Part 2 (1/2)
The wood is useful and has been giving service since the settlement of the country began, fifty or more years ago. Choice trunks were split for shakes or s.h.i.+ngles, but the wood is inferior in splitting qualities to either eastern white pine or California sugar pine, because of more knots. The western white pine does not prime itself early or well. Dead limbs adhere to the trunk long after the sugar pine would shed them. In split products, the western white pine's princ.i.p.al rival has been the western red cedar. The pine has been much employed for mine timbers in the region where it is abundant. Miners generally take the most convenient wood for props, stulls, and lagging. A little higher use for pine is found among the mines, where is it made into tanks, flumes, sluice boxes, water pipes, riffle blocks, rockers, and guides for stamp mills. However, the total quant.i.ty used by miners is comparatively small. Much more goes to ranches for fences and buildings. It is serviceable, and is s.h.i.+pped outside the immediate region of production and is marketed in the plains states east of the Rocky Mountains, where it is excellent fence material.
A larger market is found in manufacturing centers farther east. Western white pine is s.h.i.+pped to Chicago where it is manufactured into doors, sash, and interior finish, in compet.i.tion with all other woods in that market. It is said to be of frequent occurrence that the very pine which is s.h.i.+pped in its rough form out of the Rocky Mountain region goes back finished as doors and sash. When the mountain regions shall have better manufacturing facilities, this will not occur. In the manufacture of window and hothouse sash, gla.s.s is more important than wood, although each is useless without the other. The princ.i.p.al gla.s.s factories are in the East, and it is sometimes desirable to s.h.i.+p the wood to the gla.s.s factory, have the sash made there, and the glazing done; and the finished sash, ready for use, may go back to the source of the timber.
The same operation is sometimes repeated for doors; but in recent years the mountain region where this pine grows has been supplied with factories and there is now less s.h.i.+pping of raw material out and of finished products back than formerly. The development of the fruit industry in the elevated valleys of Idaho, Montana, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Oregon has called for s.h.i.+pping boxes in large numbers, and western white pine has been found an ideal wood for that use. It is light in weight and in color, strong enough to satisfy all ordinary requirements, and cheap enough to bring it within reach of orchardists. It meets with lively compet.i.tion from a number of other woods which grow abundantly in the region, but it holds its ground and takes its share of the business.
Estimates of the total stand of western white pine among its native mountains have not been published, but the quant.i.ty is known to be large. It is a difficult species to estimate because it is scattered widely, large, pure stands being scarce. Some large mills make a specialty of sawing this species. The annual output is believed to reach 150,000,000 feet, most of which is in Idaho and Montana.
MEXICAN WHITE PINE (_Pinus strobiformis_) is not sufficiently abundant to be of much importance in the United States. The best of it is south of the international boundary in Mexico, but the species extends into New Mexico and Arizona where it is most abundant at alt.i.tudes of from 6,000 to 8,000 feet. The growth is generally scattering, and the trunks are often deformed through fire injury, and are inclined to be limby and of poor form. The best trees are from eighty to one hundred feet high, and two in diameter; but many are scarcely half that size. The lumbermen of the region, who cut Mexican white pine, are inclined to place low value on it, not because the wood is of poor quality, but because it is scarce. It is generally sent to market with western yellow pine.
Excellent grades and quality of this wood are s.h.i.+pped into the United States from Mexico, but not in large amounts. An occasional carload reaches door and sash factories in Texas, and woodworkers as far east as Michigan are acquainted with it, through trials and experiments which they have made. It is highly recommended by those who have tried it.
Some consider it as soft, as easy to work, and as free from warping and checking as the eastern white pine. In Arizona and New Mexico the tree is known as ayacahuite pine, white pine, and Arizona white pine. The wood is moderately light, fairly strong, rather stiff, of slow growth, and the bands of summerwood are comparatively broad. The resin pa.s.sages are few and large. The wood is light red, the sapwood whiter. The leaves occur in cl.u.s.ters of five, are three or four inches long, and fall during the third and fourth years. The seeds are large and have small wings which cannot carry them far from the parent tree.
PINON (_Pinus edulis_). This is one of the nut pines abounding among the western mountains, and it is called pinon in Texas, nut pine in Texas and Colorado, pinon pine and New Mexican pinon in other parts of its range, extending from Colorado through New Mexico to western Texas. It has two and three leaves to the cl.u.s.ter. They begin to fall the third year and continue through six or seven years following. The cones are quite small, the largest not exceeding one and one-half inches in length. Trees are from thirty to forty feet high, and large trunks may be two and one-half feet in diameter. The tree runs up mountain sides to alt.i.tudes of 8,000 or 9,000 feet. It exists in rather large bodies, but is not an important timber tree, because the trunks are short and are generally of poor form. It often branches near the ground and a.s.sumes the appearance of a large shrub. Ties of pinon have been used with various results. Some have proved satisfactory, others have proved weak by breaking, and the ties occasionally split when spikes are driven. The wood's service as posts varies also. Some posts will last only three or four years, while others remain sound a long time. The difference in lasting properties is due to the difference in resinous contents of the wood. Few softwoods rank above it in fuel value, and much is cut in some localities. Large areas have been totally stripped for fuel. Charcoal for local smithies is burned from this pine. The wood is widely used for ranch purposes, but not in large quant.i.ties. The edible nuts are sought by birds, rodents, and Indians. Some stores keep the nuts for sale. The tree is handicapped in its effort at reproduction by weight, and the small wing power of the seeds. They fall near the base of the parent tree, and most of them are speedily devoured.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
SUGAR PINE
[Ill.u.s.tration: SUGAR PINE]
SUGAR PINE
(_Pinus Lambertiana_)
This is the largest pine of the United States, and probably is the largest true pine in the world. Its rival, the Kauri pine of New Zealand, is not a pine according to the cla.s.sification of botanists; and that leaves the sugar pine supreme, as far as the world has been explored. David Douglas, the first to describe the species, reported a tree eighteen feet in diameter and 245 feet high, in southern Oregon. No tree of similar size has been reported since; but trunks six, ten, and even twelve feet through, and more than 200 high are not rare.
The range of sugar pine extends from southern Oregon to lower California. Through California it follows the Sierra Nevada mountains in a comparatively narrow belt. In Oregon it descends within 1,000 feet of sea level, but the lower limit of its range gradually rises as it follows the mountains southward, until in southern California it is 8,000 or 10,000 feet above the sea. Its choice of situation is in the mountain belt where the annual precipitation is forty inches or more.
The deep winter snows of the Sierras do not hurt it. The young trees bear abundant limbs covering the trunks nearly or quite to the ground, and are of perfect conical shape. When they are ten or fifteen feet tall they may be entirely covered in snow which acc.u.mulates to a depth of a dozen feet or more. The little pines are seldom injured by the load, but their limbs shed the snow until it covers the highest twig. The consequence is that a crooked sugar pine trunk is seldom seen, though a considerable part of the tree's youth may have been spent under tons of snow. Later in life the lower limbs die and drop, leaving clean boles which a.s.sure abundance of clear lumber in the years to come.
The tree is nearly always known as sugar pine, though it may be called big pine or great pine to distinguish it from firs, cedars, and other softwoods with which it is a.s.sociated. The name is due to a product resembling sugar which exudes from the heartwood when the tree has been injured by fires, and which dries in white, brittle excrescences on the surface. Its taste is sweet, with a suggestion of pitch which is not unpleasant. The principle has been named ”pinite.”
The needles of sugar pine are in cl.u.s.ters of five and are about four inches long. They are deciduous the second and third years. The cones are longer than cones of any other pine of this country but those of the Coulter pine are a little heavier. Extreme length of 22 inches for the sugar pine cone has been recorded, but the average is from 12 to 15 inches. Cones open, shed their seeds the second year, and fall the third. The seeds resemble lentils, and are provided with wings which carry them several hundred feet, if wind is favorable. This affords excellent opportunities for reproduction; but there is an offset in the sweetness of the seeds which are prized for food by birds, beasts and creeping things from the Piute Indian down to the Douglas squirrel and the jumping mouse.
Sugar pine occupies a high place as a timber tree. It has been in use for half a century. The cut in 1900 was 52,000,000 feet, in 1904 it was 120,000,000; in 1907, 115,000,000, and the next year about 100,000,000.
Ninety-three per cent of the cut is in California, the rest in Oregon.
Its stand in California has been estimated at 25,000,000,000 feet.
The wood of sugar pine is a little lighter than eastern white pine, is a little weaker, and has less stiffness. It is soft, the rings of growth are wide, the bands of summerwood thin and resinous; the resin pa.s.sages are numerous and very large, the medullary rays numerous and obscure.
The heart is light brown, the sapwood nearly white.
Sugar pine and redwood were the two early roofing woods in California, and both are still much used for that purpose. Sugar pine was made into sawed s.h.i.+ngles and split shakes. The s.h.i.+ngle is a mill product; but the shake was rived with mallet and frow, and in the years when it was the great roofing material in central and eastern California, the shake makers camped by twos in the forest, lived princ.i.p.ally on bacon and red beans, and split out from 200,000 to 400,000 shakes as a summer's work.
The winter snows drove the workers from the mountains, with from eight to twelve hundred dollars in their pockets for the season's work.