Part 13 (1/2)
RED FIR (_Abies magnifica_) is the largest fir in America. At its best it attains a height of 250 feet and a diameter of ten, but that size is rare. It has several names, magnificent fir, which is a translation of its botanical name; redbark fir, California red fir, and golden fir. The reference to red which occurs in its several names, is descriptive of its heartwood. Its range lies on the Cascade mountains of southern Oregon, and along the entire length of the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas in California. It is common in southern Oregon and sometimes forms nearly pure forests at elevations of 5,000 or 7,000 feet. It is plentiful in the Sierra Nevada ranges at alt.i.tudes of from 6,000 to 9,000 feet. In southern California it ascends 10,000 feet. On old trees the limbs, regularly whorled in collars of five, are usually pendulous or down-growing and are regularly and precisely subdivided into branches and twigs, the short, stiff blue-green leaves, which persist for ten years, closely covering the upper side of the latter. Its cones are the largest of the firs, are dark purple in color and grow erect on the branches.
The cones are six or eight inches long, and three or four in diameter.
They present a fine appearance as they stand erect on the branches. The seeds are large, but their strong wings are able to carry them away from the immediate presence of the parent tree. The wings are extremely beautiful, and flash light with the colors of the rainbow. Old trees are protected by hard, dark-colored bark five or six inches thick. A forest fire may pa.s.s through a stand of old firs without burning through the bark, but young trees are not so protected, and are liable to be killed.
A study of the wood of the red fir reveals rather more favorable qualities than the other firs afford. Sap and heartwood are more easily distinguished than in the other species, the sapwood being much lighter in color than the reddish heart. Contrary to the general rule among the firs, this wood possesses considerable durability, especially when used for purposes which bring it in contact with the soil. It is, however, light, soft and weak, but has a close, fine grain and compact structure.
Seasoning defects, such as checking and warping, are liable to occur unless properly guarded against. It weighs 29.30 pounds per cubic foot, or nearly three pounds less than Douglas fir. It is used for rough lumber, packing boxes, bridge floors, interior house finish, and fuel.
SHASTA RED FIR (_Abies magnifica shastensis_) is p.r.o.nounced by George B.
Sudworth to be only a form of red fir (_Abies magnifica_) and not a separate species. The princ.i.p.al difference is in the cones. The Shasta form was discovered on the mountain of that name in northern California in 1890 by Professor J. G. Lemmon. It was supposed to be confined to that locality, but was subsequently found on the Cascade mountains in Oregon, and also at several points in northern California. It was later found in the Sierras five hundred miles south of Mount Shasta.
LOVELY FIR (_Abies amabilis_) is known by a number of names, red fir, silver fir, red silver fir, lovely red fir, amabilis fir, and larch. The last name is applied to this tree by lumbermen who have discovered that fir lumber sells better if it is given some other name. The range of this species extends from British Columbia southward in the Cascade mountains through Was.h.i.+ngton to Oregon. It is the common fir of the Olympic mountains and there reaches its best development, sometimes a height of 250 feet and a diameter of five or six; but the average, even in the best part of its range, is much under that size, while in the northern country, and high on mountains, it is a commonplace tree, averaging less than 100 feet high, and scarcely eighteen inches in diameter. When this fir stands in open ground, the whole trunk is covered with limbs from base to top; but in dense stands, the limbs drop off, and a clean trunk results.
Some of the largest trees rise with scarcely a limb 150 feet, and above that is the small crown. The bark of young trees is covered with blisters filled with resin. The bark is thin and smooth until the tree is a century or more old, after which it becomes rougher, and near the base may be two and a half inches thick. It is of very slow growth, and a century hardly produces a trunk of small sawlog size. The leaves are dark green above, and whitish below. They are much crowded on the twigs, those on the underside rising with a twist at the base, and standing nearly erect. They are longer than those on the twig's upper side. The purple cones are conspicuous objects on the tree, are from three and a half to six inches long, and bear abundance of seeds which are well dispersed by wind.
However, the reproduction of this tree is not plentiful. The species holds its own, and not much more. When artificial reforestation takes place in this country, if that time ever comes, lovely fir will receive scant consideration, because of its discouragingly slow growth. It ranks with lodgepole pine in that respect. Nature can afford to wait two hundred years for a forest to mature, but men will not plant and protect when the prospect of returns is so remote. The wood is light, weak, moderately stiff and hard. The heartwood is pale brown, the sap nearly white. The summerwood appears in thin but well-marked bands in the annual rings, and the medullary rays are large enough to show slightly in quarter-sawed lumber. Growing as it does, interspersed with really valuable woods, the lovely fir is not highly thought of from a commercial standpoint. However, it is exploited in conjunction with the other species and turned into lumber and general structural material. A considerable quant.i.ty finds a market as interior finish and other millwork. It has many of the properties which fit it for the manufacture of packing boxes, particularly those intended for dried fruit and light merchandise. It bears considerable resemblance to spruce. The utilization of this and similar species of western fir for pulp has been suggested, but little has been done. It has been planted ornamentally in parts of Europe, but there is no comparison between the decorative appearance of this fir and its a.s.sociated species, the others which are in cultivation being much superior.
Removal from the old habitat militates greatly against its natural beauty and reduces it to the level of the ordinary.
ALPINE FIR (_Abies lasiocarpa_) is so called because it thrives on high mountains and in the far North. It grows in southern Alaska, up to lat.i.tude 60, and southward to Oregon and Colorado. Its other names are balsam, white balsam, Oregon balsam, mountain balsam, white fir, pumpkin tree, down-cone, and downy-cone subalpine fir. It grows from sea level in Alaska up to 7,000 feet or more in the South. It is not abundant, and not very well known. However, its slender, spirelike top distinguishes it from all a.s.sociates and it may be recognized at long distances by that characteristic. It endures cold at 40 degrees below zero, and summer climate at 90 degrees. Trees are usually small, and the trunks are covered with limbs to the ground. On high mountains the lower limbs often lie flat on the ground, and the twigs sometimes take root. Under very favorable circ.u.mstances this fir may reach a height of 160 feet and a diameter of four, but the usual size is less than half of it, even when conditions are fair, while on bleak mountains mature trees may be only three or four feet high, with most of the limbs prostrate.
The sprawling form of growth makes the tree peculiarly liable to be killed by fire. The bark is thin, smooth, and flinty; and in color it is ashy gray or chalky white. Leaves are one and a half inches or less long; the purple cones from two to four inches. Trees bear cones at about twelve years of age. The seeds are equipped with violet or purplish wings, and they fly far enough to find the best available places to plant themselves. The wood is narrow-ringed, light, soft, and in color from pale straw to light yellowish-brown.
It is fairly straight grained, and splits and works easily; but trunks are very knotty. Its best service in the past has consisted in supplying fuel to mining camps and mountain stock ranges.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
DOUGLAS FIR
[Ill.u.s.tration: DOUGLAS FIR]
DOUGLAS FIR
(_Pseudotsuga Taxifolia_)
During one hundred and ten years, from 1803 until the present time, botanists and others have proposed and rejected names for this tree. It has been called a fir, pine, and spruce, with various combinations, but the name now seems to be fixed. Laymen have disputed almost as much as botanists as to what the tree should be named. It has been called red fir, Douglas spruce, Douglas fir, yellow fir, spruce, fir, pine, red pine, Puget Sound pine, Oregon pine, cork-barked Douglas spruce, and Douglas tree. More than a dozen varieties are distinguished in cultivation.
The range of Douglas fir covers most of the Rocky Mountain region in the United States and northward to central British Columbia; on the coast from the lat.i.tude of southern Alaska to the Sierra Nevada mountains in central California. It reaches its maximum development in western Was.h.i.+ngton and Oregon, particularly between the Cascade mountains and the Pacific ocean. In these Cascade forests, stands are found which yield from 50,000 to 100,000 feet per acre, and mills in that region cut the longest timbers in the world, some two feet square and 100 feet long.
Two forms of Douglas fir are recognized by botanists, not essentially different except in size and habit of growth. One is the finely developed form on the Pacific coast where the climate is warm and the air moist. The other is the Rocky Mountain form which is smaller and shows the effect of cold, dryness, and other adverse circ.u.mstances. When the seeds of the two forms are planted in nurseries, where they enjoy identical advantages, the coast form outgrows the other in Europe, but the Rocky Mountain form thrives best in the eastern part of the United States.
Douglas fir needles are from three-quarters to one and a quarter inches long, and of a dark, yellow-green color. They remain on the twigs about eight years. Cones are from two to four and a half inches long, and are borne on long stems. The seeds, which ripen in August, are of light, reddish-brown color with irregular white spots on the lower side; are about a quarter of an inch long, and are provided with wings. Trees of this species in the moist climate of the Pacific slope average much larger than those in the mountains farther east. The largest are 300 feet high, occasionally more, and from eight to ten in diameter. The average among the Rocky Mountains is from eighty to 100 feet high, and two to four in diameter. Young trees are slender with crowded branches.
In thick stands the lower limbs die and the trunks remain bare, except an occasional small branch. Douglas fir at its best grows in thick stands, with crowns forming a canopy so dense that sunlight can scarcely reach the ground. The result of this is that other species have little show where Douglas fir prevails.
The bark of large trunks attains a thickness of eight or ten inches near the base. Young bark contains blisters filled with resin, similar to those of balsam and other species of fir.
The wood is light red or yellow, the sap much whiter. Lumbermen recognize two kinds of wood, yellow and red. The former is considered more valuable. Both may come from the same trunk, and the reason for the difference in color and quality is not well understood. It cannot be attributed to soil or climate, or to the age of the tree, and it does not seem to depend upon rate of growth. The bands of summerwood are broad and quite distinct. A few scattered resin ducts are visible under a magnifying gla.s.s of low power. The medullary rays are numerous, rather large, frequently yellow, conspicuous when wood is split radially. The wood's average weight is given by Sargent at 32.14 pounds per cubic foot, yet some specimens exceed forty pounds. It is hard, strong, and stiff. In mechanical properties it rates about the same as longleaf pine of the South. Elaborate tests have been made to determine which of these woods is the better for heavy construction, and neither appears to win over the other. In one respect, however, Douglas fir has a clear advantage over its southern rival: it may be had in much larger pieces.
No other commercial wood of the world equals it in that particular. The Douglas fir flagstaff at the Kew gardens in England was 159 feet long, eight inches in diameter at the top, more than three feet at the base.