these two largest trees of America—indeed, with the exception of the
Australian eucalipti, we might say of the world. It is said that some
of the latter surpass the redwood in height, though a redwood tree was
discovered within recent years on the Eel River, California, whose
stupendous height reached nearly three hundred and fifty feet,
thus surpassing in that dimension, at least, any previously recorded
measurements of the big tree. The ages of the sequoias have been more
difficult to determine, but it appears that in the beginning they
were exaggerated. The mature redwood, doubtless, is apt to be several
centuries younger than the big tree; but so excellent an authority as
Mr. John Muir has said of the latter that “these giants under the most
favorable conditions probably live five thousand years or more, though
few of even the larger trees are more than half as old.”
The redwoods are great lovers of moisture. In the valleys and canyons
near the ocean they bathe in the ascending fog and stand dripping with
condensed vapor. We shall come upon them in dense groves, where the
day is a continuous twilight and the trees surpass in their combined
massiveness even the red firs of Oregon. At other times we shall find
them mingling in more open forest with lowland firs and hemlocks, or,
in their northern range, with the splendid Port Orford cedar. The light
enters these more open forests and calls forth much beautiful young
growth and shrubbery: the rhododendrons of California, with large and
showy purplish blossoms and evergreen leaves; western dogwoods, that
might at first glance be mistaken for the eastern species; barberries
and familiar hazels; and ferns and violets.
[Illustration: Devastation in the Forest]
The reader must not infer, of course, that such scenes are necessarily
of common occurrence in the forest; but they are more agreeable to
contemplate than those that have been despoiled of their attractions.
It should be remembered that if we traveled through these forests we
should often find fresh signs of human interference: sections of trees
lying prone on the ground, abandoned as useless by the lumberman;
stripped crowns that stood in the way of falling trunks, and debris
of bark and slashings. We should also notice the track of the forest
fire among the stumps and charred treetrunks, and here and there the
dying tops of standing trees that were unable to withstand the flames.
Finally, in dry and semi-arid regions, particularly in sections of the
Southwest, we should notice still another danger that threatens our
forests: the excessive or ill-timed grazing of sheep, which trample to
death the young tree seedlings as they pass over the ground in great
herds and devour the last vestiges of vegetation, thus leaving a bare
and dry forest floor, upon which the old trees subsist with difficulty
through the prolonged droughts of summer.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Bureau of Forestry_
Where the Sheep Have Been]
II
FOREST ADORNMENT
Though there can be no forest without trees, it may be asserted with
equal truth that trees alone would make but an incomplete forest.[5]
Under the old trees we find the young saplings that are in future years
to replace them and in their turn are to form a new canopy of shade. In
their company is a vast variety of shrubs, ferns, and delicate grasses
and flowers that decorate the forest floor. Vines and creepers gather
about the old trees and clamber up their furrowed trunks. In autumn the
ground is strewed with fallen leaves, motionless or hurrying along
before the wind. These gather into deep beds, soft to the tread, and
at last molder away in the moist, rich earth. In the needle-bearing
forests of the mountains brilliant green mosses replace the shrubs and
flowers and deck the bare brown earth.
There are _lifeless_ sources of beauty in the woods, too, that are not
easy to pass by unnoticed: rocks with interesting forms and surfaces;
forms that are lifeless, yet take on distinct expression by their
different modes of cleavage, and surfaces that drape themselves in the
choicest paraphernalia of drooping moss and rare lichen; prattling
mountain streams; cascades; and glassy pools. These are “inanimate”
things with a kind of life in them, after all.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Bureau of Forestry_
A Passageway through Granite Rocks]
Lastly, there are the true owners of the forest: the bird that hovers
round its borders; the free, chattering squirrel; the casual butterfly
that leads us to the flowers; and the large game that inhabits the
hidden recesses and adds an element of wildness and strange attraction
to these quiet haunts.
All this wealth of detail gives life to the forest. The shrubs,
above the rest, should here interest us somewhat more minutely. They
are often the most conspicuous objects in the embellishment of the
forest; and since our investigation was to be guided to some extent
by considerations of usefulness, it ought to be added that shrubs
not infrequently exercise a beneficial influence on the vigor and
well-being of the trees themselves. Trees, shrubs, and certain of the
smaller plants—so long as their root systems are not too dense and
intricate—are of value on account of their ameliorative effects on
temperature and moisture. This is more important in this country, so
extreme in its climatic variations, than in northern Europe. In the dry
and parching days of summer the shrubbery of the woods, by its shade,
helps to keep the earth cool and moist. This mantle of the earth,
moreover, conducts the rain more gradually to the soil, exercising an
efficient economy. In the fall and winter the shrubs, which are densest
near the forest border, help to break the force of the sweeping winds
which might otherwise carry away the fallen leaves, so useful in their
turn because they are conservators and regulators of moisture and
contain valuable chemical constituents which they return to the soil.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Bureau of Forestry_
Shrubbery and River Birches. New Jersey]
The pine barrens of New Jersey illustrate these principles. In close
proximity to the sea a welcome moisture enters the forest with the
ocean breezes. Penetrating farther inland, it is not so entirely
dissipated as to preclude a varied undergrowth of shrubbery, which in
turn renders a welcome aid to the forest by the protection it affords
to the porous, sandy soil, which would soon dry out under the scant
shelter of the pervious pines. Underneath these the kalmia or calico
bush, with its large and showy bunches of flowers, is abundant. In
late summer the sweet pepperbush is there, laden with its fragrant
racemes; in winter, the cheerful evergreen holly of glossy green leaf
and bright berry. In the dry and sunny places we find the wild rose,
the trailing blackberry, with its rich color traceries on the autumn
leaves, and the no less brilliant leaves of the wild strawberries
underfoot. We come upon the creeping wintergreen and the local
“flowering moss.” The fragrant “trailing arbutus,” here as elsewhere,
is an earnest of the generous returning spring. Along the creeks and
brooks are masses of honeysuckles, alder bushes, and sweet magnolias.
[Illustration: Fern Patch in a Grove of White Birch]
The coniferous forests of the Rocky Mountain region are either too dry
or too elevated to promote a luxuriant undergrowth; but we find it in
the humid coast region of Oregon and Washington, within the forests
of fir, pine, and spruce. In the deciduous forests, however, the
shrubbery attains its best development, for its presence depends
largely upon moisture, climate, and soil, and these conditions are
usually most favorable in our broadleaf districts. In the latter,
moreover, the shrubbery exercises its influence most efficiently, for
many of the pines will bear a considerable amount of heat and drought,
and several other conifers show their independence and a different kind
of hardihood at high and humid elevations. The varied and beautiful
forms of undergrowth in our broadleaf forests—the shrubs, the vines and
graceful large ferns, and the smaller plants that live along the forest
borders and penetrate within—may be regarded as one of the distinctive
features of American forest scenery.
In such forests, and along their borders, the birds like to make their
home. Among the bushy thickets they find a secure shelter, and some of
them seek their food among the fruits and berries that grow there. They
all possess their individual charms, and infuse such varied elements of
life and cheer into the woods that even the most commonplace scenes are
transmuted by their presence, while those that were already beautiful
receive an added attraction. In winter there is nothing more harmonious
than a flock of snowbirds flying over frosted evergreens toward some
soft gray mist or cloud. For grace and ease of movement I have never
seen anything more airy than the Canada jay alighting on some near
bough, softly as a snowflake, to watch and wait for the scraps of the
forester’s meal. Another interesting bird to watch in his movements is
the red-winged blackbird. Out along the edges of the forest and in the
swamps and marshes lying between bits of woodland, he may be seen from
earliest spring to the last days of fall.[6] We cannot help watching
him passing restlessly to and fro by himself, or circling happily about
in the flock, returning at last to his clumps of alders and willows,
or disappearing among the hazy reeds and grasses. But if, instead of
grace and movement, we are more interested in sound, we shall find no
songbird with sweeter notes than the thrush. Whatever added name he may
bear, we are sure of a fine quality of music; music with modulating
notes, plaintive and clear, that drive away all harshness of thought.
Let us again consider the undergrowth in the forest. Where shrubs and
tender growths abound the wintry season cannot be desolate or dreary.
When the display of summer is over they attract the eye by their
bright fruits and their habits of growth. Their branchlets are often
strikingly pretty in color and well set off against the snow. Their
intricate traceries of twig and stem are an interesting study. The
copses of brown hazels that spread along the mountain side and the
dusky alders or yellow-tinted willows are in perfect harmony with this
season of the year.
It is by crowding into masses that our shrubs of brighter blossom
produce some of the most superb effects of spring. A multitude of
rhododendrons or great laurels covers some mountain side, carrying its
drifts of pale rose far back into the woods. A mass of redbuds and
flowering dogwoods, the former again rose-colored, the latter a creamy
white, pours out from the forest’s edge among ledges of rock and low
hills. The wild plums and thorns, with their delicate flowers, are
beautiful in the same manner, and in addition have a pretty habit of
straying out and away from the woods, much like the red juniper.
Our shrubs are no less beautiful in their separate parts than they are
magnificent in their united profusion. The common sweet magnolia is
especially well favored. Its elegantly elliptical leaf, with smooth
surfaces, glossy and dark green above, silken and silvery below,
is one of the most attractive to be found. Its flower cannot help
being beautiful, for beauty is the heritage of all the magnolias.
Often, however, half the pure ivory cups lie hidden in the leaves, to
surprise us on a closer approach with their beauty and sweet fragrance.
Altogether this favored shrub is one of the most exquisite objects of
decoration, whether in the swamp, along brooksides, or through the damp
places of the forest.
The hawthorns, which, like the sweet magnolia, occur both as trees and
as shrubs, combine varied forms of attractiveness, such as compound
flowers of white or pinkish hue; sharply edged, elegantly pointed
leaves; bright berries; and closely interwoven branchlets stuck about
with thorns. The redbud, which I have already mentioned, holds its
little bunches of flowers so lightly that they look as if they had been
carried there by the wind and had caught along the twigs and branches.
Very different from these, yet no less interesting in its way, is the
staghorn sumach, which is of erratic growth and bears stately pyramids
of velvety flowers of a dark crimson-maroon. There is a fine contrast,
too, where the serviceberry, with early delicate white blossoms, blooms
among the evergreens and the opening leaves of spring.
Another word about the West. The undergrowth of the northerly portion
of the Pacific coast region has already been referred to; but there
extends throughout the Southwest, penetrating also northward and
eastward, another kind of forest growth that is so distinct in
character from all others that it should be specially described. It
is, in fact, quite opposite in its nature to the shrubbery of the more
humid forest regions in that it shows a tendency to seek the arid,
open, sunny slopes, where it forms a scrubby, though interesting, and
varied cover to the rough granite boulders and loose, gravelly soils.
This growth is everywhere conveniently known as “chaparral,” whether it
be the low, even-colored brush on the higher mountains or the dense,
scraggy, promiscuous, and impenetrable thicket of the foothills and
lower and gentler slopes.
The impression which the chaparral makes depends largely upon the
distance at which it is viewed. If we stand in the midst of a dense
patch of it we see of how many elements it is composed; how the shrubs
of different size, shape, and character crowd each other into a
tangle of branches, some not reaching above the waist, others closing
in overhead. The ceanothus, with its dull, dark-green foliage and
bunches of small white flowers, which appear in June, stands beside
the stout-stemmed, knotty, twisted manzanita, with its strikingly
reddish-brown bark and sticky, orbicular, olive-colored leaves. Among
smaller shrubs we find the aromatic sage brush, of a light-gray,
soft appearance, and the richer, darker, small-leaved grease-wood,
or chemisal, as it is more commonly called farther north, with its
small, white-petaled flowers enclosing a greenish-yellow center. Very
plentifully scattered among all these we usually find the scrubby forms
of the canyon live oak and the California black oak. Here and there we
may see a large golden-flowered mallow, or the queenly yucca raising
its fine pyramid of cream-colored flowers out of the dense mass.
The far view is quite different. Distance smoothes the surface and
somewhat obliterates the colors, though we may still distinguish a
variegated appearance. The eye takes in the larger outlines and the
scattered pines that sometimes occur within the chaparral. Nor is
the latter, as we now perceive, always a dense growth, but may be
separated here and there. Indeed, it is often most interesting when
interrupted by large granite boulders and jumbles of rocks, with the
clean gray shade of which it forms a fine contrast on a clear morning.
[Illustration: A Yucca in the Chaparral]
If we look still farther up toward some higher slopes, miles away,
we shall see only a uniform and continuous stretch of low brush that
appears at that great distance hardly otherwise than a green pasture
clothing the barren mountain. As we walk toward it the bluish-green
changes to a bronze-green, and then suddenly we recognize the broad
sweep of chemisal, with a few scattered scrubby oaks and mountain
mahogany in between.
In the account of forest embellishment should be included those
humblest plants, the liverworts and mosses and the lichens that so
beautifully stain the rocks and color the stems of trees. A close study
of all their delicate and tender characters, both of form and color,
is always a revelation. Among these lowlier plants it is no uncommon
sight in the depth of winter to see a field of fern sending a thousand
elegant sprays through the light snow-covering; or half a dozen kinds
of mosses, all of different green, but every one pure and brilliant,
gleaming in the shadow of some dripping rock. Between the rock and its
ice cap, covered by the latter but not concealed from view, there is
a fine collection of the most delicate little liverworts and grasses,
herbs with tender leaves, and even flowers, it may be, on some earthy
speck where the sun has melted the ice—all as if held in cold crystal.
A word also remains to be said about the vines and creepers. As far
north as Pennsylvania, and even to the States bordering the Great
Lakes, these clambering plants are a conspicuous element in the forest.
Virginia creeper, clematis, the hairy-looking poison oak, and the
wild grape, are among those that are most familiar. In the woods of
the lower Mississippi Valley the wild grapevines often make a strange
tangle among the old and twisted trees and hang in long festoons from
the boughs. They are not uncommon in some of the northerly States,
though less rank and exuberant in growth.
The common ivy is one of the most beautiful of all creepers. It makes
a fine setting for the little wood flowers that peep from its leaves.
I like it best, however, where it clings to some old oak or other tree
and brings out the contrast between its own passiveness and weakness
and the strength of the column that gives it support.
III
DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN FORESTS
The geographical distribution of trees has been referred to
occasionally in the preceding chapters. This distribution, gradually
accomplished during the progress of ages, has not been accidental; on
the contrary, it has been due to natural causes, and arises out of
the special needs and adaptations of each species. The geology of a
region, which determines in many respects the character of the physical
forces of both the earth and the air, is no small factor in the
development of the forest. The character of the climate, the nature
of the soil, the degree of moisture in the soil and in the atmosphere,
the amount and intensity of the sunlight—in short, the various elements
and natural forces that constitute the environment of a tree—are
the all-important conditions of its life. On these it depends, and
according to its own peculiar nature and its special needs, selects its
natural home.
Yet the manner in which this selection is accomplished, though simple
in theory, is complicated by many circumstances. Frost, fire, insects,
and floods, by destroying the trees or their seeds, may retard the
progress of the species. The wind may be unfavorable. The seeds hang
upon the trees ready and ripe for germination, but a breeze comes
along and carries them to a place where the conditions are ill adapted
to their peculiar nature. The following year the wind is propitious
and the little trees soon start into life. But presently the seeds of
another tree, whose growth is by nature faster, are conveyed to the
same spot, and the intruders outstrip the others in rapidity of growth
and spread a canopy of foliage that screens the smaller trees from the
life-giving sun and dooms them to destruction. Thus only a few of the
numberless seeds that are produced each year live, and fewer still
are able to maintain or extend the boundaries of the parent tree.
Sometimes, too, the frugality or hardiness of a species may be the
reason for its exclusive occupation of a certain locality, since other
trees may find it impossible to live at high altitudes and on rocky
ridges or to subsist upon rough, poor soil. Consequently we shall find
some kinds of trees exclusive, gregarious only among themselves, while
others mingle freely in the general concourse.
Through the persistency, therefore, of the vital forces of nature,
through a suitable climate or situation, through the power of
adaptation and the delicate adjustment of many details, the vast
armies of trees, like migratory races, have at last accomplished their
purpose and found their several homes; and to us the varied aspect of
the forests, as we traverse the extended territory of our country, is
in a manner explained. There are stretches of land over which the tree
growth is dense and uniform; where the forest is given over, it may
be, almost entirely to a single kind of tree. In other places the trees
may join in varied luxuriance, young and old, familiar and strange,
on some fertile, protected plain or well watered mountain side. In
still other places they may be seen struggling up the steep slopes and
maintaining a precarious existence on bleak, rocky ridges.
While the eastern portion of the United States is, generally speaking,
the home of the broadleaf species, and the northern and western
portions are similarly occupied by the coniferous forests, these areas
may readily be subdivided into specified regions of distinct forest
growth. The latter, however, cannot be accurately delimited, since the
regions naturally penetrate into one another and overlap, on account of
the manner in which forests have extended their bounds.
In the basin of the Great Lakes, where the glaciers of a recent
geological age have prepared a light, loose, gravelly or sandy soil,
the white pine belt extends through the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin,
and Michigan, and penetrates into portions of Pennsylvania, New
York, and New England. Once covered with dense tall forests of white
pine, interspersed in places with other northern conifers, or broken
by smaller areas of broadleaf forests, the white pine belt has now
yielded to us its richest treasures. The exacting demands of our modern
artificial civilization have drawn ceaselessly upon these resources,
and the assiduous ax and the fire that follows in its train have
invaded even the most secluded regions. The resulting barren spaces,
where they have not become cultivated land, have either reverted to
the young white pine itself or have been transformed into oak barrens
and open forests of broadleaf trees. Thus the aspect of the region has
been altered, though many a limited spot may be found in which the tall
majesty of the primeval forest still finds its full expression.
Extending from southern New England along the entire range of the
Appalachians, sloping toward the Atlantic, and spreading far westward
to the Mississippi and beyond, the region of the eastern broadleaf
forests covers a vast territory. Not that the conifers are here
entirely absent, for several of these, including the white pine itself,
follow the mountain ranges and scatter throughout the hills and plains;
but their number dwindles in the proportion of the whole.
Beyond this region to the southward, in the States that border the Gulf
east of the Mississippi, in Georgia, and stretching along the coast
northward, a region of pines is once more encountered. This section of
our forests, though it has already yielded generous supplies, is among
the richest in the country. From the pineries of the South is obtained
much of our construction timber; and thence, too, we derive our pitch,
tar, and turpentine from the sap of the trees.
Finally, within the eastern forests a restricted region at the southern
end of Florida, including the Keys, may properly be separated from the
rest. For here is found a distinctively tropical vegetation, differing
entirely in character from the forest flora to the north. Many trees
indigenous to the West India Islands have established themselves upon
this small area, on which the number of species exceeds that of any
region of equal extent within the United States, not excepting even
the varied forest growth of the Mexican border line, to which alone it
might be worthily compared.