THE FORESTS
The coniferous forests of the Sierra are the grandest and most
beautiful in the world, and grow in a delightful climate on the most
interesting and accessible of mountain-ranges, yet strange to say they
are not well known. More than sixty years ago David Douglas, an
enthusiastic botanist and tree lover, wandered alone through fine
sections of the Sugar Pine and Silver Fir woods wild with delight. A
few years later, other botanists made short journeys from the coast
into the lower woods. Then came the wonderful multitude of miners into
the foot-hill zone, mostly blind with gold-dust, soon followed by
“sheepmen,” who, with wool over their eyes, chased their flocks through
all the forest belts from one end of the range to the other. Then the
Yosemite Valley was discovered, and thousands of admiring tourists
passed through sections of the lower and middle zones on their way to
that wonderful park, and gained fine glimpses of the Sugar Pines and
Silver Firs along the edges of dusty trails and roads. But few indeed,
strong and free with eyes undimmed with care, have gone far enough and
lived long enough with the trees to gain anything like a loving
conception of their grandeur and significance as manifested in the
harmonies of their distribution and varying aspects throughout the
seasons, as they stand arrayed in their winter garb rejoicing in
storms, putting forth their fresh leaves in the spring while steaming
with resiny fragrance, receiving the thunder-showers of summer, or
reposing heavy-laden with ripe cones in the rich sungold of autumn. For
knowledge of this kind one must dwell with the trees and grow with
them, without any reference to time in the almanac sense.
The distribution of the general forest in belts is readily perceived.
These, as we have seen, extend in regular order from one extremity of
the range to the other; and however dense and somber they may appear in
general views, neither on the rocky heights nor down in the leafiest
hollows will you find anything to remind you of the dank, malarial
selvas of the Amazon and Orinoco, with, their “boundless contiguity of
shade,” the monotonous uniformity of the Deodar forests of the
Himalaya, the Black Forest of Europe, or the dense dark woods of
Douglas Spruce where rolls the Oregon. The giant pines, and firs, and
Sequoias hold their arms open to the sunlight, rising above one another
on the mountain benches, marshaled in glorious array, giving forth the
utmost expression of grandeur and beauty with inexhaustible variety and
harmony.
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE SIERRA FOREST.]
The inviting openness of the Sierra woods is one of their most
distinguishing characteristics. The trees of all the species stand more
or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to
find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through
openings that have a smooth, park-like surface, strewn with brown
needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a
ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves
and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge commanding
superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near.
One would experience but little difficulty in riding on horseback
through the successive belts all the way up to the storm-beaten fringes
of the icy peaks. The deep cañons, however, that extend from the axis
of the range, cut the belts more or less completely into sections, and
prevent the mounted traveler from tracing them lengthwise.
This simple arrangement in zones and sections brings the forest, as a
whole, within the comprehension of every observer. The different
species are ever found occupying the same relative positions to one
another, as controlled by soil, climate, and the comparative vigor of
each species in taking and holding the ground; and so appreciable are
these relations, one need never be at a loss in determining, within a
few hundred feet, the 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
possessing the greatest vertical range are available in this
connection, in as much as they take on new forms corresponding with the
variations in altitude.
Crossing the treeless plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin from the
west and reaching the Sierra foot-hills, you enter the lower fringe of
the forest, composed of small oaks and pines, growing so far apart that
not one twentieth of the surface of the ground is in shade at clear
noonday. After advancing fifteen or twenty miles, and making an ascent
of from two to three thousand feet, you reach the lower margin of the
main pine belt, composed of the gigantic 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 sweeps up the rocky
acclivities of the summit peaks in a dwarfed, wavering fringe to a
height of from ten to twelve thousand feet.
[Illustration: EDGE OF THE TIMBER LINE ON MOUNT SHASTA.]
This general order of distribution, with reference to climate dependent
on elevation, is perceived at once, but there are other harmonies, as
far-reaching in this connection, that become manifest only after
patient observation and study. Perhaps the most interesting of these is
the arrangement of the forests in long, curving bands, braided together
into lace-like patterns, and outspread in charming variety. The key to
this beautiful harmony is the ancient glaciers; where they flowed the
trees followed, tracing their wavering courses along cañons, over
ridges, and over high, rolling plateaus. The Cedars of Lebanon, says
Hooker, are growing 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, cutting gaps, disintegrating boulders, and carrying
away their decaying material into new formations, until at length they
are no longer recognizable by any save students, who trace their
transitional forms down from the fresh moraines still in process of
formation, through those that are more and more ancient, and more and
more obscured by vegetation and all kinds of post-glacial weathering.
Had the ice-sheet that once covered all the range been melted
simultaneously from the foot-hills to the summits, the flanks would, of
course, have been left almost bare of soil, and these noble forests
would be wanting. Many groves and thickets would undoubtedly have grown
up on lake and avalanche beds, and many a fair flower and shrub would
have found food and a dwelling-place in weathered nooks and crevices,
but the Sierra as a whole would have been a bare, rocky desert.
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE MAIN PINE BELT OF THE SIERRA FOREST.]
It appears, therefore, that the Sierra forests in general indicate the
extent and positions of the ancient moraines as well as they do lines
of climate. For forests, properly speaking, cannot exist without soil;
and, since the moraines have been deposited upon the solid rock, and
only upon elected places, leaving a considerable portion of the old
glacial surface bare, we find luxuriant forests of pine and fir
abruptly terminated by scored and polished pavements on which not even
a moss is growing, though soil alone is required to fit them for the
growth of trees 200 feet in height.
THE NUT PINE
(_Pinus Sabiniana_)
The Nut Pine, the first conifer met in ascending the range from the
west, grows only on the torrid foothills, seeming to delight in the
most ardent sun-heat, like a palm; springing up here and there singly,
or in scattered groups of five or six, among scrubby White 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.
This tree is remarkable for its airy, widespread, tropical appearance,
which suggests a region of palms, rather than cool, resiny pine woods.
No one would take it at first sight to be a conifer of any kind, it is
so loose in habit and so widely branched, and its foliage is so thin
and gray. 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 and twenty feet from the
ground, which, after bearing away from one another, shoot straight up
and form separate summits; while the crooked subordinate branches
aspire, and radiate, and droop in ornamental sprays. The slender,
grayish-green needles are from eight to twelve inches long, loosely
tasseled, and inclined to droop in handsome curves, contrasting with
the stiff, dark-colored trunk and branches in a very striking manner.
No other tree of my acquaintance, so substantial in body, is in its
foliage so thin and so pervious to the light. The sunbeams sift through
even the leafiest trees with scarcely any interruption, and the weary,
heated traveler finds but little protection in their shade.
[Illustration: THE NUT PINE (_Pinus Sabiniana_)]
The generous crop of nutritious nuts which the Nut Pine yields makes it
a favorite with Indians, bears, and squirrels. The cones are most
beautiful, measuring from five to eight inches in length, and not much
less in thickness, rich chocolate-brown in color, and protected by
strong, down-curving hooks which terminate the scales. Nevertheless,
the little Douglas squirrel can open them. Indians gathering the ripe
nuts make a striking picture. The men climb the trees like bears and
beat off the cones with sticks, or recklessly cut off the more fruitful
branches with hatchets, while the squaws gather the big, generous
cones, and roast them until the scales open sufficiently to allow the
hard-shelled seeds to be beaten out. Then, in the cool evenings, men,
women, and children, with their capacity for dirt greatly increased by
the soft resin with which they are all bedraggled, form circles around
camp-fires, on the bank of the nearest stream, and lie in easy
independence cracking nuts and laughing and chattering, as heedless of
the future as the squirrels.
_Pinus tuberculata_
This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000
feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and
graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside
the groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing 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.
[Illustration: THE GROVE FORM. THE ISOLATED FORM (PINUS TUBERCULATA).]
At the age of seven or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on
branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk
is soon picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become
fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the
older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to
fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long,
exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum,
rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the
careful preservation of the seeds.
No other conifer in the range is so closely restricted to special
localities. It is usually found apart, standing deep in chaparral on
sunny hill-and cañon-sides where there is but little depth of soil,
and, where found at all, it is quite plentiful; but the ordinary
traveler, following carriage-roads and trails, may ascend the range
many times without meeting it.
While exploring the lower portion of the Merced Cañon I found a lonely
miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side
planted with this singular tree. He told me that he called it the
Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is
so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common
name. Most mountaineers refer to it as “that queer little pine-tree
covered all over with burs.” In my studies of this species I found a
very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will
be seen almost as soon as stated:
1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size,
are of the same age.
2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with
chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves,
but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground
once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of
the chaparral.
4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the
tree or branch to which they belong dies.
[Illustration: LOWER MARGIN OF THE MAIN PINE BELT, SHOWING OPEN
CHARACTER OF WOODS.]
A full discussion of the bearing of these facts upon one another would
perhaps be out of place here, but I may at least call attention to the
admirable adaptation of the tree to the fire-swept regions where alone
it is found. After a grove has been destroyed, the ground is at once
sown lavishly with all the seeds ripened during its whole life, which
seem to have been carefully held in store with reference to such a
calamity. Then a young grove immediately springs up, giving beauty for
ashes.
SUGAR PINE
(_Pinus Lambertiana_)
This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not
merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty.
It towers sublimely from every ridge and cañon of the range, at an
elevation of from three to seven thousand feet above the sea, attaining
most perfect development at a height of about 5000 feet.
Full-grown specimens are commonly about 220 feet high, and from six to
eight feet in diameter near the ground, though some grand old patriarch
is occasionally met that has enjoyed five or six centuries of storms,
and attained a thickness of ten or even twelve feet, living on
undecayed, sweet and fresh in every fiber.
In southern Oregon, where it was first discovered by David Douglas, on
the head waters of the Umpqua, it attains still grander dimensions, one
specimen having been measured that was 245 feet high, and over eighteen
feet in diameter three feet from the ground. The discoverer was the
Douglas for whom the noble Douglas Spruce is named, and many other
plants which will keep his memory sweet and fresh as long as trees and
flowers are loved. His first visit to the Pacific Coast was made in the
year 1825. The Oregon Indians watched him with curiosity as he wandered
in the woods collecting specimens, and, unlike the fur-gathering
strangers they had hitherto known, caring nothing about trade. And when
at length they came to know him better, and saw that from year to year
the growing things of the woods and prairies were his only objects of
pursuit, they called him “The Man of Grass,” a title of which he was
proud. During his first summer on the waters of the Columbia he made
Fort Vancouver his headquarters, making excursions from this Hudson Bay
post in every direction. On one of his long trips he saw in an Indian’s
pouch some of the seeds of a new species of pine which he learned were
obtained from a very large tree far to the southward of the Columbia.
At the end of the next summer, returning to Fort Vancouver after the
setting in of the winter rains, bearing in mind the big pine he had
heard of, he set out on an excursion up the Willamette Valley in search
of it; and how he fared, and what dangers and hardships he endured, are
best told in his own journal, from which I quote as follows:
_October_ 26, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and cloudy. When my friends in
England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they will think I
have told them nothing but my miseries…. I quitted my camp early in the
morning to survey the neighboring country, leaving my guide to take
charge of the horses until my return in the evening. About an hour’s
walk from the camp I met an Indian, who on perceiving me instantly
strung his bow, placed on his left arm a sleeve of raccoon skin and
stood on the defensive. Being quite sure that conduct was prompted by
fear and not by hostile intentions, the poor fellow having probably
never seen such a being as myself before, I laid my gun at my feet on
the ground and waved my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly
and with great caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver of
arrows beside my gun, and striking a light gave him a smoke out of my
own pipe and a present of a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough
sketch of the cone and pine tree which I wanted to obtain, and drew his
attention to it, when he instantly pointed with his hand to the hills
fifteen or twenty miles distant towards the south; and when I expressed
my intention of going thither, cheerfully set out to accompany me. At
midday I reached my long-wished-for pines, and lost no time in
examining them and endeavoring to collect specimens and seeds. New and
strange things seldom fail to make strong impressions, and are
therefore frequently over-rated; so that, lest I should never see my
friends in England to inform them verbally of this most beautiful and
immensely grand tree, I shall here state the dimensions of the largest
I could find among several that had been blown down by the wind. At 3
feet from the ground its circumference is 57 feet 9 inches; at 134
feet, 17 feet 5 inches; the extreme length 245 feet…. As it was
impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down, I endeavored to
knock off the cones by firing at them with ball, when the report of my
gun brought eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth, armed
with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives. They appeared
anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they
seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of them
string his bow, and another sharpen his flint knife with a pair of
wooden pincers and suspend it off the wrist of his right hand. Further
testimony of their intentions was unnecessary. To save myself by flight
was impossible, so without hesitation I stepped back about five paces,
cocked my gun, drew one of the pistols out of my belt, and holding it
in my left hand and the gun in my right, showed myself determined to
fight for my life. As much as possible I endeavored to preserve my
coolness, and thus we stood looking at one another without making any
movement or uttering a word for perhaps ten minutes, when one at last,
who seemed to be the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some
tobacco; this I signified that they should have if they fetched a
quantity of cones. They went off immediately in search of them, and no
sooner were they all out of sight than I picked up my three cones and
some twigs of the trees and made the quickest possible retreat,
hurrying back to the camp, which I reached before dusk…. I now write
lying on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and penning these
lines by the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited piece of
rosin-wood.
This grand pine discovered under such, exciting circumstances Douglas
named in honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London.
The trunk is a smooth, round, delicately tapered shaft, mostly without
limbs, and colored rich purplish-brown, usually enlivened with tufts of
yellow lichen. At the top of this magnificent bole, long, curving
branches sweep gracefully outward and downward, sometimes forming a
palm-like crown, but far more nobly impressive than any palm crown I
ever beheld. The needles are about three inches long, finely tempered
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 immense
cylindrical cones that depend loosely from the ends of the main
branches! No one knows what Nature can do in the way of pine-burs until
he has seen those of the Sugar Pine. They are commonly from 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.
Then the flat scales open and the seeds take wing, but the empty cones
become still more beautiful and effective, for their diameter is nearly
doubled by the spreading of the scales, and their color changes to a
warm 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, and fine in grain and texture; it is of a rich cream-yellow,
as if formed of condensed sunbeams. _Retinospora obtusa, Siebold_, the
glory of Eastern forests, is called “Fu-si-no-ki” (tree of the sun) by
the Japanese; the Sugar Pine is the sun-tree of the Sierra.
Unfortunately it is greatly prized by the lumbermen, and in accessible
places is always the first tree in the woods to feel their steel. But
the regular lumbermen, with their saw-mills, have been, less generally
destructive thus far than the shingle-makers. The wood splits freely,
and there is a constant demand for the shingles. And because an ax, and
saw, and frow are all the capital required for the business, many of
that drifting, unsteady class of men so large in California engage in
it for a few months in the year. When prospectors, hunters, ranch
hands, etc., touch their “bottom dollar” and find themselves out of
employment, they say, “Well, I can at least go to the Sugar Pines and
make shingles.” A few posts are set in the ground, and a single length
cut from the first tree felled produces boards enough for the walls and
roof of a cabin; all the rest the lumberman makes is for sale, and he
is speedily independent. No gardener or haymaker is more sweetly
perfumed than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this business,
but the havoc they make is most deplorable.
[Illustration: SUGAR PINE ON EXPOSED RIDGE.]
The sugar, from which the common name is derived, is to my taste the
best of sweets—better than maple sugar. It exudes from the heart-wood,
where wounds have been made, either by forest fires, or the ax, in the
shape of irregular, crisp, candy-like kernels, which are crowded
together in masses of considerable size, like clusters of resin-beads.
When fresh, it is perfectly white and delicious, but, because most of
the wounds on which it is found have been made by fire, the exuding sap
is stained on the charred surface, and the hardened sugar becomes
brown. Indians are fond of it, but on account of its laxative
properties only small quantities may be eaten. Bears, so fond of sweet
things in general, seem never to taste it; at least I have failed to
find any trace of their teeth in this connection.
No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the Sugar
Pine, nor will he afterward need a poet to call him to “listen what the
pine-tree saith.” In most pine-trees there is a sameness of expression,
which, to most people, is apt to become monotonous; for the typical
spiry form, however beautiful, affords but little scope for appreciable
individual character. The Sugar Pine is as free from conventionalities
of form and motion as any oak. No two are alike, even to the most
inattentive observer; and, notwithstanding they are ever tossing out
their immense arms in what might seem most extravagant gestures, there
is a majesty and repose about them that precludes all possibility of
the grotesque, or even picturesque, in their general expression. 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 White 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 found to be forty feet in length, 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, and filled with sunshine, is one of the most glorious
forest objects conceivable. Commonly, however, there is a great
preponderance of limbs toward the east, away from the direction of the
prevailing winds.
No other pine seems to me so unfamiliar and self-contained. In
approaching it, we feel as if in the presence of a superior being, and
begin to walk with a light step, holding our breath. Then, perchance,
while we gaze awe-stricken, along comes a merry squirrel, chattering
and laughing, to break the spell, running up the trunk with no
ceremony, and gnawing off the cones as if they were made only for him;
while the carpenter-woodpecker hammers away at the bark, drilling holes
in which to store his winter supply of acorns.
[Illustration: YOUNG SUGAR PINE BEGINNING TO BEAR CONES.]
Although so wild and unconventional when full-grown, the Sugar Pine is
a remarkably proper tree in youth. The old is the most original and
independent in appearance of all the Sierra evergreens; the young is
the most regular,—a strict follower of coniferous fashions,—slim,
erect, with leafy, supple branches kept exactly in place, each tapering
in outline and terminating in a spiry point. The successive
transitional forms presented between the cautious neatness of youth and
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 in the most unthought-of places, and bend
with the great cones, at once marking individual character, and this
being constantly augmented from year to year by the varying action of
the sunlight, winds, snow-storms, etc., the individuality of the tree
is never again lost in the general forest.
The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a
worthy companion it is.
[Illustration: FOREST OF SEQUOIA, SUGAR PINE, AND DOUGLAS SPRUCE.]
The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White 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
flowery, park-like ground, into a scene of enchantment.
On the most sunny slopes the white-flowered fragrant chamoebatia 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. On 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 never 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.
View the forest from beneath or from some commanding ridge-top; each
tree presents a study in itself, and proclaims the surpassing grandeur
of the species.
YELLOW, OR SILVER PINE
(_Pinus ponderosa_)
The Silver, 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,
arctic ridges, and torrid lava-beds; planting itself upon the lips of
craters, flourishing vigorously even there, and tossing ripe cones
among the ashes and cinders of Nature’s hearths.
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 may
easily be found that are considerably larger. I measured one, growing
at an elevation of 4000 feet in the valley of the Merced, that is a few
inches over eight feet in diameter, and 220 feet high.
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. About one
half of the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all
close, three fourths or more become naked; the tree 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.
[Illustration: PINUS PONDEROSA]
The species attains its noblest form in filled-up lake basins,
especially in those of the older yosemites, and so prominent a part
does it form of their groves that it may well be called the Yosemite
Pine. Ripe specimens favorably situated are almost always 200 feet or
more in height, and the branches clothe the trunk nearly to the ground,
as seen in the illustration.
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, and in its redder and more closely furrowed bark,
grayish-green foliage, less divided branches, and 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 that climbs storm-swept ridges, and wanders out among the
volcanoes of the Great Basin. Whether exposed to extremes of heat or
cold, it is dwarfed like every other tree, 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 seven or eight
thousand feet, whose highest branches scarce reach above one’s
shoulders.
[Illustration: SILVER PINE 210 FEET HIGH. (THE FORM GROWING IN
YOSEMITE VALLEY.)]
I have oftentimes 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 burs 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
royal 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. But to me there is something more
impressive in the fall of light upon these Silver Pines. It seems
beaten to the finest dust, and is shed off in myriads of minute
sparkles that seem to come from the very heart of the trees, 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 music to the wind. 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 mountains by
this pine-music alone. If you would catch the tones of separate
needles, climb a tree. They are well tempered, and give forth no
uncertain sound, each standing out, with no interference excepting
during heavy gales; then you may detect the click of one needle upon
another, readily distinguishable from their free, wing-like hum. Some
idea of their temper may be drawn from the fact that, notwithstanding
they are so long, the vibrations that give rise to the peculiar
shimmering of the light are made at the rate of about two hundred and
fifty per minute.
When a Sugar Pine and one of this species equal in size are observed
together, the latter is seen to be far more simple in manners, more
lithely graceful, and its beauty is of a kind more easily appreciated;
but then, it is, on the other hand, much less dignified and original in
demeanor. The Silver Pine seems eager to shoot aloft. 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.
DOUGLAS SPRUCE
(_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_)
This tree is the king of the spruces, as the Sugar Pine is king of
pines. It is by far the most majestic spruce I ever beheld in any
forest, and 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. Where the growth is
not too close, the strong, spreading branches come more than halfway
down the trunk, and these are hung with innumerable slender, swaying
sprays, that are handsomely feathered with the short leaves which
radiate at right angles all around them. This vigorous spruce is ever
beautiful, welcoming the mountain winds and the snow as well as the
mellow summer light, and maintaining its youthful freshness
undiminished from century to century through a thousand storms.
It makes its finest appearance in the months of June and July. The rich
brown buds with which its sprays are tipped swell and break about this
time, 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 with their shell-like scales are a constant
adornment.
The young trees are mostly gathered into beautiful 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 curves as free and as
finely drawn as those of falling water.
In Oregon and Washington it grows in dense forests, growing tall and
mast-like to a height of 300 feet, and is greatly prized as a lumber
tree. But in the Sierra 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 I have measured are in Yosemite
Valley, one of which is more than eight feet in diameter, and is
growing upon the terminal moraine of the residual glacier that occupied
the South Fork Canon; the other is nearly as large, growing upon
angular blocks of granite that have been shaken from the precipitous
front of the Liberty Cap near the Nevada Fall. No other tree seems so
capable of adapting itself to earthquake taluses, and many of these
rough boulder-slopes are occupied by it almost exclusively, especially
in yosemite gorges moistened by the spray of waterfalls.
INCENSE CEDAR
(_Libocedrus decurrens_)
The Incense Cedar is another of the giants quite generally distributed
throughout this portion of the forest, without exclusively occupying
any considerable area, or even making extensive groves. It ascends to
about 5000 feet on the warmer hillsides, and reaches the climate most
congenial to it at about from 3000 to 4000 feet, growing vigorously at
this elevation on 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.
The largest specimens are about 150 feet high, and seven feet in
diameter. The bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive
to artists, and the foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of
any other evergreen in the woods. Casting your eye over the general
forest from some ridge-top, the color alone of its spiry summits is
sufficient to identify it in any company.
[Illustration: INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.]
In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree
forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom. The branches swoop
outward and downward in bold curves, excepting the younger ones near
the top, which aspire, while the lowest droop to the ground, and all
spread out in flat, ferny plumes, beautifully fronded, and imbricated
upon one another. As it becomes older, it grows strikingly irregular
and picturesque. Large special branches put out at right angles from
the trunk, form big, stubborn elbows, and then shoot up parallel with
the axis. Very old trees are usually dead at the top, the main axis
protruding above ample masses of green plumes, gray and lichen-covered,
and drilled full of acorn holes by the woodpeckers. The plumes are
exceedingly beautiful; no waving fern-frond in shady dell is more
unreservedly beautiful in form and texture, or half so inspiring in
color and spicy fragrance. In its prime, the whole tree is thatched
with them, so that they shed off rain and snow like a roof, making fine
mansions for storm-bound birds and mountaineers. But if you would see
the _Libocedrus_ in all its glory, you must go to the woods in winter.
Then it is laden with myriads of four-sided staminate cones about the
size of wheat grains,—winter wheat,—producing a golden tinge, and
forming a noble illustration of Nature’s immortal vigor and virility.
The fertile cones are about three fourths of an inch long, borne on the
outside of the plumy branchlets, where they serve to enrich still more
the surpassing beauty of this grand winter-blooming goldenrod.
WHITE SILVER FIR
(_Abies concolor_)
[Illustration: FOREST OF GRAND SILVER FIRS. TWO SEQUOIAS IN THE
FOREGROUND ON THE LEFT.]
We come now to the most regularly planted of all the main forest belts,
composed almost exclusively of two noble firs—_A. concolor_ and _A.
magnifica_. It extends with no marked interruption for 450 miles, at an
elevation of from 5000 to nearly 9000 feet above the sea. In its youth
_A. concolor_ is a charmingly symmetrical tree with branches regularly
whorled in level collars around its whitish-gray axis, which terminates
in a strong, hopeful shoot. The leaves are 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, about from three to four inches
long by one and a half to two inches wide, and stand upright on the
upper branches.
Full-grown trees, favorably situated as to soil and exposure, are about
200 feet high, and five or six feet in diameter near the ground, though
larger specimens are by no means rare.
As old age creeps on, the bark becomes rougher and grayer, the branches
lose their exact regularity, many are snow-bent or broken off, and the
main axis often becomes double or otherwise irregular from accidents to
the terminal bud or shoot; but throughout all the vicissitudes of its
life on the mountains, come what may, the noble grandeur of the species
is patent to every eye.
MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR, OR RED FIR
(_Abies magnifica_)
This is the most charmingly symmetrical of all the giants of the Sierra
woods, 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, more
regularly whorled and fronded branches, and by its leaves, which are
shorter, and grow all around the branchlets and point upward.
In size, these two Silver Firs are about equal, the _magnifica_ perhaps
a little the taller. Specimens from 200 to 250 feet high are not rare
on well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from 7500 to 8500 feet
above sea-level. The largest that I measured stands back three miles
from the brink of the north wall of Yosemite Valley. Fifteen years ago
it was 240 feet high, with a diameter of a little more than five feet.
Happy the man with the freedom and the love to climb one of these
superb trees in full flower and fruit. How admirable the forest-work of
Nature is then seen to be, as one makes his way up through the midst of
the broad, fronded branches, all arranged in exquisite order around the
trunk, like the whorled leaves of lilies, and each branch and branchlet
about as strictly pinnate as the most symmetrical fern-frond. The
staminate cones are seen growing straight downward from the under side
of the young branches in lavish profusion, making fine purple clusters
amid the grayish-green foliage. On the topmost branches the fertile
cones are set firmly on end like small casks. They are about six inches
long, three wide, covered with a fine gray down, and streaked with
crystal balsam that seems to have been poured upon each cone from
above.
Both the Silver Firs live 250 years or more when the conditions about
them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen,
heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising
generation, with a protecting grove of saplings pressing close around
his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems
wanting. Other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life,
exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture, as if Nature
had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from all the rest
of the woods.
[Illustration: VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.]
It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumberman, that
mountaineers always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate
as to be within its limits. Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping
along the middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes mixed with ferns and
flowers for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essences
of the pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of one’s body, the sounds
of falling water make a soothing hush, while the spaces between the
grand spires afford noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into
the starry sky. Even in the matter of sensuous ease, any combination of
cloth, steel springs, and feathers seems vulgar in comparison.
The fir woods are delightful sauntering-grounds at any time of year,
but most so in autumn. Then the noble trees are hushed in the hazy
light, and drip with balsam; the cones are ripe, and the seeds, with
their ample purple wings, mottle the air like flocks of butterflies;
while deer feeding in the flowery openings between the groves, and
birds and squirrels in the branches, make a pleasant stir which
enriches the deep, brooding calm of the wilderness, and gives a
peculiar impressiveness to every tree. No wonder the enthusiastic
Douglas went wild with joy when he first discovered this species. Even
in the Sierra, where so many noble evergreens challenge admiration, we
linger among these colossal firs with fresh love, and extol their
beauty again and again, as if no other in the world could henceforth
claim our regard.
[Illustration: SILVER-FIR FOREST GROWING ON MORAINES OF THE HOFFMAN
AND TENAYA GLACIERS.]
It is in these woods the great granite domes rise that are so striking
and characteristic a feature of the Sierra. And here too we find the
best of the garden meadows. They lie level on the tops of the dividing
ridges, or sloping on the sides of them, embedded in the magnificent
forest. Some of these meadows are in great part occupied by
_Veratrumalba_, which here grows rank and tall, with boat-shaped leaves
thirteen inches long and twelve inches wide, ribbed like those of
cypripedium. Columbine grows on the drier margins with tall larkspurs
and lupines waist-deep in grasses and sedges; several species of
castilleia also make a bright show in beds of blue and white violets
and daisies. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily—_L.
parvum_. The flowers are orange-colored and quite small, the smallest I
ever saw of the true lilies; but it is showy nevertheless, for it is
seven to eight feet high and waves magnificent racemes of ten to twenty
flowers or more over one’s head, while it stands out in the open ground
with just enough of grass and other plants about it to make a fringe
for its feet and show it off to best advantage.
A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a Silver Fir lily
garden makes a glorious campground, especially where the slope is
toward the east and opens a view of the distant peaks along the summit
of the range. The tall lilies are brought forward in all their glory by
the light of your blazing camp-fire, relieved against the outer
darkness, 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.
In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of
the dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the
sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks give a margin of
gold to each of them. Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the
middle region catch the glow, and your camp grove is filled with light.
The birds begin to stir, seeking sunny branches on the edge of the
meadow for sun-baths after the cold night, and looking for their
breakfasts, every one of them as fresh as a lily and as charmingly
arrayed. Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from the
open glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the
chaparral, the flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew
vanishes, every pulse beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very
rocks seem to tingle with life, and God is felt brooding over
everything great and small.
BIG TREE
(_Sequoia gigantea_)
Between the heavy pine and Silver Fir belts we find the Big Tree, the
king of all the conifers in the world, “the noblest of a noble race.”
It extends in a widely interrupted belt from a small grove on the
middle fork of the American River to the head of Deer Creek, a distance
of about 260 miles, the northern limit being near the thirty-ninth
parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth, and the
elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000
feet. From the American River grove to the forest on King’s 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 King’s River southward the Sequoia is not
restricted to mere groves, but extends across the broad 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 deep cañons. The Fresno, the largest of the northern groves,
occupies an area of three or four square miles, a short distance to the
southward of the famous Mariposa Grove. Along the beveled rim of the
cañon of the south fork of King’s River there is a majestic forest of
Sequoia about six miles long by two wide. This is the northernmost
assemblage of Big Trees that may fairly be called a forest. Descending
the precipitous divide between the King’s River and Kaweah you enter
the grand forests that form the main continuous portion of the belt.
Advancing southward the giants become more and more irrepressibly
exuberant, heaving their massive crowns into the sky from every ridge
and slope, and 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 extends from the granite headlands overlooking the hot 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 an elevation of 8400 feet. But
the finest block of Big Tree forest in the entire belt is on the north
fork of Tule River. In the northern groves there are comparatively few
young trees or saplings. But here for every old, storm-stricken giant
there are many in all the glory of prime vigor, and for each of these a
crowd of eager, hopeful young trees and saplings growing heartily on
moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses, and in the moist alluvium
of meadows, seemingly in hot pursuit of eternal life.
[Illustration: SEQUOIA GIGANTEA—VIEW IN GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARK.]
But though the area occupied by the species increases so much from
north to south there is no marked increase in the size of the trees. A
height of 275 feet and a diameter near the ground of about 20 feet is
perhaps about the average size of full-grown trees favorably situated;
specimens 25 feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly
300 feet high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over 300
feet in height, the tallest of which by careful measurement is 325
feet. The largest I have yet met in the course of my explorations is a
majestic old scarred monument in the King’s River forest. It is 35 feet
8 inches in diameter inside the bark four feet from the ground. Under
the most favorable conditions these giants probably live 5000 years or
more, though few of even the larger trees are more than half as old. I
never saw a Big Tree that had died a natural death; barring accidents
they seem to be immortal, being exempt from all the diseases that
afflict and kill other trees. Unless destroyed by man, they live on
indefinitely until burned, smashed by lightning, or cast down by
storms, or by the giving way of the ground on which they stand. The age
of one that was felled in the Calaveras Grove, for the sake of having
its stump for a dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and its diameter,
measured across the stump, 24 feet inside the bark. Another that was
cut down in the King’s River forest was about the same size, but nearly
a thousand years older (2200 years), though not a very old-looking
tree. It was felled to procure a section for exhibition, and thus an
opportunity was given to count its annual rings of growth. The colossal
scarred monument in the King’s River forest mentioned above is burned
half through, and I spent a day in making an estimate of its age,
clearing away the charred surface with an ax and carefully counting the
annual rings with the aid of a pocket-lens. The wood-rings in the
section I laid bare were so involved and contorted in some places that
I was not able to determine its age exactly, but I counted over 4000
rings, which showed that this tree was in its prime, swaying in the
Sierra winds, when Christ walked the earth. No other tree in the world,
as far as I know, has looked down on so many centuries as the Sequoia,
or opens such impressive and suggestive views into history.
So exquisitely harmonious and finely balanced are even the very
mightiest of these monarchs of the woods in all their proportions and
circumstances there never is anything overgrown or monstrous-looking
about them. On coming in sight of them for the first time, you are
likely to say, “Oh, see what beautiful, noble-looking trees are
towering there among the firs and pines!”—their grandeur being in the
mean time in great part invisible, but to the living eye it will be
manifested sooner or later, stealing slowly on the senses, like the
grandeur of Niagara, or the lofty Yosemite domes. Their great size is
hidden from the inexperienced observer as long as they are seen at a
distance in one harmonious view. When, however, you approach them and
walk round them, you begin to wonder at their colossal size and seek a
measuring-rod. These giants 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 of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I
measured in the King’s River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the
ground, and 10 feet in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that
the taper of the trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you
stand back far enough to see the massive columns from the swelling
instep to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice
in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and beauty. About a
hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its
massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of
making an irregular network run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an
architectural column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays
that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to
have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only. The
young trees have slender simple branches down to the ground, put on
with strict regularity, sharply aspiring at the top, horizontal about
half-way down, and drooping in handsome curves at the base. By the time
the sapling is five or six hundred years old this spiry, feathery,
juvenile habit merges into the firm, rounded dome form of middle age,
which in turn takes on the eccentric picturesqueness of old age. No
other tree in the Sierra forest has foliage so densely massed or
presents outlines so firmly drawn and so steadily subordinate to a
special type. A knotty ungovernable-looking branch five to eight feet
thick may be seen pushing out abruptly from the smooth trunk, as if
sure to throw the regular curve into confusion, but as soon as the
general outline is reached it stops short and dissolves in spreading
bosses of law-abiding sprays, just as if every tree were growing
beneath some huge, invisible bell-glass, against whose sides every
branch was being pressed and molded, yet somehow indulging in so many
small departures from the regular form that there is still an
appearance of freedom.
The foliage of the saplings is dark bluish-green in color, while the
older trees ripen to a warm brownish-yellow tint like Libocedrus. The
bark is rich cinnamon-brown, purplish in young trees and in shady
portions of the old, while the ground is covered with brown leaves and
burs forming color-masses of extraordinary richness, not to mention the
flowers and underbrush that rejoice about them in their seasons. Walk
the Sequoia woods at any time of year and you will say they are the
most beautiful and majestic on earth. Beautiful and impressive
contrasts meet you everywhere: the colors of tree and flower, rock and
sky, light and shade, strength and frailty, endurance and evanescence,
tangles of supple hazel-bushes, tree-pillars about as rigid as granite
domes, roses and violets, the smallest of their kind, blooming around
the feet of the giants, and rugs of the lowly chamaebatia where the
sunbeams fall. Then in winter the trees themselves break forth in
bloom, myriads of small four-sided staminate cones crowd the ends of
the slender sprays, coloring the whole tree, and when ripe dusting the
air and the ground with golden pollen. The fertile cones are bright
grass-green, measuring about two inches in length by one and a half in
thickness, and are made up of about forty firm rhomboidal scales
densely packed, with from five to eight seeds at the base of each. A
single cone, therefore, contains from two to three hundred seeds, which
are about a fourth of an inch long by three sixteenths wide, including
a thin, flat margin that makes them go glancing and wavering in their
fall like a boy’s kite. The fruitfulness of Sequoia may be illustrated
by two specimen branches one and a half and two inches in diameter on
which I counted 480 cones. No other Sierra conifer produces nearly so
many seeds. 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 of the world. Nature takes care,
however, that not one seed in a million shall germinate at all, and of
those that do perhaps not one in ten thousand is suffered to live
through the many vicissitudes of storm, drought, fire, and
snow-crushing that beset their youth.
The Douglas squirrel is the happy harvester of most of the Sequoia
cones. Out of every hundred perhaps ninety fall to his share, and
unless cut off by his ivory sickle they shake out their seeds and
remain on the tree for many years. Watching the squirrels at their
harvest work in the Indian summer is one of the most delightful
diversions imaginable. The woods are calm and the ripe colors are
blazing in all their glory; the cone-laden trees stand motionless in
the warm, hazy air, and you may see the crimson-crested woodcock, the
prince of Sierra woodpeckers, drilling some dead limb or fallen trunk
with his bill, and ever and anon filling the glens with his happy
cackle. The humming-bird, too, dwells in these noble woods, and may
oftentimes be seen glancing among the flowers or resting wing-weary on
some leafless twig; here also are the familiar robin of the orchards,
and the brown and grizzly bears so obviously fitted for these majestic
solitudes; and the Douglas squirrel, making more hilarious, exuberant,
vital stir than all the bears, birds, and humming wings together.
As soon as any accident happens to the crown of these Sequoias, such as
being stricken off by lightning or broken by storms, then 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 of these grand trees 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. These patches of fresh, mellow soil beside the
upturned roots of the fallen giant may be from forty to sixty feet
wide, and they are speedily occupied by seedlings. Out of these
seedling-thickets perhaps two or three may become trees, forming those
close groups called “three graces,” “loving couples,” etc. For even
supposing that the trees should stand twenty or thirty feet apart while
young, by the time they are full-grown their trunks will touch and
crowd against each other and even appear as one in some cases.
It is generally believed that this grand 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 to-day,
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 we might notice that no species of coniferous tree
in the range keeps its individuals so well together as 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, Sequoia trunks frequently endure for centuries after they fall.
I have a specimen block, cut from a fallen trunk, which is hardly
distinguishable from specimens cut from living trees, although the old
trunk-fragment from which it was derived has lain in the damp forest
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 is growing
that is now four feet in diameter and 380 years old, as 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 rare one.
But admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once covered
with Sequoia 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 times.
_Is the species verging to 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 on the question of
extension.
In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are few young trees or
saplings growing up around the failing old ones to perpetuate the race,
and in as much 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 climate
is exceptionally favorable. But the language of the majestic continuous
forests of the south creates a very different impression. No tree of
all the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with
climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhere—on moraines, rocky
ledges, along watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows,
with a multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged,
seemingly abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. For
every old storm-stricken tree, there is one or more in all the glory of
prime; and for each of these many young trees and crowds of exuberant
saplings. 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 piece of
rough avalanche soil not exceeding two acres in area. This soil bed is
about seven years old, and has 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.
In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling
Sequoia is capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its
rivals, but requires more sunshine than they; the latter fact being
clearly shown wherever a Sugar Pine or fir is growing in close contact
with a Sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the
sun; the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy.
Toward the south, however, where the Sequoia becomes _more_ exuberant
and numerous, the rival trees become _less_ so; and where they mix with
Sequoias, they mostly grow up beneath them, like slender grasses among
stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of sandy flood-soil 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.
[Illustration: MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAÑON—YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.]
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
Sequoia, also furnishes bare virgin ground, one of the conditions
essential for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however,
furnished in sufficient quantities for the constant renewal of the
forests without fire, viz., by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus
upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one that
falls. Land-slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin ground; and
a tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or squirrel,
but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of
aged trees.
The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure
of tree life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time
and the means employed by Nature in effecting them. 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 Sequoia, leaving
its ground to other trees supposed capable of nourishing in a drier
climate. But that 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 in greatest abundance in
well-watered places where streams are exceptionally abundant?” 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, and I confess that at
first I shared in the blunder.
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 rains
and melting snows, only allowing them 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.
Evaporation is also checked by the dense foliage to a greater extent
than by any other Sierra tree, and the air is entangled in masses and
broad sheets that are quickly saturated; while thirsty winds are not
allowed to go sponging and licking along the ground.
So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt,
that bogs and meadows are created by the killing of the trees. A single
trunk falling across a stream in the woods forms a dam 200 feet long,
and from ten to thirty feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the
trees within its reach. These dead trees fall in turn, thus making a
clearing, while sediments gradually accumulate changing the pond into a
bog, or meadow, for a growth of carices and sphagnum. In some instances
a series of small bogs or meadows rise above one another on a hillside,
which are gradually merged into one another, forming sloping bogs, or
meadows, which make striking features of Sequoia woods, and since all
the trees that have fallen into them have been preserved, they contain
records of the generations that have passed since they began to form.
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 the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial
period in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest
post-glacial watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river
channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring floodmarks 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 mean time,
eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain
fact remains that _the present rain- and snow-fall 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 occured to me
that this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is located exactly in the
basin of the vast ancient _mer de glace_ of the San Joaquin and King’s
River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the
snows that fell on more than fifty miles of the summit. 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 most perfectly 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 King’s 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 King’s 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.
[Illustration: VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.]
What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to
establish itself upon these oldest and warmest portions of the main
glacial soil-belt, I cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in
this connection, that since the Sequoia forests present a more and more
ancient aspect as they extend southward, I am inclined to think that
the species was distributed from the south, while the Sugar Pine, its
great rival in the northern groves, seems to have come around the head
of the Sacramento valley and down the Sierra from the north;
consequently, when the Sierra soil-beds were first thrown open to
preemption on the melting of the ice-sheet, the Sequoia may have
established itself along the available portions of the south half of
the range prior to the arrival of the Sugar Pine, while the Sugar Pine
took possession of the north half prior to the arrival of Sequoia.
But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question,
there are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we
have pointed out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the
ancient glaciers of the Sierra. And when we bear in mind that all the
present forests of the Sierra are young, growing on moraine soil
recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all
its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to the
light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a
thousand lawless mysteries disappear, and broad harmonies take their
places.
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 seem to have 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 probably are 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 reëxtend
both species and individuals. This, however, is a branch of the
question into which I do not now purpose to enter.
In studying the fate of our forest king, we have thus far considered
the action of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, _man_ is
in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway.
If the importance of forests were at all understood, even from an
economic standpoint, their preservation would call forth the most
watchful attention of government. Only of late years by means of forest
reservations has the simplest groundwork for available legislation been
laid, while in many of the finest groves every species of destruction
is still moving on with accelerated speed.
In the course of my explorations I found no fewer than five mills
located on or near the lower edge of the Sequoia belt, all of which
were cutting considerable quantities of Big Tree lumber. Most of the
Fresno group are doomed to feed the mills recently erected near them,
and a company of lumbermen are now cutting the magnificent forest on
King’s River. In these milling operations waste far exceeds use, for
after the choice young manageable trees on any given spot have been
felled, the woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse
with reference to further operations, and, of course, most of the
seedlings and saplings are destroyed.
These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the
comprehensive destruction caused by “sheepmen.” Incredible numbers of
sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their
course is ever marked by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down,
the shrubs are stripped of leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the
woods are burned. Running fires are set everywhere, with a view to
clearing the ground of prostrate trunks, to facilitate the movements of
the flocks and improve the pastures. The entire forest belt is thus
swept and devastated from one extremity of the range to the other, and,
with the exception of the resinous _Pinus contorta_, Sequoia suffers
most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to
facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow
their camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or
_muttoneers_, form more than ninety per cent. of all destructive fires
that range the Sierra forests.
It appears, therefore, that notwithstanding our forest king might live
on gloriously in Nature’s keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the
fire and steel of man; and unless protective measures be speedily
invented and applied, in a few decades, at the farthest, all that will
be left of _Sequoia gigantea_ will be a few hacked and scarred
monuments.
TWO-LEAVED, OR TAMARACK, PINE
(_Pinus contorta_, var._Marrayana_)
This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the
range, above the fir zone, up to a height of from 8000 to 9500 feet
above the sea, growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are
scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the
giants of the lower zones, this is a small tree, seldom attaining a
height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I ever measured was
ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four feet from
the ground. 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 little pine, with
grayish-brown bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the
greater portion of the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent
its being seen. The lower limbs curve downward, gradually take a
horizontal position about half-way up the trunk, then aspire more and
more toward the summit, thus forming a sharp, conical top. The foliage
is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively
long, cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving
branchlets. The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff
clusters among the needles, without making any striking effect, except
while very young, when they are of a vivid crimson color, and the whole
tree appears to be dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are
still more showy, on account of their great abundance, often giving a
reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the
air with pollen.
No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine
forests sweep along the sides of the high, rocky valleys for miles
without interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for
flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places,
where the trees grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are
specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground, in
sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmer’s crop, and
serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the
arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted.
The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by
fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it
had been showered down upon it like rain, so that even the green trees
catch fire readily, and during strong winds whole forests are
destroyed, the flames leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous
belt of roaring fire that goes surging and racing onward above the
bending woods, like the grass-fires of a prairie. During the calm, dry
season of Indian summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground,
feeding on the dry needles and burs; then, arriving at the foot of a
tree, the resiny bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a
powerful current, increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames
swiftly upward; then the leaves catch fire, and an immense column of
flame, beautifully spired on the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue,
rushes aloft thirty or forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a
grand spectacle, especially on a dark night. It lasts, however, only a
few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others
along the fire-line at irregular intervals for weeks at a time—tree
after tree flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and branches
hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and
in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent
are thus killed and left standing with the branches on, 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 trunks are blown down during some storm,
and piled one upon another encumbering the ground until they are
consumed by the next fire, and leave it ready for a fresh crop.
The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out
over the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless
mountain-sides with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in
rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks—always, however, showing the
effects of such hardships in every feature.
Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so
far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct
species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to
eighty feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in
eddying gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods. I have
frequently found specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in
diameter. Being thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy
boughs, it is oftentimes bent to the ground when laden with soft snow,
forming beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until
the melting of the snow in spring.
MOUNTAIN PINE
(_Pinus monticola_)
The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, 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 in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger
than this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring
strength as that of an oak. About two thirds of the trunk is commonly
free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all the way
down, like those which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark
is deep reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near
its upper limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running
nearly parallel with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross
furrows, which, with one exception, are, as far as I have noticed,
peculiar to this species.
The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and
somewhat curved, resembling those of the common White Pine of the
Atlantic coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or
seven, becoming pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the
bending of the branches.
This species is nearly related to the Sugar Pine, and, though not half
so tall, it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it
extends its long arms and in general habit. The Mountain Pine is first
met on the upper margin of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued,
inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making
much impression on the general forest. Continuing up through the
Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its
character, and at an elevation of about 10,000 feet attains its noblest
development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the
frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the
grand old age of 1000 years.
JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
(_Juniperus occidentalis_)
[Illustration: JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.]
The Juniper is preëminently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes
and pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height
of from 7000 to 9500 feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently
over eight feet in diameter, and not much more in height. The top is
almost always dead in old trees, and great stubborn limbs push out
horizontally that are mostly broken and bare at the ends, but densely
covered and embedded here and there with bossy mounds of gray foliage.
Some are mere weathered stumps, as broad as long, decorated with a few
leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of some ancient
castle scantily draped with ivy. Only upon the head waters of the
Carson have I found this species established on good moraine soil. Here
it flourishes with the Silver and Two-leaved Pines, in great beauty and
luxuriance, attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, and
manifesting but little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a
feature throughout the greater portion, of its range. Two of the
largest, growing at the head of Hope Valley, measured twenty-nine feet
three inches and twenty-five feet six inches in circumference,
respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a bright
cinnamon color, and, in thrifty trees, beautifully braided and
reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes
used by Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd
picturesqueness always catch an artist’s eye, but to me the Juniper
seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never speaking to one’s
heart. I have spent many a day and night in its company, in all kinds
of weather, and have ever found it silent, cold, and rigid, like a
column of ice. Its broad stumpiness, of course, precludes all
possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this rocky
steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm, sun-days the Sugar
Pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without
moving a leaf.
[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS.]
On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence
like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it alive
or dead as it does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over
2000 years old. All the trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less,
from avalanches, the Two-leaved Pine most of all. Gaps two or three
hundred yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree-line to
the bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of common occurrence in all
the upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old
backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is scraped away,
while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon one
another heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the
clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with
branches wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers.
After braving in silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty
centuries, they seem in this, their last calamity, to become somewhat
communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their
fate, holding themselves well up from the ground on knees and elbows,
seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn wrestlers, to rise
again.
HEMLOCK SPRUCE
(_Tsuga Pattoniana_)
The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the
California coniferae. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends
over and droops like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop
also, and divide into innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are
arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable.
Its cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels two
inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely
delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies
deepest, far up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from 9000
to 9500 feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing
considerably higher, say 10,500 feet. The tallest specimens, growing in
sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from
eighty to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter.
The very largest specimen I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches
in circumference four feet from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake
Hollow, at an elevation of 9250 feet above the level of the sea. At the
age of twenty or thirty years it becomes fruitful, and hangs out its
beautiful purple cones at the ends of the slender sprays, where they
swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully with the cool green
foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty is
delicious. After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like
scales and allow the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while
the empty cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh
crop.
[Illustration: STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.]
The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in
bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock
Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue
flowers, each on a slender stem.
Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed,
this tree is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit
upon exposed ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets,
huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages
to throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness; while on
well-ground moraine soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of
foliage and fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the forest; poised
in thin white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not
in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming
majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its
race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and
joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like
sensitive tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of
our alpine conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches
yield to the mountains’ gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the
wildest onsets of the gale,—strong not in resistance, but compliance,
bowing, snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month
after month in the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the
leaves, weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis
bends yet lower and lower, until the slender top touches the ground,
thus forming a fine ornamental arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and
the whole tree is at length buried, to sleep and rest in its beautiful
grave as though dead. Entire groves of young trees, from ten to forty
feet high, are thus buried every winter like slender grasses. But, like
the violets and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not, they are
safe. It is as though this were only Nature’s method of putting her
darlings to sleep instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms
of winter.
Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow
becomes soft in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass
hard and compact, like ice, so that during the months of April and May
you can ride a horse over the prostrate groves without catching sight
of a single leaf. At length the down-pouring sunshine sets them free.
First the elastic tops of the arches begin to appear, then one branch
after another, each springing loose with a gentle rustling sound, and
at length the whole tree, with the assistance of the winds, gradually
unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm air, as
dry and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil.
Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes
of Lassen’s Butte. There are also many charming companies on the head
waters of the Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin, and, in general, the
species is so far from being rare that you can scarcely fail to find
groves of considerable extent in crossing the range, choose what pass
you may. The Mountain Pine grows beside it, and more frequently the
two-leaved species; but there are many beautiful groups, numbering 1000
individuals, or more, without a single intruder.
I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this
favorite spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special
admiration; apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold,
stop to gaze on first meeting it, and mutter to themselves: “That’s a
mighty pretty tree,” some of them adding, “d——d pretty!” In autumn,
when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas
squirrel, and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer
love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from
the snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus
spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its
charms. Come to the mountains and see.
DWARF PINE
(_Pinus albicaulis_)
This species forms the extreme edge of the timber line throughout
nearly the whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met
growing in company with _Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_, on the
upper margin of the belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet
high and from one to two feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling
up the flanks of the summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges,
wherever it can obtain a foothold, to an elevation of from 10,000 to
12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled, prostrate branches,
covered with slender, upright shoots, each tipped with a short,
close-packed tassel of leaves. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some
places almost white. The fertile cones grow in rigid clusters upon the
upper branches, dark chocolate in color while young, and bear beautiful
pearly seeds about the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two
species of tamias and the notable Clark crow. The staminate cones occur
in clusters, about an inch wide, down among the leaves, and, as they
are colored bright rose-purple, they give rise to a lively, flowery
appearance little looked for in such a tree.
[Illustration: GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES.]
Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily
aspire or die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly,
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 below. Seen from a distance, it would never be taken for a
tree of any kind. Yonder, for example, is Cathedral Peak, some three
miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine creeping like mosses
over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north gable, nowhere
giving any hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near it
still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no
great difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom
absolutely prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three
or four feet, with a main trunk, and branches outspread and
intertangled above it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a
ceiling, against which they had grown and been compelled to spread
horizontally. The winter snow is indeed such a ceiling, lasting half
the year; while the pressed, shorn surface is made yet smoother by
violent winds, armed with cutting sand-grains, that beat down any shoot
that offers to rise much above the general level, and 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.
[Illustration: A DWARF PINE.]
The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed.
Here, for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700
feet, which seems as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it
is only three and a half inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is
hardly three feet above the ground. Cutting it half through and
counting the annual rings with the aid of a lens, we find its age to be
no less than 255 years. Here is another telling specimen about the same
height, 426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches in diameter; and
one of its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter
inside the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily
balsam, and so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots
like a whip-cord.
WHITE PINE
(_Pinus flexilis_)
This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and
over all the higher of the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the
Wahsatch Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In
the Sierra it is sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from
Bloody Cañon southward nearly to the extremity of the range, opposite
the village of Lone Pine, nowhere forming any appreciable portion of
the general forest. From its peculiar position, in loose, straggling
parties, it seems to have been derived from the Basin ranges to the
eastward, where it is abundant.
It is a larger tree than the Dwarf Pine. At an elevation of about 9000
feet above the sea, it often attains a height of forty or fifty feet,
and a diameter of from three to five feet. The cones open freely when
ripe, and are twice as large as those of the _albicaulis_, and the
foliage and branches are more open, having a tendency to sweep out in
free, wild curves, like those of the Mountain Pine, to which it is
closely allied. It is seldom found lower than 9000 feet above
sea-level, but from this elevation it pushes upward over the roughest
ledges to the extreme limit of tree-growth, where, in its dwarfed,
storm-crushed condition, it is more like the white-barked species.
Throughout Utah and Nevada it is one of the principal timber-trees,
great quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous White
Pine Mining District, White Pine City, and the White Pine Mountains
have derived their names from it.
NEEDLE PINE
(_Pinus aristata_)
This species is restricted in the Sierra to the southern portion of the
range, about the head waters of Kings and Kern rivers, where it forms
extensive forests, and in some places accompanies the Dwarf Pine to the
extreme limit of tree-growth.
It is first met at an elevation of between 9000 and 10,000 feet, and
runs up to 11,000 without seeming to suffer greatly from the climate or
the leanness of the soil. It is a much finer tree than the Dwarf Pine.
Instead of growing in clumps and low, heathy mats, it manages in some
way to maintain an erect position, and usually stands single. Wherever
the young trees are at all sheltered, they grow up straight and arrowy,
with delicately tapered bole, and ascending branches terminated with
glossy, bottle-brush tassels. At middle age, certain limbs are
specialized and pushed far out for the bearing of cones, after the
manner of the Sugar Pine; and in old age these branches droop and cast
about in every direction, giving rise to very picturesque effects. The
trunk becomes deep brown and rough, like that of the Mountain Pine,
while the young cones are of a strange, dull, blackish-blue color,
clustered on the upper branches. When ripe they are from three to four
inches long, yellowish brown, resembling in every way those of the
Mountain Pine. Excepting the Sugar Pine, no tree on the mountains is so
capable of individual expression, while in grace of form and movement
it constantly reminds one of the Hemlock Spruce.
[Illustration: OAK GROWING AMONG YELLOW PINES.]
The largest specimen I measured was a little over five feet in diameter
and ninety feet in height, but this is more than twice the ordinary
size.
This species is common throughout the Rocky Mountains and most of the
short ranges of the Great Basin, where it is called the Fox-tail Pine,
from its long dense leaf-tassels. On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and
Golden Gate ranges it is quite abundant. About a foot or eighteen
inches of the ends of the branches is densely packed with stiff
outstanding needles which radiate like an electric fox or squirrel’s
tail. The needles have a glossy polish, and the sunshine sifting
through them makes them burn with silvery luster, while their number
and elastic temper tell delightfully in the winds. This tree is here
still more original and picturesque than in the Sierra, far surpassing
not only its companion conifers in this respect, but also the most
noted of the lowland oaks. Some stand firmly erect, feathered with
radiant tassels down to the ground, forming slender tapering towers of
shining verdure; others, with two or three specialized branches pushed
out at right angles to the trunk and densely clad with tasseled sprays,
take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again in the same woods
you find trees that are made up of several boles united near the
ground, spreading at the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the
mountain, with the elegant tassels hung in charming order between them,
making a harp held against the main wind lines where they are most
effective in playing the grand storm harmonies. And besides these there
are many variable arching forms, alone or in groups, with innumerable
tassels drooping beneath the arches or radiant above them, and many
lowly giants of no particular form that have braved the storms of a
thousand years. But whether old or young, sheltered or exposed to the
wildest gales, this tree is ever found irrepressibly and extravagantly
picturesque, and offers a richer and more varied series of forms to the
artist than any other conifer I know of.
NUT PINE
(_Pinus monophylla_)
The Nut Pine covers or rather 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 contentedly 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 exigency of climate or soil, it remains 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 give no promise of edible nuts; but when we come to open
them, we find that about half the entire bulk of the cone is made up of
sweet, nutritious seeds, the kernels of which are nearly as large as
those of hazel-nuts.
This is undoubtedly the most important food-tree on the Sierra, and
furnishes the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and
better nuts than all the other species taken together. It is the
Indians’ own tree, and many a white man have they killed for cutting it
down.
In its development Nature seems to have aimed at the formation of as
great a fruit-bearing surface as possible. Being so low and accessible,
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 will gather thirty or forty bushels of them—a fine squirrelish
employment.
Of all the conifers along the eastern base of the Sierra, and on all
the many mountain groups and short ranges of the Great Basin, this
foodful little pine is the commonest tree, and the most important.
Nearly every mountain is planted with it to a height of from 8000 to
9000 feet above the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this
one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes
to break the continuity of its curious woods, which, though
dark-looking at a distance, are almost shadeless, and have none of the
damp, leafy glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods.
Tens of thousands of acres occur in continuous belts. Indeed, viewed
comprehensively the entire Basin seems to be pretty evenly divided into
level plains dotted with sage-bushes and mountain-chains covered with
Nut Pines. No slope is too rough, none too dry, for these bountiful
orchards of the red man.
The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
furnishes charcoal and timber for the mines, and, with the juniper,
supplies the ranches with fuel and rough fencing. In fruitful seasons
the nut crop is perhaps greater than the California wheat crop, which
exerts so much influence throughout the food markets of the world.
When, the crop is ripe, the Indians make ready the long beating-poles;
bags, baskets, mats, and sacks are collected; the women out at service
among the settlers, washing or drudging, assemble at the family huts;
the men leave their ranch work; old and young, all are mounted on
ponies and start in great glee to the nut-lands, forming curiously
picturesque cavalcades; flaming scarfs and calico skirts stream loosely
over the knotty ponies, two squaws usually astride of each, with baby
midgets bandaged in baskets slung on their backs or balanced on the
saddle-bow; while nut-baskets and water-jars project from each side,
and the long beating-poles make angles in every direction. Arriving at
some well-known central point where grass and water are found, the
squaws with baskets, the men with poles ascend the ridges to the laden
trees, followed by the children. Then the beating begins right merrily,
the burs fly in every direction, rolling down the slopes, lodging here
and there against rocks and sage-bushes, chased and gathered by the
women and children with fine natural gladness. Smoke-columns speedily
mark the joyful scene of their labors as the roasting-fires are
kindled, and, at night, assembled in gay circles garrulous as jays,
they begin the first nut feast of the season.
The nuts are about half an inch long and a quarter of an inch in
diameter, pointed at the top, round at the base, light brown in general
color, and, like many other pine seeds, handsomely dotted with purple,
like birds’ eggs. The shells are thin and may be crushed between the
thumb and finger. The kernels are white, becoming brown by roasting,
and are sweet to every palate, being eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs,
horses, and men. Perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the
whole crop is ever gathered. Still, besides supplying their own wants,
in times of plenty the Indians bring large quantities to market; then
they are eaten around nearly every fireside in the State, and are even
fed to horses occasionally instead of barley.
Of other trees growing on the Sierra, but forming a very small part of
the general forest, we may briefly notice the following:
_Chamoecyparis Lawsoniana_ is a magnificent tree in the coast ranges,
but small in the Sierra. It is found only well to the northward along
the banks of cool streams on the upper Sacramento toward Mount Shasta.
Only a few trees of this species, as far as I have seen, have as yet
gained a place in the Sierra woods. It has evidently been derived from
the coast range by way of the tangle of connecting mountains at the
head of the Sacramento Valley.
In shady dells and on cool stream banks of the northern Sierra we also
find the Yew (_Taxus brevifolia_).
The interesting Nutmeg Tree (_Torreya Californica_) is sparsely
distributed along the western flank of the range at an elevation of
about 4000 feet, mostly in gulches and cañons. It is a small, prickly
leaved, glossy evergreen, like a conifer, from twenty to fifty feet
high, and one to two feet in diameter. The fruit resembles a green-gage
plum, and contains one seed, about the size of an acorn, and like a
nutmeg, hence the common name. The wood is fine-grained and of a
beautiful, creamy yellow color like box, sweet-scented when dry, though
the green leaves emit a disagreeable odor.
_Betula occidentalis_, the only birch, is a small, slender tree
restricted to the eastern flank of the range along stream-sides below
the pine-belt, especially in Owen’s Valley.
Alder, Maple, and Nuttall’s Flowering Dogwood make beautiful bowers
over swift, cool streams at an elevation of from 3000 to 5000 feet,
mixed more or less with willows and cottonwood; and above these in lake
basins the aspen forms fine ornamental groves, and lets its light shine
gloriously in the autumn months.
The Chestnut Oak (_Quercus densiflora_) seems to have come from the
coast range around the head of the Sacramento Valley, like the
_Chamaecyparis_, but as it extends southward along the lower edge of
the main pine-belt it grows smaller until it finally dwarfs to a mere
chaparral bush. In the coast mountains it is a fine, tall, rather
slender tree, about from sixty to seventy-five feet high, growing with
the grand _Sequoia sempervirens_, or Redwood. But unfortunately it is
too good to live, and is now being rapidly destroyed for tan-bark.
[Illustration: PATE VALLEY, SHOWING THE OAKS. TUOLUMNE CAÑON, YOSEMITE
NATIONAL PARK.]
Besides the common Douglas Oak and the grand _Quercus Wislizeni_ of the
foot-hills, and several small ones that make dense growths of
chaparral, there are two mountain-oaks that grow with the pines up to
an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, and greatly enhance the
beauty of the yosemite parks. These are the Mountain Live Oak and the
Kellogg Oak, named in honor of the admirable botanical pioneer of
California. Kellogg’s Oak (_Quercus Kelloggii_) is a firm, bright,
beautiful tree, reaching a height of sixty feet, four to seven feet in
diameter, with wide-spreading branches, and growing at an elevation of
from 3000 to 5000 feet in sunny valleys and flats among the evergreens,
and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about 4000 feet
above the sea it is so abundant and effective it might fairly be called
the Yosemite Oak. The leaves make beautiful masses of purple in the
spring, and yellow in ripe autumn; while its acorns are eagerly
gathered by Indians, squirrels, and woodpeckers. The Mountain Live Oak
(_Q. Chrysolepis_) is a tough, rugged mountaineer of a tree, growing
bravely and attaining noble dimensions on the roughest earthquake
taluses in deep cañons and yosemite valleys. The trunk is usually
short, dividing near the ground into great, wide-spreading limbs, and
these again into a multitude of slender sprays, many of them cord-like
and drooping to the ground, like those of the Great White Oak of the
lowlands (_Q. lobata_). The top of the tree where there is plenty of
space is broad and bossy, with a dense covering of shining leaves,
making delightful canopies, the complicated system of gray,
interlacing, arching branches as seen from beneath being exceedingly
rich and picturesque. No other tree that I know dwarfs so regularly and
completely as this under changes of climate due to changes in
elevation. At the foot of a cañon 4000 feet above the sea you may find
magnificent specimens of this oak fifty feet high, with craggy, bulging
trunks, five to seven feet in diameter, and at the head of the cañon,
2500 feet higher, a dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same
species, while all the way up the cañon between these extremes of size
and habit a perfect gradation may be traced. The largest I have seen
was fifty feet high, eight feet in diameter, and about seventy-five
feet in spread. The trunk was all knots and buttresses, gray like
granite, and about as angular and irregular as the boulders on which it
was growing—a type of steadfast, unwedgeable strength.