Part 2 (2/2)
The increase in stumpage price has practically killed the shake maker's business. In the palmy days when most everything went, he procured his timber for little or nothing. He sometimes failed to find the surveyor's lines, particularly if there happened to be a fine sugar pine just across on a government quarter section. His method of operation was wasteful. He used only the best of the tree. If the grain happened to twist the fraction of an inch, he abandoned the fallen trunk, and cut another. The shakes were split very thin, for sugar pine is among the most cleavable woods of this country. Four or five good trees provided the shake maker's camp with material for a year's work.
Some of the earliest sawmills in California cut sugar pine for sheds, shacks, sluiceboxes, flumes among the mines; and almost immediately a demand came from the agricultural and stock districts for lumber. From that day until the present time the sugar pine mills have been busy. As the demand has grown, the facilities for meeting it have increased. The prevailing size of the timber forbade the use of small mills. A saw large enough for most eastern and southern timbers would not slab a sugar pine log. From four to six feet were common sizes, and the lumberman despised anything small.
In late years sugar pine operators have looked beyond the local markets, and have been sending their lumber to practically every state in the Union, except probably the extreme South. It comes in direct compet.i.tion with the white pine of New England and the Lake States. The two woods have many points of resemblance. The white pine would probably have lost no markets to the California wood if the best grades could still be had at moderate prices; but most of the white pine region has been stripped of its best timber, and the resulting scarcity in the high grades has been, in part, made good by sugar pine. Some manufacturers of doors and frames claim that sugar pine is more satisfactory than white pine, because of better behavior under climatic changes. It is said to shrink, swell, and warp less than the eastern wood.
Sugar pine has displaced white pine to a very small extent only, in comparison with the field still held by the eastern wood, whose annual output is about thirty times that of the California species. Their uses are practically the same except that only the good grades of sugar pine go east, and the corresponding grades of white pine west, and therefore there is no compet.i.tion between the poor grades of the two woods. The annual demand for sugar and white pine east of the Rocky Mountains is probably represented as an average in Illinois, where 2,000,000 feet of the former and 175,000,000 of the latter are used yearly.
While there is a large amount of mature sugar pine ready for lumbermen, the prospect of future supplies from new growth is not entirely satisfactory. The western yellow pine is mixed with it throughout most of its range, and is more than a match for it in taking possession of vacant ground. It is inferred from this fact that the relative positions of the two species in future forests will change at the expense of sugar pine. It endures shade when small, and this enables it to obtain a start among other species; but as it increases in size it becomes intolerant of shade, and if it does not receive abundance of light it will not grow. A forest fire is nearly certain to kill the small sugar pines, but old trunks are protected by their thick bark. Few species have fewer natural enemies. Very small trees are occasionally attacked by mistletoe (_Arceuthobium occidentale_) and succ.u.mb or else are stunted in their growth.
MEXICAN PINON (_Pinus cembroides_) is known also as nut pine, pinon pine and stone-seed Mexican pinon. It is one of the smallest of the native pines of this country. The tree is fifteen or twenty feet high and a few inches in diameter, but in sheltered canyons in Arizona it sometimes attains a height of fifty or sixty feet with a corresponding diameter. It reaches its best development in northern Mexico and what is found of it in the United States is the species'
extreme northern extension, in Arizona and New Mexico at alt.i.tudes usually above 6,000 feet. It supplies fuel in districts where firewood is otherwise scarce, and it has a small place as ranch timber. The wood is heavy, of slow growth, the summerwood thin and dense. The resin pa.s.sages are few and small; color, light, clear yellow, the sapwood nearly white. If the tree stood in regions well-forested with commercial species, it would possess little or no value; but where wood is scarce, it has considerable value. The hardsh.e.l.l nuts resemble those of the gray pine, but are considered more valuable for food. They are not of much importance in the United States, but in Mexico where the trees are more abundant and the population denser, the nuts are bought and sold in large quant.i.ties. Its leaves are in cl.u.s.ters of three, sometimes two. They are one inch or more in length, and fall the third and fourth years.
Cones are seldom over two inches in length. The species is not extending its range, but seems to be holding the ground it already has. It bears abundance of seeds, but not one in ten thousand germinates and becomes a mature tree.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
WHITEBARK PINE
[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITEBARK PINE]
WHITEBARK PINE
(_Pinus Albicaulis_)
This interesting and peculiar pine has a number of names, most of which are descriptive. The whiteness of the bark and the stunted and rec.u.mbent position which the tree a.s.sumes on bleak mountains are referred to in the names whitestem pine in California and Montana, scrub pine in Montana, whitebark in Oregon, white in California, and elsewhere it is creeping pine, whitebark pine, and alpine whitebark pine. It is a mountain tree. There are few heights within its range which it cannot reach. Its tough, prostrate branches, in its loftiest situations, may whip snow banks nine or ten months of the year, and for the two or three months of summer every starry night deposits its sprinkle of frost upon the flowers or cones of this persistent tree. It stands the storms of centuries, and lives on, though the whole period of its existence is a battle for life under adverse circ.u.mstances. At lower alt.i.tudes it fares better but does not live longer than on the most sterile peak. Its range covers 500,000 square miles, but only in scattered groups. It touches the high places only, creeping down to alt.i.tudes of 5,000 or 6,000 feet in the northern Rocky Mountains. It grows from British Columbia to southern California, and is found in Montana, Idaho, Was.h.i.+ngton, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and California. Its a.s.sociates are the mountain climbers of the tree kingdom, Engelmann spruce, Lyall larch, limber pine, alpine fir, foxtail pine, Rocky Mountain juniper, k.n.o.bcone pine, and western juniper. Its dark green needles, stout and rigid, are from one and one-half to two and one-half inches long. They hang on the twigs from five to eight years. In July the scarlet flowers appear, forming a beautiful contrast with the white bark and the green needles. In August the seeds are ripe. The cones are from one and one-half to three inches long. The seeds are nearly half an inch long, sweet to the taste. The few squirrels and birds which inhabit the inhospitable region where the whitebark pine grows, get busy the moment the cones open, and few escape. Nature seems to have played a prank on this pine by giving wings to the seeds and rendering their use impossible. The wing is stuck fast with resin to the cone scales, and the seed can escape only by tearing its wing off. The heavy nut then falls plumb to the ground beneath the branches of its parent. It might be supposed that a tree situated as the whitebark pine is would be provided with ample means of seedflight in order to afford wide distribution, and give opportunity to survive the hards.h.i.+ps which are imposed by surroundings; but such is not the case.
The willow and the cottonwood which grow in fertile valleys have the means of scattering their seeds miles away; but this bleak mountain tree must drop its seeds on the rocks beneath. In this instance, nature seems more interested in depositing the pine nuts where the hungry squirrels can get them, than in furnis.h.i.+ng a planting place for the nuts themselves--therefore, tears off their wings before they leave the cone.
The battle for existence begins before the seeds germinate, and the struggle never ceases. The tree, in parts of its range, survives a temperature sixty degrees below zero. Its seedlings frequently perish, not from cold and drought, but because the wind thrashes them against the rocks which wear them to pieces. Trees which survive on the great heights are apt to a.s.sume strange and fantastic forms, with less resemblance to trees than to great, green spiders sprawling over the rocks. Trees 500 years old may not be five feet high. Deep snows hold them flat to the rocks so much of the time that the limbs cannot lift themselves during the few summer days, but grow like vines. The growth is so exceedingly slow that the new wood on the tips of twigs at the end of summer is a mere point of yellow. John Muir, with a magnifying gla.s.s, counted seventy-five annual rings in a twig one-eighth of an inch in diameter. Trunks three and one-half inches in diameter may be 225 years old; one of six inches had 426 rings; while a seventeen-inch trunk was 800 years old, and less than six feet high. Such a tree has a spread of branches thirty or forty feet across. They lie flat on the ground. Wild sheep, deer, bear, and other wild animals know how to shelter themselves beneath the prostrate branches by creeping under; and travelers, overtaken by storms, sometimes do the same; or in good weather the sheepherder or the hunter may spread his blankets on the ma.s.s of limbs, boughs, and needles, and spend a comfortable night on a springy couch--actually sleeping in a tree top within two feet of the ground. In regions lower down, the whitebark pine reaches respectable tree form.
Fence posts are sometimes cut from it in the Mono basin, east of the Sierra Nevada mountains. In the Nez Perce National Forest trees forty feet high have merchantable lengths of twenty-four feet. Similar growth is found in other regions. In its best growth, the wood of whitebark pine resembles that of white pine. It is light, of about the same strength as white pine, but more brittle. The annual rings are very narrow; the small resin pa.s.sages are numerous. The sapwood is very thin and is nearly white. Men can never greatly a.s.sist or hinder this tree.
It will continue to occupy heights and elevated valleys.
BRISTLECONE PINE (_Pinus aristata_) owes its name to the sharp bristles on the tips of the cone scales. It is known also as foxtail pine and hickory pine. The latter name is given, not because of toughness, but on account of the whiteness of the sapwood. It is strictly a high mountain tree, running up to the timber line at 12,000 feet, and seldom occurring below 6,000 or 7,000 feet. It maintains its existence under adverse circ.u.mstances, its home being on dry, stony ridges, cold and stormy in winter, and subject to excessive drought during the brief growing season. Trees of large trunks and fine forms are impossible under such conditions. The bristlecone pine's bole is short, tapers rapidly and is excessively knotty. The species reaches its best development in Colorado. Though it is seldom sawed for lumber, it is of much importance in many localities where better material is scarce. In central Nevada many valuable mines were developed and worked by using the wood for props and fuel. Charcoal made of it was particularly important in that region, and it was carried long distances to supply blacksmith shops in mining camps. Railways have made some use of it for ties. Though rough, it is liked for fence posts. The resin in the wood a.s.sists in resisting decay, and posts last many years in the dry regions where the tree grows. Ranchmen among the high mountains build corrals, pens, sheds, and fences of it; but the fibers of the wood are so twisted and involved that splitting is nearly impossible, and round timbers only are employed. The bristlecone pine can never be more important in the country's lumber supply than it is now. It occupies waste land where no other tree grows, and it crowds out nothing better than itself. It clings to stony peaks and wind-swept ridges where the ungainly trunks are welcome to the traveler, miner, or sheepherder who is in need of a shed to shelter him, or a fire for his night camp. In situations exposed to great cold and drying winds, the bristlecone pine is a shrub, with little suggestion of a tree, further than its green foliage and small cones. The needles are in cl.u.s.ters of five. They cling to the twigs for ten or fifteen years. The seeds are scattered about the first of October, and the wind carries them hundreds of feet. They take root in soil so sterile that no humus is visible. Young trees and the small twigs of old ones present a peculiar appearance. The bark is chalky white, but when the trees are old the bark becomes red or brown.
FOXTAIL PINE (_Pinus balfouriana_) owes its name to the cl.u.s.tering of its needles round the ends of the branches, bristling like a fox's tail. The needles are seldom more than one and one-half inches in length, and are in cl.u.s.ters of fives. They cling to the branches ten or fifteen years before falling. The cones are about three inches long, and are armed with slender spines. The tree is strictly a mountain species and grows at a higher alt.i.tude than any other tree in the United States, although whitebark pine is not much behind it. It reaches its best development near Mt. Whitney, California, where it is said to grow at an alt.i.tude of 15,000 feet above sea level. It has been officially reported at Farewell Gap, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, at an alt.i.tude of 13,000. At high alt.i.tudes it is scrubby and distorted, but in more favorable situations it may be sixty feet high and two in diameter. On high mountains it is generally not more than thirty feet high and ten inches in diameter. It is of remarkably slow growth, and comparatively small trees may be 200 or 300 years old. The wood is moderately light, is soft, weak, brittle. Resin pa.s.sages are few and very small. The wood is satiny and susceptible of a good polish, and would be valuable if abundant. The seeds are winged and the wind scatters them widely, but most of them are lost on barren rocks or drifts of eternal snow. The untoward circ.u.mstances under which the tree must live prevent generous reproduction. It holds its own but can gain no new foothold on the bleak and barren heights which form its environment. The dark green of its foliage makes the belts of foxtail pines conspicuous where they grow above the timber line of nearly all other trees. Its range is confined to a few of the highest mountains of California, particularly about (but not on) Mt.
Shasta and among the cl.u.s.ters of peaks about the sources of Kings and Kern rivers. Those who travel and camp among the highest mountains of California are often indebted to foxtail pine for their fuel. Near the upper limit of its range it frequently dies at the top, and stands stripped of bark for many years. The dead wood, which frequently is not higher above the ground than a man's head, is broken away by campers for fuel, and it is often the only resource.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
LONGLEAF PINE
[Ill.u.s.tration: LONGLEAF PINE]
<script>