Part 9 (1/2)
In the eastern markets the lumber from this tree is usually called western cedar without further description, but that name does not always sufficiently identify it. There are other western cedars, notably incense and yellow; but they have not generally appeared in eastern markets. Western red cedar is the name given it when the purpose is to separate it from other western cedars. It is the only red cedar in the far West, except the scarce junipers which are totally unknown as its compet.i.tors in lumber centers. Gigantic cedar is a name which takes size into account. It is the largest of American cedars. Trunks fifteen feet in diameter and 200 feet high are sometimes seen, but the usual size is 100 high, from two to four in diameter. Canoe cedar is a name bestowed upon this western tree for the same reason that canoe wood is one of the yellow poplar's names in the East. It is one of the best woods for dugout canoes. Botanists have called the tree giant arborvitae, but the name never got beyond books. When the people of Was.h.i.+ngton and Oregon speak of cedar without a qualifying term, they mean this species. It is widely known as s.h.i.+ngle wood or s.h.i.+ngle cedar, because more s.h.i.+ngles are made of it than of all other kinds of timber in the United States combined.
The western red cedar's range covers 300,000 square miles, not counting regions of small or scattered growth. For a timber tree, that range is large, but not nearly as large as some others. It exceeds one-hundred fold the commercial range of redwood, and probably a thousand fold that of Port Orford cedar, but its range is not one-third that of the eastern red cedar, though in total quant.i.ty of available lumber it surpa.s.ses the eastern tree a hundred fold. Its range begins in Alaska on the north, and follows the coast to northern California, and extends eastward into Idaho. The best development occurs in the regions of warm, moist Pacific winds, but not in the immediate fog belts. The largest quant.i.ty of this wood, and probably the largest trees also, are in Was.h.i.+ngton. Abundant rainfall is essential to western red cedar's development. It would be difficult to approximate the amount of the remaining stand. This cedar does not form pure forests, and estimates of so many feet per acre or square mile cannot be based on fairly exact information as may be done with redwood, and some of the southern pines. Though the drain upon the cedar forests is heavy, it is generally believed there is enough of this species to meet demands for a long period of years.
Nature made ample provision for the spread and perpetuation of this tree. The seeds are fairly abundant, are light, have good wing power, and are great travelers in search of suitable places to germinate and take root. The tree's greatest enemy is fire. The cedar's bark is thin, even when trunks are mature, and a moderate blaze often proves fatal to large trees; but small ones, with all their branches close to the ground, have no chance when the fire burns the litter among them. Some tree seeds germinate readily on soil bared by fire--such as lodgepole pine, wild red cherry, and paper birch--but the western red cedar's do not, if the humus is sufficiently burned to lessen the soil's capacity to retain moisture. For that reason, this cedar seldom follows fire, and the result is that it constantly loses ground. Under normal conditions, it is not exacting in its requirements; but anything that disturbs natural conditions is more likely to harm than help this cedar. In that respect it is like beech and hemlock, which suffer when forest conditions are disturbed.
Trunks are large but not shapely. They are generally fluted, and greatly swelled at the base. These deformities develop rather late in the tree's life; at least, they are not prominent in young timber. Western cedar poles of large size are beautiful in outline; but when maturity approaches, the trunk grows faster near the ground than some distance above; the annual rings are wider near the base than twenty feet above, resulting in great enlargement near the ground. At the same time ribs and creases slowly develop, and by the time the tree is old, it is as ungainly as one of the giant sequoias. Its appearance is hurt by characteristics other than the swelled base and the b.u.t.tresses. While the tree is small, the limbs ascend, and maintain a graceful upright position. Toward middle life they begin to droop, and the limbs of old trees hang down the trunks--the reverse of their att.i.tude in early life.
The western red cedar lives to an old age, from 600 to 1,000 years. The oldest are liable to be hollow near the ground. The tree is remarkable for what happens after it falls. Often the trunk crashes down in a bed of moss, which in a few years buries it from sight. The moss holds so much water that the buried log is constantly too wet for fungous attack.
Consequently decay does not take place. Fallen trees have lain for hundreds of years--as much as 800 having been claimed in one instance--and at the end of that time they are sound enough for s.h.i.+ngles. The position of living trees growing upon buried logs furnishes the key to the length of time since the trunks fell. The long period during which the moss-buried wood has remained sound has led to the claim that western red cedar is the most enduring wood in America.
Such is not necessarily the case. A good many others would probably last as long if protected in the same way.
Western red cedar is strong and stiff but falls from twenty to thirty per cent below white oak in these factors. It is light, and the texture of the wood is rather coa.r.s.e. The springwood and summerwood are distinct, the latter const.i.tuting one-half or less of the annual ring.
The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood's color is dull brown, tinged with red. The thin sapwood is nearly white.
The ease with which western red cedar may be worked led the Indians to use it in their most ambitious woodcraft. The gigantic totem poles which have excited the curiosity and admiration of travelers near the coast in Alaska and southward have nearly all been of this wood. Some of them are the largest single pieces of wood carving in the world. Trunks three or four feet in diameter and forty or fifty feet long have been hewed and whittled in weird, uncouth, and fantastic forms, decorated with eagle heads, bear mouths, and with various creatures of the forest or sea, or from the realms of imagination. Before the northern Pacific coast Indians procured tools from white men they executed their carving by means of bone, stone, sh.e.l.l, and wooden tools, a.s.sisted by fire.
The making of canoes was in some ways a work more laborious for the Indians than the manufacture of totem poles. Their canoes were dugouts of all sizes, from the small trough which carried one or two persons, to the enormous canoe which carried fifty warriors with all their equipment. Such a canoe, now in the National Museum at Was.h.i.+ngton, D.
C., is fifty-nine feet long, seven feet, three inches deep at the bow, five feet three inches at the stern, and three feet seven inches in the middle, and eight feet wide. It was made on Vancouver island, and is capable of carrying 100 persons. The capacity of the canoe is thirty-five tons. Civilized man has produced no vessel with lines more perfect than are seen in some of these canoes made by savages; but all the canoes are not alike: some are crude and clumsy. It is claimed that large cedar canoes of Indian manufacture were early carried from the Pacific coast by fur traders, and New York and Boston s.h.i.+pbuilders took them as models in constructing the celebrated clipper s.h.i.+ps which formerly sailed between New York and San Francisco.
The Indians formerly made much use of western red cedar bark which they twisted into ropes and cords, braided for mats, wove for cloth, used in making baskets, roofing wigwams, constructing fish nets and bird snares, ladders for climbing cliffs, and they even pulped the inner bark by pounding it in mortars, and mixed it with their food.
White men have put western red cedar to many uses, as s.h.i.+ngles, lumber, cooperage, poles, posts, piles, car siding and roofing, boat building from skiffs to s.h.i.+ps, and general furniture and interior finish.
WESTERN JUNIPER (_Juniperus occidentalis_) is a high mountain tree with all the characteristics belonging to that cla.s.s of timber. The trunks are short and strong, the limbs wide-spreading, the wood of slow growth, and dense. The tree attains a diameter of ten inches in about 130 years.
Trunks ten feet in diameter have been reported, but trees that large would be hard to find now. John Muir said that the western juniper lives 2,000 years, and that the tree is never uprooted by wind. The trunk is usually short, six or eight feet being a fair average, and very knotty.
However, when a block of clear wood is found, it is high cla.s.s, the heaviest of the cedars, straight grain, soft, compact, brittle. The summerwood is so narrow that it resembles a fine, black line. The medullary rays are numerous and very obscure. The wood is slightly aromatic, splits easily, works nicely, and in color is brown, tinged with red. In appearance, the sapwood suggests spruce. The average height of the trees is from twenty-five to forty-five feet, diameter two to four feet. The range of this tree is in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and through the Cascades and Sierras to southern California. It seldom occurs below an alt.i.tude of 6,000 feet, and ascends to 10,000 or more.
On the highest summits it is deformed and stunted. Its fruit is eaten by Indians, and it furnishes fuel for mountain camps and ranches, timber for mines, and sometimes a little lumber. The crooked limbs and trunks are made into corral fences where better material cannot be had. The wood has been found suitable for lead pencils, but that of proper quality is too scarce to attract manufacturers. Other names for this tree are juniper cedar, yellow cedar, western cedar, western red cedar, and western juniper. Some of these names are applied to other species of the same region.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
PORT ORFORD CEDAR
[Ill.u.s.tration: PORT ORFORD CEDAR]
PORT ORFORD CEDAR
(_Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana_)
Port Orford cedar of the northwestern coast is an interesting member of the cedar group with a very limited range. Specimens are found throughout an area of about 10,000 square miles, but the district moderately heavily timbered does not exceed 300 or 400 miles in area. It lies near Coos bay in southwestern Oregon. The tree is found as far south in California as the mouth of Klamath river, and it was once reported on Mt. Shasta, but it is very scarce there if it exists at all.
In the best of its range Port Orford cedar runs 20,000 feet to the acre, and a single acre has yielded 100,000 feet. Trees run from 135 to 175 feet in height and three to seven in diameter. The largest on record were about 200 feet high and twelve in diameter. Few trees of any species have smaller leaves. They often are only one-sixteenth of an inch in length. They die the third year and change to a bright brown.
The cones are about one-third of an inch in diameter. Two or four seeds lie under each fertile cone scale, and ripen in September and October.