Trees Worth Knowing Part 32

The bark of this fir tree is covered with dark brown scales, deeply divided into broad rounded ridges, broken by cross fissures when old. Out toward the tips of the branches the bark is silvery white.

In mid-June the flowers appear, the staminate in profuse cl.u.s.ters against the silvery leaf-linings, bright red, on the under sides of the platforms. It is a blind or stupid person who can travel in fir woods and fail to notice this wonderful flower pageant, that may be viewed by merely looking upward. The pistillate flowers, greenish yellow, tipped with pink, are out of sight as a rule, among the needles in the tree-tops. They ripen into tall cylindrical cones, six to eight inches long and half as wide, that fall to pieces at maturity, discharging their broad thin scales with the purple iridescent winged seeds.

Pure forests of this splendid fir tree are found in southern Oregon among the Cascade Mountains, between five and seven thousand feet above the sea. It is the commonest species in the forest belt of the Sierra Nevada, between elevations of six thousand and nine thousand feet. From northern California, it follows the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, climbing to ten thousand feet in its southernmost range. A variety, _Shastensis_, Lemm., is the red fir with bright yellow fringed bracts on its stout cones. This ornament upon its fruits seems to be the chief distinguishing character of the form which occurs with the parent species on the mountains in Oregon and northern California, and recurs in the southern Sierra Nevada.

The best defense of this superb red fir is the comparative worthlessness of its soft, weak wood. Coa.r.s.e lumber for cheap buildings, packing cases and fuel makes the only demands upon it. In European parks it is successfully grown as an ornamental tree, and has proved hardy in eastern Ma.s.sachusetts.

=The n.o.ble Fir=

_A. n.o.bilis_, Lindl.

The n.o.ble fir or red fir is another giant of the Northwest. On the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon it reaches occasionally two hundred and fifty feet in height, differing from _magnifica_ in being round-topped instead of pyramidal before maturity. Its red-brown wood, furrowed bark and the red staminate flowers justify its name. The twigs are red and velvety for four or five years. The leaves are deeply grooved above, rounded and obscurely ribbed on the lower surface, blue-green, often silvery through their first season, crowded and curved so that the tips point away from the end of the branch.

The oblong cylindrical cones, four to five inches long, are velvety, their scales covered by bracts, shaped and notched like a scallop sh.e.l.l, with a forward-pointing spine, exceeding the bract in length.

Forests of this tree at elevations of twenty-five hundred to five thousand feet are found in Washington and northern Oregon, from which limited quant.i.ties of the brownish-red wood enter the lumber trade under the name of "larch."

=The White Fir=

_A. grandis_, Lindl.

The white fir is a striking figure, from its silvery lined, dark green foliage, its slender pyramidal form that reaches three hundred feet in height, and the vivid green of its mature cones that are dest.i.tute of ornament and slenderly cylindrical. From Vancouver Island southward to Mendocino County in California, this tree is common from the sea level to an elevation of four thousand feet.

Eastward it extends into Idaho, climbing to seven thousand feet, but choosing always moist soil in the neighborhood of streams. Various uses, woodenwares, packing cases, and fuel consume its soft, coa.r.s.e wood to a limited extent. The delicate grace of its sweeping down-curving branches makes it one of the most beautiful of our Western firs. It grows rapidly, and is a favorite in European parks.

=The White Fir=

_A. concolor_, Lindl. and Gord.

This white fir is a giant of the Sierras, but a tree of medium height in the Rocky Mountains. Its leaves are often two to three inches long, very unusual for a fir tree, curving to an erect position, pale blue or silvery at first, becoming dull green at the end of two or three years.

On the California Sierras, this silver fir tree lifts its narrow spire two hundred and fifty feet toward the sky and waves great frondlike ma.s.ses of foliage on pale gray branches. As a much smaller tree, it is found in the arid regions of the Great Basin and of southern New Mexico and Arizona, territory which no other fir tree invades. In gardens of Europe and of our Eastern states this is a favorite fir tree, often known as the "blue fir" and the "silver fir" from its pale bark and foliage, whose blue cast is not always permanent. Eastern nurseries obtain their best trees from seeds gathered in the Rocky Mountains.

THE DOUGLAS SPRUCE

The Douglas spruce (_Pseudotsuga mucronata_, Sudw.), ranks with the giant arbor-vitaes, firs, and sequoias in the forests of the Pacific Coast. Thousands of square miles of pure forest of this species occur in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Here the trees stand even, like wheat in a grain field, the tallest reach four hundred feet, the redwood its only rival. Nowhere but in the redwood forests is there such a heavy stand of timber on this continent. No forest tree except sequoias equals the Douglas spruce in ma.s.siveness of trunk and yield of straight-grained lumber.

The genus _pseudotsuga_ stands botanically in a position intermediate between firs and hemlocks. Our tree giant is as often called the Douglas fir as Douglas spruce. The lumberman sells the output of his mills under the trade name, "Oregon pine." This is perhaps the best known lumber in all the Western country. It has a great reputation abroad, where timbers of the largest size are used for masts, spars, piles for wharves and bridges, and for whatever uses heavy timbers are needed. The wood is stronger in proportion to its weight than that of any other large conifer in the country. It is tough, durable, and elastic. Its only faults are its extreme hardness and liability to warp when cut into boards. These faults are noted only by carpenters who use the wood for interior finish of houses. "Red pine" it is called in regions of the Great Basin, where the trees grow smaller than on the Coast, and are put to general lumber purposes. It is variable in quality, but always pale yellow, striped with red, and handsomely wavy when quarter-sawed; distractingly so in the "slash grain," oftenest seen in the interior finish of the typical California bungalow.

The living tree is a superb, broad-based pyramid, bearing a load of crowded drooping branches, where it has a chance to a.s.sume its normal habit. A delicate lace-like drooping spray of yellowish or bluish green leaves, flat, spreading at right angles from the twig, gives the Douglas spruce its hale, abundant vigor. The dark red staminate flowers glow in late winter against the yellow foliage ma.s.s of the new leaves; but even the flowers are not so showy as the drooping cones, two to four inches long, their plain scales adorned with bracts, notched and bearing a whip that extends half an inch beyond the scales. Blue-green, shading to purple, with red-lipped scales and bright green bracts, these cones are truly the handsomest ornaments worn by any tree.

Finally, this paragon of conifers surprises Eastern nurserymen by outstripping other seedlings in vigor and quickness of growth. Rocky Mountain seed does best. The Oregon trees furnish seed to European nurseries and seedlings from Europe grow quickly into superb ornamental trees.

THE HEMLOCKS

Unlike any other conifer, the hemlock mounts its evergreen leaves on short petioles, jointed to projecting, h.o.r.n.y brackets on the twig.

At any season this character determines the family name of a group of exceptionally graceful pyramidal conifers. The Eastern hemlocks have their leaves arranged in a flat spray, silvery white underneath, by pale lines on the underside of the flat blunt-pointed blade (_See ill.u.s.tration, page 246_). An abundance of pendent cones is borne annually. The wood of hemlocks is comparatively worthless but the bark is rich in tannin, and so the tree is important in the leather trade.

=The Hemlock=

_Tsuga Canadensis_, Carr.

The hemlock lifts its dark green, feathery spray above the st.u.r.dy trunk into a splendid broad pyramid. In all rocky uplands from Nova Scotia to Alabama and west to Minnesota, the drooping lower branches sweep the ground, and the tree is often half buried in snow. But in spring every twig is dancing and waving yellow plumes of new foliage, the picture of cheerfulness as the sunlight sifts through the tree-tops. In May the new blossoms sprinkle all the leafy twigs--the staminate, yellow; the pistillate, pale violet. Looking up from below, one sees a charming iridescent effect when the blossoms add their color to the shimmering silver which lines the various platforms of foliage. The little red-brown cones cling to the twigs all winter, slowly parting their scales to release the winged seeds. Squirrels climb the trees in the fall and cut off these cones to store away for winter use.

"Peelers" go into the woods in May, when the new growth is well started and the bark will peel readily. They fell and strip hemlock trunks and remove the bark in sheets, which are piled to dry and be measured like cord-wood, and later shipped to the tanneries. The cross-grained coa.r.s.e wood is left to rot and feed forest fires.

Locally, it is useful for the timbers of houses and barns, because it is rigid and never lets go its hold upon a nail or spike.

=The Western Hemlock=

_T. heterophylla_, Sarg.

The Western hemlock is a giant that dominates other trees in the Western mountain forests, famous for their giants of many different names. It is a n.o.ble pyramidal tree that reaches two hundred feet in height and a maximum trunk diameter of ten feet. Its heavy horizontal branches droop and hold out feathery tips as light and graceful in the adult monarch as in the sapling of a few years'

growth. The characteristic hemlock foliage, l.u.s.trous green above and pale below, is two-ranked by the twisting of the slender petioles.

From southeastern Alaska, eastward into Montana and Idaho, and southward to Cape Mendocino in California, this tree climbs from the lowlands to an alt.i.tude that exceeds a mile. Wherever there are rich river valleys and the air is humid, this hemlock is superb, the delight of artists and lumbermen. At its highest range it becomes stunted, but always produces its oval, pointed cones in abundance.

Its wood, the strongest and most durable in the hemlock family, is chiefly used in buildings, and the bark for tanning.

=The Mountain Hemlock=

_T. Martensiana_, Sarg.

The mountain hemlock of the West is called by John Muir "the loveliest evergreen in America." Sargent endorses this judgment with emphasis. It grows at high alt.i.tudes, fringing upland meadows, watered by glaciers, with groves of the most exquisite beauty. The sweeping, downward-drooping branches, clothed with abundant pea-green foliage, silver-lined, resist wind storms and snow burdens by the wonderful pliancy of their fibres. In early autumn the trees are bent over so as to form arches. Young forests are thus buried out of sight for six months of the year. With the melting of the snow they right themselves gradually, and among the new leaves appear the flowers, dark purple cones and staminate star-flowers, blue as forget-me-nots. Three-angled leaves, whorled on the twig, and cones two to three inches long, set this hemlock apart from its related species, but the leaf-stalk settles once for all the question of its family name.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _See page 268_

THE FLAT, FROND LIKE SPRAY OF THE ORNAMENTAL ARBOR-VITAE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _See page 278_

FRUIT AND LEAVES OF THE AMERICAN LARCH]

THE SEQUOIAS

Nowhere else in the world are conifers found in such extensive forests and in such superlative vigor and stupendous size as in the states that border the Pacific Ocean. California is particularly the paradise of the conifers. All of the species that make the forests of the Northwest the wonder of travelers and the pride of the states are found in equally prodigal size and extent in California. To these forests are added groves of sequoias--the Big Tree and the redwood, the former found nowhere outside of California, the latter reaching into Oregon. Once the sequoias had a wide distribution in the Old and the New World. With magnolias and many other luxuriant trees found in warm climates, five species of sequoia extended over the North Temperate zone in both hemispheres, reaching even to the Arctic Circle. The glacial period transformed the climate of the world and destroyed these luxuriant northern forests under a grinding continuous glacier. The rocks of the tertiary and cretaceous periods preserved in fossils the story of these pre-glacial forests. Two of the species of sequoia escaped destruction in tracts the ice sheet did not overwhelm. For ten thousand years, perhaps, the sequoia has held its own in the California groves. Indeed, both species are able to extend their present range if nature is unhindered. The three enemies that threaten sequoia groves are the axe of the lumberman, the forest fire kindled by the waste about sawmills, and the grazing flocks that destroy seedling trees.

=The Big Tree=

_Sequoia Wellingtonia_, Seem.

The Big Tree is the most gigantic tree on the face of the earth, the mightiest living creature in existence. Among the giant sugar pines and red firs it lifts a wonderfully regular, rounded dome so far above the aspiring arrow-tips of its neighbors as to make the best of them look like mere saplings. The ma.s.sive trunk, clothed with red-brown or purplish bark, is fluted by furrows often more than a foot in depth. The trunk is usually bare of limbs for a hundred or two hundred feet, clearing the forest cover completely before throwing out its angular stout arms. These branch at last into rounded ma.s.ses of leafy twigs, whose density and brilliant color express the beauty and vigor of eternal youth in a tree which counts its age by thousands of years already.