatchets, while the squaws gather and roast them until the scales
open sufficiently to allow the hard-shell seeds to be beaten out. The
curious little _Pinus attenuata_ is found at an elevation of from 1500
to 3000 feet, growing in close groves and belts. It is exceedingly
slender and graceful, although trees that chance to stand alone send
out very long, curved branches, making a striking contrast to the
ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same peculiar gray-green
color as that of the nut pine, and is worn about as loosely, so that
the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it. At the age of seven or
eight years it begins to bear cones in whorls on the main axis, and as
they never fall off, the trunk is soon picturesquely dotted with them.
Branches also soon become fruitful. The average size of the tree is
about thirty or forty feet in height and twelve to fourteen inches in
diameter. The cones are about four inches long and covered with a sort
of varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture.
No observer can fail to notice the admirable adaptation of this curious
pine to the fire-swept regions where alone it is found. After a running
fire has scorched and killed it the cones open and the ground beneath
it is then sown broadcast with all the seeds ripened during its whole
life. Then up spring a crowd of bright, hopeful seedlings, giving
beauty for ashes in lavish abundance.
The Sugar Pine, King Of Pine Trees
Of all the world’s eighty or ninety species of pine trees, the Sugar
Pine (_Pinus Lambertiana_) is king, surpassing all others, not merely
in size but in lordly beauty and majesty. In the Yosemite region it
grows at an elevation of from 3000 to 7000 feet above the sea and
attains most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet. The
largest specimens are commonly about 220 feet high and from six to
eight feet in diameter four feet from the ground, though some grand old
patriarch may be met here and there that has enjoyed six or eight
centuries of storms and attained a thickness of ten or even twelve
feet, still sweet and fresh in every fiber. The trunk is a remarkably
smooth, round, delicately-tapered shaft, straight and regular as if
turned in a lathe, mostly without limbs, purplish brown in color and
usually enlivened with tufts of a yellow lichen. Toward the head of
this magnificent column long branches sweep gracefully outward and
downward, sometimes forming a palm-like crown, but far more impressive
than any palm crown I ever beheld. The needles are about three inches
long in fascicles of five, and arranged in rather close tassels at the
ends of slender branchlets that clothe the long outsweeping limbs. How
well they sing in the wind, and how strikingly harmonious an effect is
made by the long cylindrical cones, depending loosely from the ends of
the long branches! The cones are about fifteen to eighteen inches long,
and three in diameter; green, shaded with dark purple on their sunward
sides. They are ripe in September and October of the second year from
the flower. Then the flat, thin scales open and the seeds take wing,
but the empty cones become still more beautiful and effective as
decorations, for their diameter is nearly doubled by the spreading of
the scales, and their color changes to yellowish brown while they
remain, swinging on the tree all the following winter and summer, and
continue effectively beautiful even on the ground many years after they
fall. The wood is deliciously fragrant, fine in grain and texture and
creamy yellow, as if formed of condensed sunbeams. The sugar from which
the common name is derived is, I think, the best of sweets. It exudes
from the heart-wood where wounds have been made by forest fires or the
ax, and forms irregular, crisp, candy-like kernels of considerable
size, something like clusters of resin beads. When fresh it is white,
but because most of the wounds on which it is found have been made by
fire the sap is stained and the hardened sugar becomes brown. Indians
are fond of it, but on account of its laxative properties only small
quantities may be eaten. No tree lover will ever forget his first
meeting with the sugar pine. In most pine trees there is the sameness
of expression which to most people is apt to become monotonous, for the
typical spiral form of conifers, however beautiful, affords little
scope for appreciable individual character. The sugar pine is as free
from conventionalities as the most picturesque oaks. No two are alike,
and though they toss out their immense arms in what might seem
extravagant gestures they never lose their expression of serene
majesty. They are the priests of pines and seem ever to be addressing
the surrounding forest. The yellow pine is found growing with them on
warm hillsides, and the silver fir on cool northern slopes but, noble
as these are, the sugar pine is easily king, and spreads his arms above
them in blessing while they rock and wave in sign of recognition. The
main branches are sometimes forty feet long, yet persistently simple,
seldom dividing at all, excepting near the end; but anything like a
bare cable appearance is prevented by the small, tasseled branchlets
that extend all around them; and when these superb limbs sweep out
symmetrically on all sides, a crown sixty or seventy feet wide is
formed, which, gracefully poised on the summit of the noble shaft, is a
glorious object. Commonly, however, there is a preponderance of limbs
toward the east, away from the direction of the prevailing winds.
Although so unconventional when full-grown, the sugar pine is a
remarkably proper tree in youth—a strict follower of coniferous
fashions—slim, erect, with leafy branches kept exactly in place, each
tapering in outline and terminating in a spiry point. The successive
forms between the cautious neatness of youth and the bold freedom of
maturity offer a delightful study. At the age of fifty or sixty years,
the shy, fashionable form begins to be broken up. Specialized branches
push out and bend with the great cones, giving individual character,
that becomes more marked from year to year. Its most constant companion
is the yellow pine. The Douglas spruce, libocedrus, sequoia, and the
silver fir are also more or less associated with it; but on many
deep-soiled mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above
the sea, it forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and
hollow and down-plunging ravine. The majestic crowns, approaching each
other in bold curves, make a glorious canopy through which the tempered
sunbeams pour, silvering the needles, and gilding the massive boles and
the flowery, park-like ground into a scene of enchantment. On the most
sunny slopes the white-flowered, fragrant chamaebatia is spread like a
carpet, brightened during early summer with the crimson sarcodes, the
wild rose, and innumerable violets and gilias. Not even in the shadiest
nooks will you find any rank, untidy weeds or unwholesome darkness. In
the north sides of ridges the boles are more slender, and the ground is
mostly occupied by an underbrush of hazel, ceanothus, and flowering
dogwood, but not so densely as to prevent the traveler from sauntering
where he will; while the crowning branches are never impenetrable to
the rays of the sun, and never so interblended as to lose their
individuality.
The Yellow Or Silver Pine
The Silver Pine (_Pinus ponderosa_), or Yellow Pine, as it is commonly
called, ranks second among the pines of the Sierra as a lumber tree,
and almost rivals the sugar pine in stature and nobleness of port.
Because of its superior powers of enduring variations of climate and
soil, it has a more extensive range than any other conifer growing on
the Sierra. On the western slope it is first met at an elevation of
about 2000 feet, and extends nearly to the upper limit of the
timber-line. Thence, crossing the range by the lowest passes, it
descends to the eastern base, and pushes out for a considerable
distance into the hot, volcanic plains, growing bravely upon
well-watered moraines, gravelly lake basins, climbing old volcanoes and
dropping ripe cones among ashes and cinders.
The average size of full-grown trees on the western slope where it is
associated with the sugar pine, is a little less than 200 feet in
height and from five to six feet in diameter, though specimens
considerably larger may easily be found. Where there is plenty of free
sunshine and other conditions are favorable, it presents a striking
contrast in form to the sugar pine, being a symmetrical spire, formed
of a straight round trunk, clad with innumerable branches that are
divided over and over again. Unlike the Yosemite form about one-half of
the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all close
three-fourths or more is naked, presenting then a more slender and
elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods. The bark is mostly
arranged in massive plates, some of them measuring four or five feet in
length by eighteen inches in width, with a thickness of three or four
inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing feature. The needles
are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to eight inches long, firm
and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant tassels on the upturning
ends of the branches. The cones are about three or four inches long,
and two and a half wide, growing in close, sessile clusters among the
leaves.
The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins,
especially in those of the older yosemites, and as we have seen, so
prominent a part does it form of their groves that it may well be
called the Yosemite Pine.
The Jeffrey variety attains its finest development in the northern
portion of the Range, in the wide basins of the McCloud and Pitt
Rivers, where it forms magnificent forests scarcely invaded by any
other tree. It differs from the ordinary form in size, being only about
half as tall, in its redder and more closely-furrowed bark
grayish-green foliage, less divided branches, and much larger cones;
but intermediate forms come in which make a clear separation
impossible, although some botanists regard it as a distinct species. It
is this variety of ponderosa that climbs storm-swept ridges alone, and
wanders out among the volcanoes of the Great Basin. Whether exposed to
extremes of heat or cold, it is dwarfed like many other trees, and
becomes all knots and angles, wholly unlike the majestic forms we have
been sketching. Old specimens, bearing cones about as big as
pineapples, may sometimes be found clinging to rifted rocks at an
elevation of 7000 or 8000 feet, whose highest branches scarce reach
above one’s shoulders.
I have often feasted on the beauty of these noble trees when they were
towering in all their winter grandeur, laden with snow—one mass of
bloom; in summer, too, when the brown, staminate clusters hang thick
among the shimmering needles, and the big purple burrs are ripening in
the mellow light; but it is during cloudless wind-storms that these
colossal pines are most impressively beautiful. Then they bow like
willows, their leaves streaming forward all in one direction, and, when
the sun shines upon them at the required angle, entire groves glow as
if every leaf were burnished silver. The fall of tropic light on the
crown of a palm is a truly glorious spectacle, the fervid sun-flood
breaking upon the glossy leaves in long lance-rays, like mountain water
among boulders at the foot of an enthusiastic cataract. But to me there
is something more impressive in the fall of light upon these noble,
silver pine pillars: it is beaten to the finest dust and shed off in
myriads of minute sparkles that seem to radiate from the very heart of
the tree as if like rain, falling upon fertile soil, it had been
absorbed to reappear in flowers of light. This species also gives forth
the finest wind music. After listening to it in all kinds of winds,
night and day, season after season, I think I could approximate to my
position on the mountain by this pine music alone. If you would catch
the tone of separate needles climb a tree in breezy weather. Every
needle is carefully tempered and gives forth no uncertain sound each
standing out with no interference excepting during head gales; then you
may detect the click of one needle upon another, readily
distinguishable from the free wind-like hum.
When a sugar pine and one of this species equal in size are observed
together, the latter is seen to be more simple in manners, more lively
and graceful, and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated; on
the other hand it is less dignified and original in demeanor. The
yellow pine seems ever eager to shoot aloft, higher and higher. Even
while it is drowsing in autumn sun-gold you may still detect a skyward
aspiration, but the sugar pine seems too unconsciously noble and too
complete in every way to leave room for even a heavenward care.
The Douglas Spruce
The Douglas Spruce (_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_) is one of the largest and
longest-lived of the giants that flourish throughout the main pine
belt, often attaining a height of nearly 200 feet, and a diameter of
six or seven feet. Where the growth is not too close, the stout,
spreading branches, covering more than half of the trunk, are hung with
innumerable slender, drooping sprays, handsomely feathered with the
short leaves which radiate at right angles all around them. This
vigorous tree is ever beautiful, welcoming the mountain winds and the
snow as well as the mellow summer light; and it maintains its youthful
freshness undiminished from century to century through a thousand
storms. It makes its finest appearance during the months of June and
July, when the brown buds at the ends of the sprays swell and open,
revealing the young leaves, which at first are bright yellow, making
the tree appear as if covered with gay blossoms; while the pendulous
bracted cones, three or four inches long, with their shell-like scales,
are a constant adornment.
The young trees usually are assembled in family groups, each sapling
exquisitely symmetrical. The primary branches are whorled regularly
around the axis, generally in fives, while each is draped with long,
feathery sprays that descend in lines as free and as finely drawn as
those of falling water.
In Oregon and Washington it forms immense forests, growing tall and
mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber
tree. Here it is scattered among other trees, or forms small groves,
seldom ascending higher than 5500 feet, and never making what would be
called a forest. It is not particular in its choice of soil: wet or
dry, smooth or rocky, it makes out to live well on them all. Two of the
largest specimens, as we have seen, are in Yosemite; one of these, more
than eight feet in diameter, is growing on a moraine; the other, nearly
as large, on angular blocks of granite. No other tree in the Sierra
seems so much at home on earthquake taluses and many of these huge
boulder-slopes are almost exclusively occupied by it.
The Incense Cedar
Incense Cedar (_Libocedrus decurrens_), already noticed among the
Yosemite trees, is quite generally distributed throughout the pine belt
without exclusively occupying any considerable area, or even making
extensive groves. On the warmer mountain slopes it ascends to about
5000 feet, and reaches the climate most congenial to it at a height of
about 4000 feet, growing vigorously at this elevation in all kinds of
soil and, in particular, it is capable of enduring more moisture about
its roots than any of its companions excepting only the sequoia.
Casting your eye over the general forest from some ridge-top you can
identify it by the color alone of its spiry summits, a warm
yellow-green. In its youth up to the age of seventy or eighty years,
none of its companions forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to
bottom. As it becomes older it oftentimes grows strikingly irregular
and picturesque. Large branches push out at right angles to the trunk,
forming stubborn elbows and shoot up parallel with the axis. Very old
trees are usually dead at the top. The flat fragrant plumes are
exceedingly beautiful: no waving fern-frond is finer in form and
texture. In its prime the whole tree is thatched with them, but if you
would see the libocedrus in all its glory you must go to the woods in
midwinter when it is laden with myriads of yellow flowers about the
size of wheat grains, forming a noble illustration of Nature’s immortal
virility and vigor. The mature cones, about three-fourths of an inch
long, born on the ends of the plumy branchlets, serve to enrich still
more the surpassing beauty of this winter-blooming tree-goldenrod.
The Silver Firs
We come now to the most regularly planted and most clearly defined of
the main forest belts, composed almost exclusively of two Silver
Firs—_Abies concolor_ and _Abies magnifica_—extending with but little
interruption 450 miles at an elevation of from 5000 to 9000 feet above
the sea. In its youth _A. concolor_ is a charmingly symmetrical tree
with its flat plumy branches arranged in regular whorls around the
whitish-gray axis which terminates in a stout, hopeful shoot, pointing
straight to the zenith, like an admonishing finger. The leaves are
arranged in two horizontal rows along branchlets that commonly are less
than eight years old, forming handsome plumes, pinnated like the fronds
of ferns. The cones are grayish-green when ripe, cylindrical, from
three to four inches long, and one and a half to two inches wide, and
stand upright on the upper horizontal branches. Full-grown trees in
favorable situations are usually about 200 feet high and five or six
feet in diameter. As old age creeps on, the rough bark becomes rougher
and grayer, the branches lose their exact regularity of form, many that
are snow-bent are broken off and the axis often becomes double or
otherwise irregular from accidents to the terminal bud or shoot.
Nevertheless, throughout all the vicissitudes of its three or four
centuries of life, come what may, the noble grandeur of this species,
however obscured, is never lost.
The magnificent Silver Fir, or California Red Fir (_Abies magnifica_)
is the most symmetrical of all the Sierra giants, far surpassing its
companion species in this respect and easily distinguished from it by
the purplish-red bark, which is also more closely furrowed than that of
the white, and by its larger cones, its more regularly whorled and
fronded branches, and its shorter leaves, which grow all around the
branches and point upward instead of being arranged in two horizontal
rows. The branches are mostly whorled in fives, and stand out from the
straight, red-purple bole in level, or in old trees in drooping
collars, every branch regularly pinnated like fern-fronds, making broad
plumes, singularly rich and sumptuous-looking. The flowers are in their
prime about the middle of June; the male red, growing on the underside
of the branches in crowded profusion, giving a very rich color to all
the trees; the female greenish-yellow, tinged with pink, standing erect
on the upper side of the topmost branches, while the tufts of young
leaves, about as brightly colored as those of the Douglas spruce, make
another grand show. The cones mature in a single season from the
flowers. When mature they are about six to eight inches long, three or
four in diameter, covered with a fine gray down and streaked and beaded
with transparent balsam, very rich and precious-looking, and stand
erect like casks on the topmost branches. The inside of the cone is, if
possible, still more beautiful. The scales and bracts are tinged with
red and the seed-wings are purple with bright iridescence. Both of the
silver firs live between two and three centuries when the conditions
about them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may be seen
heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising
generation, with a protecting grove of hopeful saplings pressing close
around his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf
seems wanting. Other groups are made up of trees near the prime of
life, nicely arranged as if Nature had culled them with discrimination
from all the rest of the woods. It is from this tree, called Red Fir by
the lumbermen, that mountaineers cut boughs to sleep on when they are
so fortunate as to be within its limit. Two or three rows of the
sumptuous plushy-fronded branches, overlapping along the middle, and a
crescent of smaller plumes mixed to one’s taste with ferns and flowers
for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essence of the
pressed leaves seems to fill every pore of one’s body. Falling water
makes a soothing hush, while the spaces between the grand spires afford
noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into the starry sky. The
fir woods are fine sauntering-grounds at almost any time of the year,
but finest in autumn when the noble trees are hushed in the hazy light
and drip with balsam; and the flying, whirling seeds, escaping from the
ripe cones, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies. Even in the
richest part of these unrivaled forests where so many noble trees
challenge admiration we linger fondly among the colossal firs and extol
their beauty again and again, as if no other tree in the world could
henceforth claim our love. It is in these woods the great granite domes
arise that are so striking and characteristic a feature of the Sierra.
Here, too, we find the best of the garden-meadows full of lilies. A dry
spot a little way back from the margin of a silver fir lily-garden
makes a glorious camp-ground, especially where the slope is toward the
east with a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the Range.
The tall lilies are brought forward most impressively like visitors by
the light of your camp-fire and the nearest of the trees with their
whorled branches tower above you like larger lilies and the sky seen
through the garden-opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.
The Two-Leaved Pine
The Two-Leaved Pine (_Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_), above the
Silver Fir zone, forms the bulk of the alpine forests up to a height of
from 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea, growing in beautiful order on
moraines scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared
with the giants of the lower regions this is a small tree, seldom
exceeding a height of eighty or ninety feet. The largest I ever
measured was ninety feet high and a little over six feet in diameter.
The average height of mature trees throughout the entire belt is
probably not far from fifty or sixty feet with a diameter of two feet.
It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome tree with grayish-brown bark
and crooked, much-divided branches which cover the greater part of the
trunk, but not so densely as to prevent it being seen. The lower limbs,
like those of most other conifers that grow in snowy regions, curve
downward, gradually take a horizontal position about half-way up the
trunk, then aspire more and more toward the summit. The short, rigid
needles in fascicles of two are arranged in comparatively long
cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough up-curving branches. The
cones are about two inches long, growing in clusters among the needles
without any striking effect except while very young, when the flowers
are of a vivid crimson color and the whole tree appears to be dotted
with brilliant flowers. The staminate flowers are still more showy on
account of their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge
to the whole mass of foliage and filling the air with pollen. No other
pine on the Range is so regularly planted as this one, covering
moraines that extend along the sides of the high rocky valleys for
miles without interruption. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled
with resin as though it had been showered upon the forest like rain.
Therefore this tree more than any other is subject to destruction by
fire. During strong winds extensive forests are destroyed, the flames
leaping from tree to tree in continuous belts that go surging and
racing onward above the bending wood like prairie-grass fires. During
the calm season of Indian summer the fire creeps quietly along the
ground, feeding on the needles and cones; arriving at the foot of a
tree, the resiny bark is ignited and the heated air ascends in a swift
current, increasing in velocity and dragging the flames upward. Then
the leaves catch forming an immense column of fire, beautifully spired
on the edges and tinted a rose-purple hue. It rushes aloft thirty or
forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle,
especially at night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing
with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at
irregular intervals, tree after tree, upflashing and darting, leaving
the trunks and branches scarcely scarred. The heat, however, is
sufficient to kill the tree and in a few years the bark shrivels and
falls off. Forests miles in extent are thus killed and left standing,
with the branches on, but peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the
distance like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a
forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay and the forlorn
gray trunks are blown down during some storm and piled one upon
another, encumbering the ground until, dry and seasoned, they are
consumed by another fire and leave the ground ready for a fresh crop.
In sheltered lake-hollows, on beds of alluvium, this pine varies so far
from the common form that frequently it could be taken for a distinct
species, growing in damp sods like grasses from forty to eighty feet
high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in eddying gusts
more lively than any other tree in the woods. I frequently found
specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in diameter. Being so
slender and at the same time clad with leafy boughs, it is often bent
and weighed down to the ground when laden with soft snow; thus forming
fine ornamental arches, many of them to last until the melting of the
snow in the spring.
The Mountain Pine
The Mountain Pine (_Pinus monticola_) is the noblest tree of the alpine
zone—hardy and long-lived towering grandly above its companions and
becoming stronger and more imposing just where other species begin to
crouch and disappear. At its best it is usually about ninety feet high
and five or six feet in diameter, though you may find specimens here
and there considerably larger than this. It is as massive and
suggestive of enduring strength as an oak. About two-thirds of the
trunk is commonly free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of spray occur
nearly all the way down to the ground. On trees that occupy exposed
situations near its upper limit the bark is deep reddish-brown and
rather deeply furrowed, the main furrows running nearly parallel to
each other and connected on the old trees by conspicuous cross-furrows.
The cones are from four to eight inches long, smooth, slender,
cylindrical and somewhat curved. They grow in clusters of from three to
six or seven and become pendulous as they increase in weight. This
species is nearly related to the sugar pine and, though not half so
tall, it suggests its noble relative in the way that it extends its
long branches in general habit. It is first met on the upper margin of
the silver fir zone, singly, in what appears as chance situations
without making much impression on the general forest. Continuing up
through the forests of the two-leaved pine it begins to show its
distinguishing characteristic in the most marked way at an elevation of
about 10,000 feet extending its tough, rather slender arms in the
frosty air, welcoming the storms and feeding on them and reaching
sometimes to the grand old age of 1000 years.
The Western Juniper
The Juniper or Red Cedar (_Juniperus occidentalis_) is preëminently a
rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and pavements in the upper
silver fir and alpine zones, at a height of from 7000 to 9500 feet. In
such situations, rooted in narrow cracks or fissures, where there is
scarcely a handful of soil, it is frequently over eight feet in
diameter and not much more in height. The tops of old trees are almost
always dead, and large stubborn-looking limbs push out horizontally,
most of them broken and dead at the end, but densely covered, and
imbedded here and there with tufts or mounds of gray-green scalelike
foliage. Some trees are mere storm-beaten stumps about as broad as
long, decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling
towers of old castles scantily draped with ivy. Its homes on bare,
barren dome and ridge-top seem to have been chosen for safety against
fire, for, on isolated mounds of sand and gravel free from grass and
bushes on which fire could feed, it is often found growing tall and
unscathed to a height of forty to sixty feet, with scarce a trace of
the rocky angularity and broken limbs so characteristic a feature
throughout the greater part of its range. It never makes anything like
a forest; seldom even a grove. Usually it stands out separate and
independent, clinging by slight joints to the rocks, living chiefly on
snow and thin air and maintaining sound health on this diet for 2000
years or more. Every feature or every gesture it makes expresses
steadfast, dogged endurance. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color and
is handsomely braided and reticulated on thrifty trees, flaking off in
thin, shining ribbons that are sometimes used by the Indians for tent
matting. Its fine color and picturesqueness are appreciated by artists,
but to me the juniper seems a singularly strange and taciturn tree. I
have spent many a day and night in its company and always have found it
silent and rigid. It seems to be a survivor of some ancient race,
wholly unacquainted with its neighbors. Its broad stumpiness, of
course, makes wind-waving or even shaking out of the question, but it
is not this rocky rigidity that constitutes its silence. In calm,
sun-days the sugar pine preaches like an enthusiastic apostle without
moving a leaf. On level rocks the juniper dies standing and wastes
insensibly out of existence like granite, the wind exerting about as
little control over it, alive or dead, as is does over a glacier
boulder.
I have spent a good deal of time trying to determine the age of these
wonderful trees, but as all of the very old ones are honey-combed with
dry rot I never was able to get a complete count of the largest. Some
are undoubtedly more than 2000 years old, for though on deep moraine
soil they grow about as fast as some of the pines, on bare pavements
and smoothly glaciated, overswept ridges in the dome region they grow
very slowly. One on the Starr King Ridge only two feet eleven inches in
diameter was 1140 years old forty years ago. Another on the same ridge,
only one foot seven and a half inches in diameter, had reached the age
of 834 years. The first fifteen inches from the bark of a medium-size
tree six feet in diameter, on the north Tenaya pavement, had 859 layers
of wood. Beyond this the count was stopped by dry rot and scars. The
largest examined was thirty-three feet in girth, or nearly ten feet in
diameter and, although I have failed to get anything like a complete
count, I learned enough from this and many other specimens to convince
me that most of the trees eight or ten feet thick, standing on
pavements, are more than twenty centuries old rather than less. Barring
accidents, for all I can see they would live forever; even then
overthrown by avalanches, they refuse to lie at rest, lean stubbornly
on their big branches as if anxious to rise, and while a single root
holds to the rock, put forth fresh leaves with a grim, never-say-die
expression.
The Mountain Hemlock
As the juniper is the most stubborn and unshakeable of trees in the
Yosemite region, the Mountain Hemlock (_Tsuga Mertensiana_) is the most
graceful and pliant and sensitive. Until it reaches a height of fifty
or sixty feet it is sumptuously clothed down to the ground with
drooping branches, which are divided again and again into delicate
waving sprays, grouped and arranged in ways that are indescribably
beautiful, and profusely adorned with small brown cones. The flowers
also are peculiarly beautiful and effective; the female dark rich
purple, the male blue, of so fine and pure a tone. What the best azure
of the mountain sky seems to be condensed in them. Though apparently
the most delicate and feminine of all the mountain trees, it grows best
where the snow lies deepest, at a height of from 9000 to 9500 feet, in
hollows on the northern slopes of mountains and ridges. But under all
circumstances, sheltered from heavy winds or in bleak exposure to them,
well fed or starved, even at its highest limit, 10,500 feet above the
sea, on exposed ridge-tops where it has to crouch and huddle close in
low thickets, it still contrives to put forth its sprays and branches
in forms of invincible beauty, while on moist, well-drained moraines it
displays a perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage, flowers and fruit.
The snow of the first winter storm is frequently soft, and lodges in
due dense leafy branches, weighing them down against the trunk, and the
slender, drooping axis, bending lower and lower as the load increases,
at length reaches the ground, forming an ornamental arch. Then, as
storm succeeds storm and snow is heaped on snow, the whole tree is at
last buried, not again to see the light of day or move leaf or limb
until set free by the spring thaws in June or July. Not only the young
saplings are thus carefully covered and put to sleep in the whitest of
white beds for five or six months of the year, but trees thirty feet
high or more. From April to May, when the snow by repeated thawing and
freezing is firmly compacted, you may ride over the prostrate groves
without seeing a single branch or leaf of them. No other of our alpine
conifers so finely veils its strength; poised in thin, white sunshine,
clad with branches from head to foot, it towers in unassuming majesty,
drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race,
loving the ground, conscious of heaven and joyously receptive of its
blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive tentacles, feeling
the light and reveling in it. The largest specimen I ever found was
nineteen feet seven inches in circumference. It was growing on the edge
of Lake Hollow, north of Mount Hoffman, at an elevation of 9250 feet
above the level of the sea, and was probably about a hundred feet in
height. Fine groves of mature trees, ninety to a hundred feet in
height, are growing near the base of Mount Conness. It is widely
distributed from near the south extremity of the high Sierra northward
along the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington and the coast
ranges of British Columbia to Alaska, where it was first discovered in
1827. Its northernmost limit, so far as I have observed, is in the icy
fiords of Prince William Sound in latitude 61°, where it forms pure
forests at the level of the sea, growing tall and majestic on the banks
of glaciers. There, as in the Yosemite region, it is ineffably
beautiful, the very loveliest of all the American conifers.
The White-Bark Pine
The Dwarf Pine, or White-Bark Pine (_Pinus albicaulis_), forms the
extreme edge of the timberline throughout nearly the whole extent of
the Range on both flanks. It is first met growing with the two-leaved
pine on the upper margin of the alpine belt, as an erect tree from
fifteen to thirty feet high and from one to two feet in diameter hence
it goes straggling up the flanks of the summit peaks, upon moraines or
crumbling ledges, wherever it can get a foothold, to an elevation of
from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled
branches, covered with slender shoots, each tipped with a short,
close-packed, leaf tassel. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some
places almost white. The flowers are bright scarlet and rose-purple,
giving a very flowery appearance little looked for in such a tree. The
cones are about three inches long, an inch and a half in diameter, grow
in rigid clusters, and are dark chocolate in color while young, and
bear beautiful pearly-white seeds about the size of peas, most of which
are eaten by chipmunks and the Clarke’s crows. Pines are commonly
regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily aspire or die. This
species forms a marked exception, crouching and creeping in compliance
with the most rigorous demands of climate; yet enduring bravely to a
more advanced age than many of its lofty relatives in the sun-lands far
below it. Seen from a distance it would never be taken for a tree of
any kind. For example, on Cathedral Peak there is a scattered growth of
this pine, creeping like mosses over the roof, nowhere giving hint of
an ascending axis. While, approached quite near, it still appears matty
and heathy, and one experiences no difficulty in walking over the top
of it, yet it is seldom absolutely prostrate, usually attaining a
height of three or four feet with a main trunk, and with branches
outspread above it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a
ceiling against which they had been compelled to spread horizontally.
The winter snow is a sort of ceiling, lasting half the year; while the
pressed surface is made yet smoother by violent winds armed with
cutting sand-grains that bear down any shoot which offers to rise much
above the general level, and that carve the dead trunks and branches in
beautiful patterns.
During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing
arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for
centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers,
such as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath
the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment. This lowly dwarf
reaches a far greater age than would be guessed. A specimen that I
examined, growing at an elevation of 10,700 feet, yet looked as though
it might be plucked up by the roots, for it was only three and a half
inches in diameter and its topmost tassel reached hardly three feet
above the ground. Cutting it half through and counting the annual rings
with the aid of a lens, I found its age to be no less than 255 years.
Another specimen about the same height, with a trunk six inches in
diameter, I found to be 426 years old, forty years ago; and one of its
supple branchlets hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter inside the
bark, was seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily balsam and
seasoned by storms that I tied it in knots like a whip-cord.
The Nut Pine
In going across the Range from the Tuolumne River Soda Springs to Mono
Lake one makes the acquaintance of the curious little Nut Pine (_Pinus
monophylla_). It dots the eastern flank of the Sierra to which it is
mostly restricted in grayish bush-like patches, from the margin of the
sage-plains to an elevation of from 7000 to 8000 feet. A more
contented, fruitful and unaspiring conifer could not be conceived. All
the species we have been sketching make departures more or less distant
from the typical spire form, but none goes so far as this. Without any
apparent cause it keeps near the ground, throwing out crooked,
divergent branches like an orchard apple-tree, and seldom pushes a
single shoot higher than fifteen or twenty feet above the ground.
The average thickness of the trunk is, perhaps, about ten or twelve
inches. The leaves are mostly undivided, like round awls, instead of
being separated, like those of other pines, into twos and threes and
fives. The cones are green while growing, and are usually found over
all the tree, forming quite a marked feature as seen against the
bluish-gray foliage. They are quite small, only about two inches in
length, and seem to have but little space for seeds; but when we come
to open them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is
made up of sweet, nutritious nuts, nearly as large as hazel-nuts. This
is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and
furnishes the Mona, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and
better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the
Indian’s own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it
down. Being so low, the cones are readily beaten off with poles, and
the nuts procured by roasting them until the scales open. In bountiful
seasons a single Indian may gather thirty or forty bushels.