The incense cedar (_Libocedius decurrens_) is one of the valued trees of
the California coast and mountains. It is eminently noted for great
rapidity of growth, wonderful lightness, stiffness, and extraordinary
durability. A thousand uses have sprung up and are multiplying around
this interesting cedar as its most inestimable qualities become better
known. Fortunately it is one of the most extensively distributed trees
of the Pacific--found from the coast range north, south to San Diego,
Sierra Nevada, southern Oregon, and most of the interior mountain region
from 2,000 to 4,000 feet, and it even thrives quite well at 6,600 feet
altitude, but seeming to give out at 7,000 feet, though said to extend
to 8,500 feet, which is questionable. As usual with the sylva, flora,
and fauna, this also is found lowest along the coast, where it finds the
requisite temperature and other essentials, with combined moisture. The
base and lower trunk somewhat resembles the Western juniper (_J.
occidentalis_). It is to be noted in general that trees of such broad,
outwardly sweeping, or expanded bases seldom blow over, and to the
perceptive and artistic eye their significant character is one of
firmness and stability. One hundred to two hundred feet high, six to
nine feet in diameter (rarely larger) the shaft is often clear of limbs
80 to 100 feet, and although the lower limbs, or even dry branches, may
encumber the middle portion, pin-knots do not damage the timber. The
massive body tapers more rapidly above than redwood, and is less
eccentric than juniper, yet its general port resembles most the best
specimens of the latter. The light cinnamon bark is thick and of
shreddy-fibered texture, but so concretely compacted as to render the
surface evenly ridged by very long, big bars of bark. These sweep
obliquely down on the long spiral twist of swift water lines. The top is
conic, the foliage is in compressed, flattened sprays, upright,
thickened, and somewhat succulent; if not a languid type, at least in no
sense rigid. It bears some resemblance to the great Western arborvitae
(_Thuja gigantea_), but the tiny leaf-scales are opposite and quite
awl-pointed. The general hue of the foliage is light yellowish green,
warmly tinted, golden and bead tipped, with tiny, oblong male catkins,
as the fruit ripens in October and November. The cones are pendulous
from the tips of twigs, oblong, and seldom over three-quarters of an
inch long, little more than one-third as thick, and for the most part a
trifle compressed. The wood is a pale cream-tint in color--a delicate
salmon shade. This would hardly warrant the name white cedar, sometimes
applied to it, as well as the giant arborvitae. The extreme lightness of
the lumber and its sweetness for packing boxes will commend it for
express and commercial purposes, for posts and fencing, and especially
railway ties, for sleepers, stringers, and ground timbers of all
varieties, and for unnumbered uses, a tithe of which cannot be told in a
brief notice. Formerly these trees were cut away and burned up, to clear
the track for redwood, tamarack, and ponderous pith-pines, etc.; now all
else is superseded by this incense cedar. Thus is seen how hasty and
ill-advised notions give place to genuine merit.
A fungus (_daedalus_) attacks and honeycombs it; and riddled as it may
occasionally be, still, if spike or nail finds substance enough to hold,
or sufficient solidity to resist crushing, then, for many purposes, even
such lumber is practically as good as the soundest timber; because when
the tree dies the fungus dies, and thenceforth will absorb no more
moisture than the soundest part, and is alike imperishable, contrary to
common experience in similar cases. This is a timber nearly as lasting
as solid granite. For ship or boat lumber, the clear stuff from sound
wood is so exceedingly light, stiff, and durable, and so plenty and
available, that few timbers excel it, unless the yellow cedar or cyprus
(_Cupressus nutkaensis_) is excepted, which is a little tougher,
stronger, perhaps more elastic, and equally durable, if judged apart
from thorough tests and careful data, which, it has been remarked, the
apathy or ignorance of some governments appear to deem unworthy their
sublime attention. There are said to be in California a thousand times
more and better kinds of naval timbers on government lands as important
to preserve as the live oaks of the South Atlantic States. It has been
asserted as probable that, after due investigation, California would be
found to possess a vast amount of the best naval timber in the world, a
hundredfold more lasting than the best now in use, if a few woods are
excepted, of which there is understood to be no very adequate supply.
The great Washington cedar (_Sequoia gigantea_) is another important
California tree. The great sequoian timber belt lies along the Sierras,
upon the first exposed mountain side--moraines of recent retiring
glaciers--that face the Pacific, from Calaveras on the north to near the
head of Deer Creek on the south--a distance of 200 miles, or a little
above 38 degrees north to a little below 36 degrees; altitude 5,000 to
8,000 feet, and rarely 8,400 feet. The belt is broken by two gaps, each
40 miles wide, caused by manifest topographical and glacial reasons, one
gap between Calaveras and Tuolumne, the other between Fresno and King's
River; thence the vast forest trends south, across the broad basins of
Kaweah and Tule, a distance of 70 miles, on fresh moraine soil, ground
from high mountain flanks by glaciers. The inscriptions are scarcely
marred by post glacial agents, and the contiguous water-worn marks are
often so slight in the rock-bound streams as to be measured by a few
inches. Rarely does one of these sound and vigorous cedars fall, and
those that do will lie 800 to 1,000 years, scarcely less perishable than
the granite on which they grew. The great sequoian ditches, dug at a
blow by their fall, and the tree tumuli, always turned up beside the
deep root-bowls, remain; but, scientists assert, not a vestige of one
outside the present forests has yet presented itself, hence the area has
not been diminished during the last 8,000 or 10,000 years, and probably
not at all in post glacial times. These colossal sequoias rise 275, 300,
and even 400 feet aloft; are 20 to 30, and in some rare cases 40 feet in
diameter, looking like vast columnar pillars of the skies. No known
trees of the world compare with them and their kin, the redwoods, for
the focused proximity of such a marvelous amount of timber within
limited areas--as it were, the highest standard of timber-land capacity.
The stage coach passes through one; 120 children and a piano crowd
inside another; a trunk furnishes a house for cotillon parties to dance
"stout on stumps;" a horse and rider travel within the burnt-out hollows
of others, and so on. A single tree would furnish a two-rail fence, 20
to 30 miles long. The tree has great value for wood and lumber.--_N.W.
Lumberman._
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A catalogue containing brief notices of many important
scientific papers heretofore published in the SUPPLEMENT,
may be had gratis at this office.
* * * * *
The
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT.