American Forest Trees Part 9

In the eastern markets the lumber from this tree is usually called western cedar without further description, but that name does not always sufficiently identify it. There are other western cedars, notably incense and yellow; but they have not generally appeared in eastern markets. Western red cedar is the name given it when the purpose is to separate it from other western cedars. It is the only red cedar in the far West, except the scarce junipers which are totally unknown as its compet.i.tors in lumber centers. Gigantic cedar is a name which takes size into account. It is the largest of American cedars. Trunks fifteen feet in diameter and 200 feet high are sometimes seen, but the usual size is 100 high, from two to four in diameter. Canoe cedar is a name bestowed upon this western tree for the same reason that canoe wood is one of the yellow poplar's names in the East. It is one of the best woods for dugout canoes. Botanists have called the tree giant arborvitae, but the name never got beyond books. When the people of Washington and Oregon speak of cedar without a qualifying term, they mean this species. It is widely known as shingle wood or shingle cedar, because more shingles are made of it than of all other kinds of timber in the United States combined.

The western red cedar's range covers 300,000 square miles, not counting regions of small or scattered growth. For a timber tree, that range is large, but not nearly as large as some others. It exceeds one-hundred fold the commercial range of redwood, and probably a thousand fold that of Port Orford cedar, but its range is not one-third that of the eastern red cedar, though in total quant.i.ty of available lumber it surpa.s.ses the eastern tree a hundred fold. Its range begins in Alaska on the north, and follows the coast to northern California, and extends eastward into Idaho. The best development occurs in the regions of warm, moist Pacific winds, but not in the immediate fog belts. The largest quant.i.ty of this wood, and probably the largest trees also, are in Washington. Abundant rainfall is essential to western red cedar's development. It would be difficult to approximate the amount of the remaining stand. This cedar does not form pure forests, and estimates of so many feet per acre or square mile cannot be based on fairly exact information as may be done with redwood, and some of the southern pines. Though the drain upon the cedar forests is heavy, it is generally believed there is enough of this species to meet demands for a long period of years.

Nature made ample provision for the spread and perpetuation of this tree. The seeds are fairly abundant, are light, have good wing power, and are great travelers in search of suitable places to germinate and take root. The tree's greatest enemy is fire. The cedar's bark is thin, even when trunks are mature, and a moderate blaze often proves fatal to large trees; but small ones, with all their branches close to the ground, have no chance when the fire burns the litter among them. Some tree seeds germinate readily on soil bared by fire--such as lodgepole pine, wild red cherry, and paper birch--but the western red cedar's do not, if the humus is sufficiently burned to lessen the soil's capacity to retain moisture. For that reason, this cedar seldom follows fire, and the result is that it constantly loses ground. Under normal conditions, it is not exacting in its requirements; but anything that disturbs natural conditions is more likely to harm than help this cedar. In that respect it is like beech and hemlock, which suffer when forest conditions are disturbed.

Trunks are large but not shapely. They are generally fluted, and greatly swelled at the base. These deformities develop rather late in the tree's life; at least, they are not prominent in young timber. Western cedar poles of large size are beautiful in outline; but when maturity approaches, the trunk grows faster near the ground than some distance above; the annual rings are wider near the base than twenty feet above, resulting in great enlargement near the ground. At the same time ribs and creases slowly develop, and by the time the tree is old, it is as ungainly as one of the giant sequoias. Its appearance is hurt by characteristics other than the swelled base and the b.u.t.tresses. While the tree is small, the limbs ascend, and maintain a graceful upright position. Toward middle life they begin to droop, and the limbs of old trees hang down the trunks--the reverse of their att.i.tude in early life.

The western red cedar lives to an old age, from 600 to 1,000 years. The oldest are liable to be hollow near the ground. The tree is remarkable for what happens after it falls. Often the trunk crashes down in a bed of moss, which in a few years buries it from sight. The moss holds so much water that the buried log is constantly too wet for fungous attack.

Consequently decay does not take place. Fallen trees have lain for hundreds of years--as much as 800 having been claimed in one instance--and at the end of that time they are sound enough for shingles. The position of living trees growing upon buried logs furnishes the key to the length of time since the trunks fell. The long period during which the moss-buried wood has remained sound has led to the claim that western red cedar is the most enduring wood in America.

Such is not necessarily the case. A good many others would probably last as long if protected in the same way.

Western red cedar is strong and stiff but falls from twenty to thirty per cent below white oak in these factors. It is light, and the texture of the wood is rather coa.r.s.e. The springwood and summerwood are distinct, the latter const.i.tuting one-half or less of the annual ring.

The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood's color is dull brown, tinged with red. The thin sapwood is nearly white.

The ease with which western red cedar may be worked led the Indians to use it in their most ambitious woodcraft. The gigantic totem poles which have excited the curiosity and admiration of travelers near the coast in Alaska and southward have nearly all been of this wood. Some of them are the largest single pieces of wood carving in the world. Trunks three or four feet in diameter and forty or fifty feet long have been hewed and whittled in weird, uncouth, and fantastic forms, decorated with eagle heads, bear mouths, and with various creatures of the forest or sea, or from the realms of imagination. Before the northern Pacific coast Indians procured tools from white men they executed their carving by means of bone, stone, sh.e.l.l, and wooden tools, a.s.sisted by fire.

The making of canoes was in some ways a work more laborious for the Indians than the manufacture of totem poles. Their canoes were dugouts of all sizes, from the small trough which carried one or two persons, to the enormous canoe which carried fifty warriors with all their equipment. Such a canoe, now in the National Museum at Washington, D.

C., is fifty-nine feet long, seven feet, three inches deep at the bow, five feet three inches at the stern, and three feet seven inches in the middle, and eight feet wide. It was made on Vancouver island, and is capable of carrying 100 persons. The capacity of the canoe is thirty-five tons. Civilized man has produced no vessel with lines more perfect than are seen in some of these canoes made by savages; but all the canoes are not alike: some are crude and clumsy. It is claimed that large cedar canoes of Indian manufacture were early carried from the Pacific coast by fur traders, and New York and Boston shipbuilders took them as models in constructing the celebrated clipper ships which formerly sailed between New York and San Francisco.

The Indians formerly made much use of western red cedar bark which they twisted into ropes and cords, braided for mats, wove for cloth, used in making baskets, roofing wigwams, constructing fish nets and bird snares, ladders for climbing cliffs, and they even pulped the inner bark by pounding it in mortars, and mixed it with their food.

White men have put western red cedar to many uses, as shingles, lumber, cooperage, poles, posts, piles, car siding and roofing, boat building from skiffs to ships, and general furniture and interior finish.

WESTERN JUNIPER (_Juniperus occidentalis_) is a high mountain tree with all the characteristics belonging to that cla.s.s of timber. The trunks are short and strong, the limbs wide-spreading, the wood of slow growth, and dense. The tree attains a diameter of ten inches in about 130 years.

Trunks ten feet in diameter have been reported, but trees that large would be hard to find now. John Muir said that the western juniper lives 2,000 years, and that the tree is never uprooted by wind. The trunk is usually short, six or eight feet being a fair average, and very knotty.

However, when a block of clear wood is found, it is high cla.s.s, the heaviest of the cedars, straight grain, soft, compact, brittle. The summerwood is so narrow that it resembles a fine, black line. The medullary rays are numerous and very obscure. The wood is slightly aromatic, splits easily, works nicely, and in color is brown, tinged with red. In appearance, the sapwood suggests spruce. The average height of the trees is from twenty-five to forty-five feet, diameter two to four feet. The range of this tree is in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and through the Cascades and Sierras to southern California. It seldom occurs below an alt.i.tude of 6,000 feet, and ascends to 10,000 or more.

On the highest summits it is deformed and stunted. Its fruit is eaten by Indians, and it furnishes fuel for mountain camps and ranches, timber for mines, and sometimes a little lumber. The crooked limbs and trunks are made into corral fences where better material cannot be had. The wood has been found suitable for lead pencils, but that of proper quality is too scarce to attract manufacturers. Other names for this tree are juniper cedar, yellow cedar, western cedar, western red cedar, and western juniper. Some of these names are applied to other species of the same region.

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PORT ORFORD CEDAR

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PORT ORFORD CEDAR

(_Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana_)

Port Orford cedar of the northwestern coast is an interesting member of the cedar group with a very limited range. Specimens are found throughout an area of about 10,000 square miles, but the district moderately heavily timbered does not exceed 300 or 400 miles in area. It lies near Coos bay in southwestern Oregon. The tree is found as far south in California as the mouth of Klamath river, and it was once reported on Mt. Shasta, but it is very scarce there if it exists at all.

In the best of its range Port Orford cedar runs 20,000 feet to the acre, and a single acre has yielded 100,000 feet. Trees run from 135 to 175 feet in height and three to seven in diameter. The largest on record were about 200 feet high and twelve in diameter. Few trees of any species have smaller leaves. They often are only one-sixteenth of an inch in length. They die the third year and change to a bright brown.

The cones are about one-third of an inch in diameter. Two or four seeds lie under each fertile cone scale, and ripen in September and October.

The seeds are one-eighth inch in length, and are winged for flight. The bark of the tree is much thicker than of most cedars, being ten inches near the base of large trees. This ought to protect the trunks against fire but it falls short of expectations. About sixty years ago much of the finest timber was killed by a great fire which swept the region.

Some of the dead trunks stood forty years without exhibiting much evidence of decay, and those that fell remained sound many years.

The whole history of this interesting tree, from its first announced discovery by white men until the present time, is embraced in the memory of living men. It had not been heard of prior to 1855. Though fire and storm have destroyed large quant.i.ties, it has been estimated that 4,000,000,000 feet of merchantable timber remain, an average of 15,000 feet per acre for an area of 400 square miles. The wood is moderately light, is nearly as strong as white oak, and falls only sixteen per cent below it in stiffness. The annual rings are generally narrow, but distinct. The summerwood is narrow, but dark in color in the heartwood.

The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood abounds in odorous resin. The odor persists long after the wood has ceased to be fresh.

Workmen in mills where this cedar is cut, and on board of vessels freighted with it, are sometimes seriously affected by the odor. It is reputed to repel insects, and is made into clothes chests, wardrobes, and shelves, with the expectation that moths will be kept at a distance.

Several other cedars bear similar reputations.

One of the first uses to which the people of the Pacific coast put Port Orford cedar was boat building. The industry was important at Coos bay at an early day, and vessels constructed there sailed the seas thirty or forty years. Trunks of this cedar turn out a high percentage of clear lumber. The wood takes a good polish, and is manufactured into furniture, doors, sash, turnery, and matches. The latter article is esteemed by many persons for the peculiar odor of the burning wood. It has been found practicable to finish this cedar in imitation of mahogany, oak, and several other cabinet woods. In its natural state it sometimes bears some resemblance to yellow pine, and sometimes to spruce, there being considerable variation in the appearance of wood from different trees. When the visible supply of Port Orford cedar has been cut, the end will be reached, for not much young growth is coming on. Sixty-eight varieties of Port Orford cedar are recognized in cultivation.

YELLOW CEDAR (_Chamaecyparis nootkatensis_) describes this tree quite well. The small twigs are of that color, and so is the heartwood. Many give it the name yellow cypress. Others know it as Alaska cypress, Alaska ground cypress, Nootka cypress, or Nootka sound cypress. The name of the species, _nootkatensis_, was given it by Archibald Menzies, a Scotch botanist who discovered it on the sh.o.r.e of Nootka sound in Alaska.

Yellow cedar's geographic range extends from southeastern Alaska to Oregon, a distance of 1,000 miles. It does not usually go far inland, and consequently the range is narrow in most places. North of the international boundary the tree seldom reaches an alt.i.tude of more than 2,000 or 3,000 feet, but in Washington and Oregon it is occasionally met with at elevations of 4,000 and 5,000 feet. The species reaches its best development on the islands off the coast of southern Alaska and British Columbia, where the air is moist, the winds warm in winter, the rainfall abundant, and the snowfall often deep. Well developed trees under such circ.u.mstances are from ninety to 120 feet high, from two to six in diameter. The blue-green leaves remain active two years, and then die, but they do not usually fall until a year later. The presence of the dead leaves on the twigs tones down the general color of the tree crowns.

The cones are about half an inch long and have four, five, or six scales. From two to four seeds lie beneath each scale until September or October when they ripen and escape. Their wings are large enough to carry them away from the immediate vicinity of the parent tree, and reproduction under natural conditions is generally good. Yellow cedar is abundant within its range, but nature has circ.u.mscribed its range, and it shows no disposition to pa.s.s the boundary line.

The bark is thin and exhibits cedar's characteristic stringiness. It is shed in thin strips.

The wood is moderately light, and is strong and stiff. It is probably the hardest of the cedars, and the grain is so regular that high polish is possible. Under favorable circ.u.mstances trees grow with fair rapidity, but when conditions are unfavorable, as on high mountains where summers are short and winters severe, growth is remarkably slow, and twenty years or more may be required for one inch increase in trunk diameter. The wood of such trees is hard, dense, and strong.

The grain of yellow cedar is usually straight. The bands of summerwood are narrow, the annual rings are indistinct, and an attempt to count them is often attended with considerable difficulty. The wood is easily worked, satiny, susceptible of a beautiful polish, and possesses an agreeable resinous odor. The heartwood is bright, clear yellow, and the thin sapwood is a little lighter in color. In common with all other cedars, yellow cedar resists decay many years. Logs which have lain in damp woods half a century remain sound inside the sapwood. Sometimes fallen timber in that region is quickly buried under deep beds of moss which preserves it from decay much longer than if the logs lie exposed to alternate dampness and dryness.

Statistics of sawmill operations in the Northwest do not distinguish between the different cedars, and the cut of yellow cedar is unknown. It is considerable, but of course not to be compared with the more abundant western red cedar. Statistics of uses are as meager as of the lumber output. In Washington the factories which use wood as raw material report only 7,500 feet of yellow cedar a year. Doubtless much more than that is used, but under other names. There is no occasion to disguise this wood under other names. It has a striking individuality and deserves a place of its own. In some respects it is one of the best woods of the Pacific Northwest. In nearly every situation where it has been tried, it has been found satisfactory. Its rich yellow presents a fine appearance in furniture and interior finish, and the polish which it takes surpa.s.ses that possible with any other cedar, with the probable exception of some of the scarce, high mountain junipers. It has been used for pyrography and patterns, two hard places to fill, and for which few woods are suitable. Indians long ago in Alaska learned that it was the best material for boat paddles which their forests afforded. It possesses the requisite stiffness and strength, and it wears to a smoothness almost like ebony. Boat factories have many uses for the wood, decking, railing, and interior finish being among the most important. It is said to be a satisfactory subst.i.tute for Spanish cedar in the manufacture of cigar boxes, but its use for that purpose is not yet large.

It is said that occasional exports of this wood go to China where it is finished in imitation of scarce and expensive woods of that country.

Yellow cedar is a wood with a future. Its splendid properties cannot fail to give it a place of no small importance in factories and in general building operations. The supply has scarcely yet been touched, but it cannot much longer remain an undeveloped a.s.set. It is apparently a high-cla.s.s cooperage material, but it does not seem to have been used much if at all in that industry. The same might be said of it for doors.

It is heavier than spruce, white pine, and redwood, but where weight is not a matter for objection, it ought to equal them in all desirable qualities.

In much of its range it is generally exempt from forest fire injury, because its native woods are nearly always too wet to burn.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN JUNIPER (_Juniperus scopulorum_) is scattered over the mountains from Dakota and Nebraska to Washington and British Columbia, and southward to western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Except near the Pacific coast, it is usually found at alt.i.tudes above 5,000 feet. It clings closely to dry, rocky ridges where it attains a height of thirty or forty feet, and a diameter of three feet or less. The trunk usually divides near the ground into several stems. The bright blue berries ripen the second year. The wood resembles that of red cedar, and is used in the same way, as far as it is used at all. It is not a source of lumber. A little is sawed occasionally on mountain mills, and the lumber is used locally in house building, particularly for window and door frames; but sawlogs are short, and because of their poor form, the output of lumber is negligible. Some of it finds its way into Texas where it is manufactured into clothes chests and wardrobes, and these are sold as red cedar. A choice mountain juniper log, with large, sound heartwood, produces lumber with a delicate grain and is more attractive than red cedar when made into chests and boxes. By habit of growth, it includes patches of white sapwood in the darker heartwood. When these are sawed through in converting the logs into boards, the islands of white wood scattered over the surface produce a unique effect not wanting in artistic value. Some of the other western junipers possess similar characteristics. Sometimes patches of bark are also found imbedded in the interior of the trees.

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RED SPRUCE

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RED SPRUCE

(_Picea Rubens_)