Part 14 (1/2)
Trees containing 100,000 to 120,000 feet each 2 Trees containing 80,000 to 100,000 feet each 13 Trees containing 60,000 to 80,000 feet each 49 Trees containing 40,000 to 60,000 feet each 112 Trees containing 20,000 to 40,000 feet each 251 Trees containing less than 20,000 feet each 353 ”Little bigtrees” 2,682 ----- Total 3,462
Bigtree is distantly related to southern cypress, and the shapes of very old trees of both species bear some resemblance. Bigtree leaves do not fall annually as those of bald cypress do. They are from one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch long, and on the leading shoots they may be half an inch in length. Cones are from two to three and a half inches long, and they ripen their seeds the second year, but the empty cones may adhere to the branches several years. The seeds are a quarter of an inch long, and have wings sufficient to carry them a hundred yards or more.
The trees bear abundance of seeds, in proportion to the small number of branches. Though shapely and well clothed with limbs when young, the crown contracts with age, and consists of a few enormous, crooked limbs, almost dest.i.tute of twigs and small branches. One of these trees may actually bear more twigs when the trunk is only a foot in diameter than will be on the same trunk when it is fifteen or twenty feet in diameter.
The old tree trunks are often without limbs to a height of 100 or 150 feet.
The Douglas squirrel is the bigtree's greatest enemy. In proportion to size, this little creature probably eats ten times as many tree seeds as the most ravenous hog that roams the forest. One of the first things that impresses a visitor in a grove of bigtrees is the rich brown of the bark of some of the trunks. All are not brown alike, or at all seasons.
The trees on which the seed harvest is ready are the brownest, thanks to the sharp claws, the tireless energy, and keen appet.i.te of the Douglas squirrel. He goes up and down the trunks for three square meals a day among the cl.u.s.ters of cone-bearing branches two hundred or three hundred feet above, and makes several extra trips for exercise; and at each scratch of his briery foot he kicks off scales of bark, until the whole trunk is ”scratched raw.” The detached scales of bark acc.u.mulate in a mound about the base of the tree, where they have been so acc.u.mulating for centuries. It is fortunate that those old trees have bark from one to two feet thick. They can afford to be scratched for a month or two each year.
These are the heaviest trees in America, notwithstanding their wood is light. It weighs less than northern white cedar. The largest bigtree trunks weigh more than 2,000,000 pounds. In order to stand at all, they must stand plumb. It is a provision of nature that the old trees are almost branchless, otherwise the wind would force them out of plumb and they would go down. It has been claimed that the overthrow of one of these giants is always brought about by one of two causes. The development of larger limbs on one side than on another unbalances them; or the wash of gullies undermines the roots on one side, and draws the tree that way. It is currently believed that no bigtree ever dies from natural causes.
A good deal of pure fiction has been published regarding the size and age of the largest of these trees. They are old enough and large enough without drawing upon the imagination. The tree's base is greatly enlarged, but tapers rapidly the first few feet. There is little doubt that some of the trunks are over forty feet in diameter, one foot above ground, but that is not a fair measurement. The point should be five or six feet at least. Measured thus, about twenty-five feet inside the bark would represent the largest. With the bark added, the diameter would be nearly thirty feet. Probably not one tree in fifty, taking them as they occur in the whole range and counting veterans only, is fifteen feet in diameter five feet from the ground.
There is also some extravagant guessing as to height. Too many tourists measure with the unaided eye, or accept a guidebook's figures. An authentic height of 365 feet--the measurement of a fallen trunk--is probably the greatest. Very few reach three hundred feet. Many unreliable figures have been published concerning the age of bigtrees.
One thing can be accepted without question; size is no proof of age, in comparing one tree with another; neither is the number of annual rings in a block cut from the side of a tree a reliable factor to determine age. The only sure way to determine the age of one of these trees is by counting all the rings from the pith to bark. Care should be taken not to count the same ring twice, as may be done when the wood is curly.
John Muir counted 4,000 rings in a bigtree stump. It is believed that no higher age is backed by the evidence of yearly rings. It was twenty-four feet in diameter. The count of another of like size made it 2,200 years old; and of still another of the same size placed its age at 1,300 years. The Forest Service has made accurate measurement and record of every ring of growth in a tree that was over twenty-four feet in diameter, and it is shown that during certain periods of years the tree grew three or four times as rapidly as during other periods.
The wood of bigtree is very light, soft, moderately strong, brittle, summerwood thin and dark rendering the rings of annual growth easily seen; the medullary rays are thin, numerous, and very obscure. The wood is light to dark red, the thin sapwood nearly white; it works easily, splits readily, and polishes well. It is very durable in contact with the soil. Trunks lie in the woods long periods before decay seriously attacks them; but forest fires hollow them, and finally burn them up.
Enormous depressions are found in the forest where logs once lay, but which disappeared long ago, judging by the size of trees which have since grown in the depressions. The interior of some large trunks which have been worked up on sawmills showed the scars of forest fires centuries ago. The annual rings which covered one such scar showed that the burning took place 1,700 years ago.
Not much can be said for the commercial uses of bigtree. Many a species of insignificant size is much more useful. Considerable quant.i.ties have been cut by sawmills. The waste is great, heavy trunks crus.h.i.+ng badly in fall. Logs are so large that many of them are split with gunpowder to facilitate handling them. Some of the wood has been exported for lead pencils; other has been used for fence posts, s.h.i.+ngles, and grapevine stakes, while the soft bark has been worked into novelties.
MACNAB CYPRESS (_Cupressus macnabiana_) is a California tree of limited range and little commercial value. It grows in Napa, Lake, Mendocino, and Trinity counties; is often little more than a branching shrub, but the largest specimens may be thirty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter. The wood is light, soft, and usually of slow growth. The medullary rays are numerous but thin, and the bands of summerwood are distinct. The cones are generally less than one inch long, and the seeds have narrow wings. The foliage is grayish which is due to white glands in the leaves. Forest foliage is fragrant. The tree is known as white cedar, Shasta cypress, and California mountain cypress.
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REDWOOD
[Ill.u.s.tration: REDWOOD]
REDWOOD
(_Sequoia Sempervirens_)
This tree's color is responsible for its name. It is sometimes spoken of as coast redwood to distinguish it from bigtree which grows in the interior of California. In European markets it is known as California redwood to distinguish it from other redwoods growing in distant parts of the world. Its botanical name, _Sequoia sempervirens_, means evergreen sequoia. The other species of sequoia is also evergreen. In reality, the coast redwood is less of an evergreen than the bigtree is, because the leaves of redwood turn brown two years before they fall, but there are always plenty of green leaves on the branches. The leaves are from one-quarter to one-half inch in length.
The geographical range of redwood covers about 6,000 square miles, but the commercial range is scarcely one-fifth as much. The redwood belt extends 500 miles along the Pacific coast from southern Oregon to central California. It varies from ten to thirty miles in width. It is strictly a fog belt tree, and grows poorly outside the region of ocean fog, which seldom reaches an alt.i.tude more than 2,800 feet above sea level. Where fog is thick and frequent, and soil is moist and otherwise suitable, redwood forests have grown in such luxuriance that no species in this country exceeds it. Stands running much over 100,000 feet per acre are frequent, and it is said 1,000,000 feet have been cut from a single acre.
Redwood cones are one inch or less in length. They ripen in one season.
Seeds are quite small, and are equipped with wings. The bark is thick, but is much thinner than the bark of bigtrees, though it is in great ridges like the bark of that species. The habits of the two species, as to form of crown, are similar. Young redwoods, particularly if they grow in the open, develop symmetrical and conical crowns which they retain until the trunks are a foot or more in diameter. Lower limbs die and fall off after that, and old trees have crowns so small that it would seem impossible that they could supply the wood-building material for trunks so large. That the growth should be slow under such circ.u.mstances is to be expected. The ages of mature trees vary from 500 to 800 years, but an extreme age of 1,373 years is on record. The average is, therefore, considerably below that of bigtrees.
Redwoods grow as tall as bigtrees, but do not equal them in diameter of trunk, though trees twenty feet in diameter occur.