The Big Trees
Between the heavy pine and silver fir zones towers the Big Tree
(_Sequoia gigantea_), the king of all the conifers in the world, “the
noblest of the noble race.” The groves nearest Yosemite Valley are
about twenty miles to the westward and southward and are called the
Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves. It extends, a widely interrupted
belt, from a very small grove on the middle fork of the American River
to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of about 260 miles, its northern
limit being near the thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little below
the thirty-sixth. The elevation of the belt above the sea varies from
about 5000 to 8000 feet. From the American River to Kings River the
species occurs only in small isolated groups so sparsely distributed
along the belt that three of the gaps in it are from forty to sixty
miles wide. But from Kings River south-ward the sequoia is not
restricted to mere groves but extends across the wide rugged basins of
the Kaweah and Tule Rivers in noble forests, a distance of nearly
seventy miles, the continuity of this part of the belt being broken
only by the main cañons. The Fresno, the largest of the northern
groves, has an area of three or four square miles, a short distance to
the southward of the famous Mariposa grove. Along the south rim of the
cañon of the south fork of Kings River there is a majestic sequoia
forest about six miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost group
that may fairly be called a forest. Descending the divide between the
Kings and Kaweah Rivers you come to the grand forests that form the
main continuous portion of the belt. Southward the giants become more
and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their massive crowns into the
sky from every ridge and slope, waving onward in graceful compliance
with the complicated topography of the region. The finest of the Kaweah
section of the belt is on the broad ridge between Marble Creek and the
middle fork, and is called the Giant Forest. It extends from the
granite headlands, overlooking the hot San Joaquin plains, to within a
few miles of the cool glacial fountains of the summit peaks. The
extreme upper limit of the belt is reached between the middle and south
forks of the Kaweah at a height of 8400 feet, but the finest block of
big tree forests in the entire belt is on the north fork of Tule River,
and is included in the Sequoia National Park.
In the northern groves there are comparatively few young trees or
saplings. But here for every old storm-beaten giant there are many in
their prime and for each of these a crowd of hopeful young trees and
saplings, growing vigorously on moraines, rocky edges, along water
courses and meadows. But though the area occupied by the big tree
increases so greatly from north to south, here is no marked increase in
the size of the trees. The height of 275 feet or thereabouts and a
diameter of about twenty feet, four feet from the ground is, perhaps,
about the average size of what may be called full-grown trees, where
they are favorably located. The specimens twenty-five feet in diameter
are not very rare and a few are nearly three hundred feet high. In the
Calaveras grove there are four trees over 300 feet in height, the
tallest of which as measured by the Geological Survey is 325 feet. The
very largest that I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a
majestic old fire-scarred monument in the Kings River forest. It is
thirty-five feet and eight inches in diameter inside the bark, four
feet above the ground. It is burned half through, and I spent a day in
clearing away the charred surface with a sharp ax and counting the
annual wood-rings with the aid of a pocket lens. I succeeded in laying
bare a section all the way from the outside to the heart and counted a
little over four thousand rings, showing that this tree was in its
prime about twenty-seven feet in diameter at the beginning of the
Christian era. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked
down on so many centuries as the sequoia or opens so many impressive
and suggestive views into history. Under the most favorable conditions
these giants probably live 5000 years or more though few of even the
larger trees are half as old. The age of one that was felled in
Calaveras grove, for the sake of having its stump for a dancing-floor,
was about 1300 years, and its diameter measured across the stump
twenty-four feet inside the bark. Another that was felled in the Kings
River forest was about the same size but nearly a thousand years older
(2200 years), though not a very old-looking tree.
So harmonious and finely balanced are even the mightiest of these
monarchs in all their proportions that there is never anything
overgrown or monstrous about them. Seeing them for the first time you
are more impressed with their beauty than their size, their grandeur
being in great part invisible; but sooner or later it becomes manifest
to the loving eye, stealing slowly on the senses like the grandeur of
Niagara or of the Yosemite Domes. When you approach them and walk
around them you begin to wonder at their colossal size and try to
measure them. They bulge considerably at the base, but not more than is
required for beauty and safety and the only reason that this bulging
seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small
section is seen in near views. One that I measured in the Kings River
forest was twenty-five feet in diameter at the ground and ten feet in
diameter 220 feet above the ground showing the fineness of the taper of
the trunk as a whole. No description can give anything like an adequate
idea of their singular majesty, much less of their beauty. Except the
sugar pine, most of their neighbors with pointed tops seem ever trying
to go higher, while the big tree, soaring above them all, seems
satisfied. Its grand domed head seems to be poised about as lightly as
a cloud, giving no impression of seeking to rise higher. Only when it
is young does it show like other conifers a heavenward yearning,
sharply aspiring with a long quick-growing top. Indeed, the whole tree
for the first century or two, or until it is a hundred or one hundred
and fifty feet high, is arrowhead in form, and, compared with the
solemn rigidity of age, seems as sensitive to the wind as a squirrel’s
tail. As it grows older, the lower branches are gradually dropped and
the upper ones thinned out until comparatively few are left. These,
however, are developed to a great size, divide again and again and
terminate in bossy, rounded masses of leafy branch-lets, while the head
becomes dome-shaped, and is the first to feel the touch of the rosy
beams of the morning, the last to bid the sun good night. Perfect
specimens, unhurt by running fires or lightning, are singularly regular
and symmetrical in general form though not in the least
conventionalized, for they show extraordinary variety in the unity and
harmony of their general outline. The immensely strong, stately shafts
are free of limbs for one hundred and fifty feet or so. The large limbs
reach out with equal boldness a every direction, showing no weather
side, and no other tree has foliage so densely massed, so finely molded
in outline and so perfectly subordinate to an ideal type. A
particularly knotty, angular, ungovernable-looking branch, from five to
seven or eight feet in diameter and perhaps a thousand years old, may
occasionally be seen pushing out from the trunk as if determined to
break across the bounds of the regular curve, but like all the others
it dissolves in bosses of branchlets and sprays as soon as the general
outline is approached. Except in picturesque old age, after being
struck by lightning or broken by thousands of snow-storms, the
regularity of forms is one of their most distinguishing
characteristics. Another is the simple beauty of the trunk and its
great thickness as compared with its height and the width of the
branches, which makes them look more like finely modeled and sculptured
architectural columns than the stems of trees, while the great limbs
look like rafters, supporting the magnificent dome-head. But though so
consummately beautiful, the big tree always seems unfamiliar, with
peculiar physiognomy, awfully solemn and earnest; yet with all its
strangeness it impresses us as being more at home than any of its
neighbors, holding the best right to the ground as the oldest strongest
inhabitant. One soon becomes acquainted with new species of pine and
fir and spruce as with friendly people, shaking their outstretched
branches like shaking hands and fondling their little ones, while the
venerable aboriginal sequoia, ancient of other days, keeps you at a
distance, looking as strange in aspect and behavior among its neighbor
trees as would the mastodon among the homely bears and deers. Only the
Sierra juniper is at all like it, standing rigid and unconquerable on
glacier pavements for thousands of years, grim and silent, with an air
of antiquity about as pronounced as that of the sequoia.
The bark of the largest trees is from one to two feet thick, rich
cinnamon brown, purplish on young trees, forming magnificent masses of
color with the underbrush. Toward the end of winter the trees are in
bloom, while the snow is still eight or ten feet deep. The female
flowers are about three-eighths of an inch long, pale green, and grow
in countless thousands on the ends of sprays. The male are still more
abundant, pale yellow, a fourth of an inch long and when the pollen is
ripe they color the whole tree and dust the air and the ground. The
cones are bright grass-green in color, about two and a half inches
long, one and a half wide, made up of thirty or forty strong,
closely-packed, rhomboidal scales, with four to eight seeds at the base
of each. The seeds are wonderfully small end light, being only from an
eighth to a fourth of an inch long and wide, including a filmy
surrounding wing, which causes them to glint and waver in falling and
enables the wind to carry them considerable distances. Unless harvested
by the squirrels, the cones discharge their seed and remain on the tree
for many years. In fruitful seasons the trees are fairly laden. On two
small branches one and a half and two inches in diameter I counted 480
cones. No other California conifer produces nearly so many seeds,
except, perhaps, the other sequoia, the Redwood of the Coast Mountains.
Millions are ripened annually by a single tree, and in a fruitful year
the product of one of the northern groves would be enough to plant all
the mountain ranges in the world.
As soon as any accident happens to the crown, such as being smashed off
by lightning, the branches beneath the wound, no matter how situated,
seem to be excited, like a colony of bees that have lost their queen,
and become anxious to repair the damage. Limbs that have grown outward
for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward to
assist in making a new crown, each speedily assuming the special form
of true summits. Even in the case of mere stumps, burned half through,
some mere ornamental tuft will try to go aloft and do its best as a
leader in forming a new head. Groups of two or three are often found
standing close together, the seeds from which they sprang having
probably grown on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a
large tree of a former generation. They are called “loving couples,”
“three graces,” etc. When these trees are young they are seen to stand
twenty or thirty feet apart, by the time they are full-grown their
trunks will touch and crowd against each other and in some cases even
appear as one.
It is generally believed that the sequoia was once far more widely
distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I have
come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close of
the glacial period, because a diligent search along the margins of the
groves, and in the gaps between fails to reveal a single trace of its
previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I feel
confident that if every sequoia in the Range were to die today,
numerous monuments of their existence would remain, of so imperishable
a nature as to be available for the student more than ten thousand
years hence.
In the first place, no species of coniferous tree in the Range keeps
its members so well together as the sequoia; a mile is, perhaps, the
greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and all of those
stragglers that have come under my observation are young, instead of
old monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth.
Again, the great trunks of the sequoia last for centuries after they
fall. I have a specimen block of sequoia wood, cut from a fallen tree,
which is hardly distinguishable from a similar section cut from a
living tree, although the one cut from the fallen trunk has certainly
lain on the damp forest floor more than 380 years, probably thrice as
long. The time-measure in the case is simply this: When the ponderous
trunk to which the old vestige belonged fell, it sunk itself into the
ground, thus making a long, straight ditch, and in the middle of this
ditch a silver fir four feet in diameter and 380 years old was growing,
as I determined by cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus
demonstrating that the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has
lain on the ground _more_ than 380 years. For it is evident that, to
find the whole time, we must add to the 380 years the time that the
vanished portion of the trunk lay in the ditch before being burned out
of the way, plus the time that passed before the seed from which the
monumental fir sprang fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now,
because sequoia trunks are never wholly consumed in one forest fire,
and those fires recur only at considerable intervals, and because
sequoia ditches after being cleared are often left unplanted for
centuries, it becomes evident that the trunk-remnant in question may
probably have lain a thousand years or more. And this instance is by no
means a late one.
Again, admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once
covered with sequoia forests, every tree may have fallen, and every
trunk may have been burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, many of
the ditches made by the fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bowls
made by their upturning roots, would remain patent for thousands of
years after the last vestige of the trunks that made them had vanished.
Much of this ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the
flood-action of overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no
inconsiderable portion would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops
beyond such destructive action; for, where all the conditions are
favorable, it is almost imperishable. Now these historic ditches and
root-bowls occur in all the present sequoia groves and forests, but, as
far as I have observed, not the faintest vestige of one presents itself
outside of them.
We therefore conclude that the area covered by sequoia has not been
diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably
not at all in post-glacial time. Nevertheless, the questions may be
asked: Is the species verging toward extinction? What are its relations
to climate, soil, and associated trees?
All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we
shall endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species,
and sustain the conclusion already arrived at as to the question of
former extension. In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are
few young trees or saplings growing up around the old ones to
perpetuate the race, and inasmuch as those aged sequoias, so nearly
childless, are the only ones commonly known the species, to most
observers, seems doomed to speedy extinction, as being nothing more
than an expiring remnant, vanquished in the so-called struggle for life
by pines and firs that have driven it into its last strongholds in
moist glens where the climate is supposed to be exceptionally
favorable. But the story told by the majestic continuous forests of the
south creates a very different impression. No tree in the forest is
more enduringly established in concordance with both climate and soil.
It grows heartily everywhere—on moraines, rocky ledges, along
watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows with, as we
have seen, a multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the
aged, abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. So that if
all the trees of any section of the main sequoia forest were ranged
together according to age, a very promising curve would be presented,
all the way up from last year’s seedlings to giants, and with the young
and middle-aged portion of the curve many times longer than the old
portion. Even as far north as the Fresno, I counted 536 saplings and
seedlings, growing promisingly upon a landslip not exceeding two acres
in area. This soil-bed was about seven years old, and had been seeded
almost simultaneously by pines, firs, libocedrus, and sequoia,
presenting a simple and instructive illustration of the struggle for
life among the rival species; and it was interesting to note that the
conditions thus far affecting them have enabled the young sequoias to
gain a marked advantage. Toward the south where the sequoia becomes
most exuberant and numerous, the rival trees become less so; and where
they mix with sequoias they grow up beneath them like slender grasses
among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy floodsoil I counted
ninety-four sequoias, from one to twelve feet high, on a patch of
ground once occupied by four large sugar pines which lay crumbling
beneath them—an instance of conditions which have enabled sequoias to
crowd out the pines. I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a
piece of fresh ground prepared for their reception by fire. Thus fire,
the great destroyer of the sequoia, also furnishes the bare ground
required for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however,
furnished in sufficient quantities for the renewal of the forests
without the aid of fire—by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus
upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one that
falls.
It is constantly asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly
wetter than now, and that the increasing drought will of itself
extinguish the sequoia, leaving its ground to other trees supposed
capable of flourishing in a drier climate. But that the sequoia can and
does grow on as dry ground as any of its present rivals is manifest in
a thousand places. “Why, then,” it will be asked, “are sequoias always
found only in well-watered places?” Simply because a growth of sequoias
creates those streams. The thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every
sequoia grove he will find running water, but it is a mistake to
suppose that the water is the cause of the grove being there; on the
contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there. Drain off
the water and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees, and the
streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely mistaken for
effect than in the case of these related phenomena of sequoia woods and
perennial streams.
When attention is called to the method of sequoia stream-making, it
will be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the
ground, forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rain and
melting snow, only allowing it to ooze and flow gently. Indeed, every
fallen leaf and rootlet, as well as long clasping root, and prostrate
trunk, may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of storm-clouds,
and dispensing it as blessings all through the summer, instead of
allowing it to go headlong in short-lived floods.
Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of sequoias are growing
thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain
pines to rifts in granite precipices, and since it has also been shown
that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is
an effect of their presence, instead of a cause of their presence, then
the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near
approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater
moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
The decrease in rain and snowfall since the close of the glacial period
in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest
post-glacial water-marks are well preserved in all the upper river
channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring flood-marks
of the present; showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease has
taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial
Sierra streams since they came into existence. But, in the meantime,
eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain
fact remains that the present rain and snowfall is abundantly
sufficient for the luxuriant growth of sequoia forests. Indeed, all my
observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the sugar pines
and firs would perish before the sequoia, not alone because of the
greater longevity of individual trees, but because the species can
endure more drought, and make the most of whatever moisture falls.
Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the Range, then instead
of increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the
rainfall is less, it should diminish. If, then, the peculiar
distribution of sequoia has not been governed by superior conditions of
soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it been governed?
In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the
only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those
portions of the general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare
toward the close of the glacial period when the ice-sheet began to
break up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin
of the San Joaquin, and trying to account for the absence of sequoia
where every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occurred to
me that this remarkable gap in the sequoia belt fifty miles wide is
located exactly in the basin of the vast, ancient _mer de glace_ of the
San Joaquin and Kings River basins which poured its frozen floods to
the plain through this gap as its channel. I then perceived that the
next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty miles wide,
extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs in the
basin of the great ancient mer de glace of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus
basins; and that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves
occurs in the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced. The wider the
ancient glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the sequoia belt.
Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah and
Tule, I discovered that the sequoia belt attained its greatest
development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the
region, the ground had been best protected from the main ice-rivers
that continued to pour past from the summit fountains long after the
smaller local glaciers had been melted.
Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south we see
that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down
the valleys of Kern and Kings Rivers by the lofty protective spurs
outspread embracingly above the warm sequoia-filled basins of the
Kaweah and Tule. Then, next northward, occurs the wide sequoia-less
channel, or basin of the ancient San Joaquin and sings River mer de
glace; then the warm, protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves;
then the sequoia-less channel of the ancient Merced glacier; next the
warm, sheltered ground of the Merced and Tuolumne groves; then the
sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient mer de glace of the Tuolumne
and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the Calaveras and
Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a certain
period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the
sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the sequoia is not.
But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial
history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was
more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial
epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed,
they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is
probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast
antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in
species and individuals,—comparing our Sierra Giant and _Sequoia
sempervirens_ of the Coast Range, the only other living species of
sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and
described by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which flourished over vast
areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories,
during tertiary and cretaceous times—then, indeed, it becomes plain
that our two surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the
limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to
species and individuals, and that they may be verging to extinction.
But the verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have a
breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to mention the possible
existence of conditions calculated to multiply and re-extend both
species and individuals.
There is no absolute limit to the existence of any tree. Death is due
to accidents, not, as that of animals, to the wearing out of organs.
Only the leaves die of old age. Their fall is foretold in their
structure; but the leaves are renewed every year, and so also are the
essential organs wood, roots, bark, buds. Most of the Sierra trees die
of disease, insects, fungi, etc., but nothing hurts the big tree. I
never saw one that was sick or showed the slightest sign of decay.
Barring accidents, it seems to be immortal. It is a curious fact that
all the very old sequoias had lost their heads by lightning strokes.
“All things come to him who waits.” But of all living things, sequoia
is perhaps the only one able to wait long enough to make sure of being
struck by lightning.
So far as I am able to see at present only fire and the ax threaten the
existence of these noblest of God’s trees. In Nature’s keeping they are
safe, but through the agency of man destruction is making rapid
progress, while in the work of protection only a good beginning has
been made. The Fresno grove, the Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves
are under the protection of the Federal Government in the Yosemite
National Park. So are the General Grant and Sequoia National Parks; the
latter, established twenty-one years ago, has an area of 240 square
miles and is efficiently guarded by a troop of cavalry under the
direction of the Secretary of the Interior; so also are the small
General Grant National Park, estatblished at the same time with an area
of four square miles, and the Mariposa grove, about the same size and
the small Merced and Tuolumne group. Perhaps more than half of all the
big trees have been thoughtlessly sold and are now in the hands of
speculators and mill men. It appears, therefore, that far the largest
and important section of protected big trees is in the great Sequoia
National Park, now easily accessible by rail to Lemon Cove and thence
by a good stage road into the giant forest of the Kaweah and thence by
rail to other parts of the park; but large as it is it should be made
much larger. Its natural eastern boundary is the High Sierra and the
northern and southern boundaries are the Kings and Kern Rivers. Thus
could be included the sublime scenery on the headwaters of these rivers
and perhaps nine-tenths of all the big trees in existence. All private
claims within these bounds should be gradually extinguished by purchase
by the Government. The big tree, leaving all its higher uses out of the
count, is a tree of life to the dwellers of the plain dependent on
irrigation, a never-failing spring, sending living waters to the
lowland. For every grove cut down a stream is dried up. Therefore all
California is crying, “Save the trees of the fountains.” Nor, judging
by the signs of the times, is it likely that the cry will cease until
the salvation of all that is left of _Sequoia gigantea_ is made sure.