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 foothill 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 thundershowers of summer, or reposing
heavy-laden with ripe cones in the rich sun-gold 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.
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, parklike 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 canons,
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
foothills, 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.
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 canons,
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 foothills 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.
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 two hundred feet in height.
THE NUT PINE
(Pines 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 sunheat, 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 four thousand feet above the sea, its lower
about from five hundred to eight hundred 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.
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 fifteen hundred to three thousand 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.
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 canon-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 Canon I found a lonely miner seeking his fortune in a
quartz vein on a wild mountainside 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: -
(1) All the trees in the
groves I examined, however unequal in size, are of the same age.
(2) Those groves are all
planted on dry hillsides covered with chaparral, and therefore are liable to
be swept by fire.
(3) 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.
(4) The cones never fall off
and never discharge their seeds until the tree or branch to which they
belong dies.
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 canon 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 five thousand feet.
Full-grown specimens are commonly about two hundred and twenty 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
two hundred and forty-five 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 on 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 sawmills, 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 axe, 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 hay-maker is
more sweetly perfumed than these rough mountaineers while engaged in this
business, but the havoc they make is most deplorable.
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 heartwood, where wounds have been made,
either by forest fires, or the axe, 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 branch-lets 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.
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, snowstorms, 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. 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 five thousand 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, parklike 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 two
thousand 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 two hundred 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 four thousand feet in the
valley of the Merced, that is a few inches over eight feet in diameter, and
two hundred and twenty 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.
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 two hundred feet or more in height, and the branches clothe
the trunk nearly to the ground.
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.
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
(Paeudotsupa Douglas)
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 two hundred 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 three
hundred 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 five thousand five hundred 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 decurrena)
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 five thousand feet on the warmer
hillsides, and reaches the climate most congenial to it at about from three
to four thousand 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 one hundred and fifty 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.
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)
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 four hundred and fifty miles, at an elevation of from five
thousand to nearly nine thousand 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 two hundred 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 nzagnifica)
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 two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet high are not rare on
well-ground moraine soil, at an elevation of from seventy-five hundred to
eighty-five hundred 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 two hundred and forty 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 two
hundred and fifty 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.
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.
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 Veratrum alba, 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 givantea)
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 two hundred and sixty 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
five to eight thousand 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 canons.
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 canon 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 eighty-four hundred 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.
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 two hundred and seventy-five
feet and a diameter near the ground of about twenty feet is perhaps about
the average size of full-grown trees favorably situated; specimens
twenty-five feet in diameter are not very rare, and a few are nearly three
hundred feet high. In the Calaveras Grove there are four trees over three
hundred feet in height, the tallest of which by careful measurement is three
hundred and twenty-five 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 thirty-five feet eight inches in diameter inside the bark four feet
from the ground. Under the most favorable conditions these giants probably
live five thousand 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 thirteen hundred years, and its diameter,
measured across the stump, twenty-four 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 (twenty-two hundred 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 axe 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 four thousand 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. 'hen, 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
twenty-five feet in diameter at the ground, and ten feet in diameter two
hundred 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 halfway 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 moulded, 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 four hundred and eighty 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 hummingbird,
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 three hundred and eighty 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
three hundred and eighty 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 three hundred and
eighty years. For it is evident that to find the whole time, we must add to
the three hundred and eighty 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? That 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 five hundred and
thirty-six 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.
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, namely, 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
flourishing 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 two hundred 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
snowfall 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 snowfall 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 occurred
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.
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 newborn, 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
re-extend 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 the 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
(Pinua contorta., var. Murrayana)
This species forms the bulk
of the alpine forests, extending along the range, above the fir zone, up to
a height of from eight thousand to ninety-five hundred 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 an average 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 halfway 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, upcurving
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 and 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
(Pines moiUicola.)
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 ten thousand 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 one thousand years.
JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR
(Juniperus occidentalis)
The juniper is preeminently a
rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and pavements, where there is
scarcely a handful of soil, at a height of from seven thousand to
ninety-five hundred 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.
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 two thousand 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
(Tsupa Pattoniana)
The hemlock spruce is the
most singularly beautiful of all the California conifer. 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
nine thousand to ninety-five hundred feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it
is capable of growing considerably higher, say ten thousand five hundred
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 ninety-two hundred
and fifty 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.
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 one thousand 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 alldtaulis)
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
ten to twelve thousand 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.
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 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.
The longevity of this lowly
dwarf is far greater than would be guessed. Here, for example, is a
specimen, growing at an elevation of ten thousand seven hundred 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 two hundred and
fifty-five years. Here is another telling specimen about the same height,
four hundred and twenty-six 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
whipcord.
WHITE PINE
(Pima lezilia)
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 Canon 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 nine thousand 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 nine
thousand 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
(Pines 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 nine and ten thousand feet, and runs up to eleven
thousand 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.
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
(Pinu, 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 seven to eight thousand 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 eight to nine thousand 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 sagebushes 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 kno&ty 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
sagebushes, 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:
Chamcrcyparis 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 brevif olia)
.
The interesting nutmeg tree (Torreya Californica) is sparsely distributed
along the western flank of the range at an elevation of about four thousand
feet, mostly in gulches and canons. 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 three to five thousand 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 Chamcecyparis, 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.
Besides the common Douglas
oak and the grand Quercus Wislizeni of the foothills, 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 five thousand feet above the sea,
and greatly enhance the beauty of the yosemite parks. These are the mountain
live-oak and Kellogg's 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
three to five thousand feet in sunny valleys and flats among the evergreens,
and higher in a dwarfed state. In the cliff-bound parks about four thousand
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 canons 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
canon four thousand 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 canon, twenty-five hundred feet higher, a
dense, soft, low, shrubby growth of the same species, while all the way up
the canon 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. |