Part 14 (2/2)
A noticeable feature of the forests is that, in a given stand, nearly all trees are of the same height, irrespective of size of trunk. The crowns go up to the light and when they reach the common level of others, and secure a share of light, they show no disposition to go higher. The doctrine which they silently put into practice is to live and let others live. That habit makes it possible for redwoods to grow in very dense stands, which they could not do if a few trees domineered over the others, and appropriated the light to themselves.
When old age overtakes the giant redwoods, they exhibit the first symptoms of weakened vitality by dying at the top. Most trees over five hundred years old are ”stag-headed.” From that period they die slowly, but usually survive two or three hundred years after the visible signs of approaching death strike them.
Redwood has an advantage over nearly all other needle-leaf trees in that it propagates by both seeds and sprouts. Few softwoods send up sprouts from stumps or roots. Redwoods of large size are produced that way, and the stumps of very old trees send up many vigorous shoots. Sometimes a ring of large trees surrounds a depression in the ground where the parent tree grew, died, and decayed.
Sprouts are of course confined to the immediate proximity of the parent tree, but redwood seeds are scattered by the wind over vacant s.p.a.ces.
This results in dense stands where other conditions are favorable, but the species has never been able to establish itself far inland or high on mountains.
In 1880 the Federal census made a rough estimate of the available redwood, and placed it at 25,825,000,000 feet. More than twenty years later, with heavy cutting all the time, private estimates placed the remaining stand at over 50,000,000,000 feet. The second estimate was unquestionably nearer correct than the first. The stand of no important timber tree in this country is more easily estimated than redwood. The forests are compact, the trees large, the trunks similar in form, and the well-timbered area is comparatively small. Redwood has been called the most important timber tree of the Pacific coast. The t.i.tle probably confers too much, though the tree's importance is beyond question. The annual cut of Douglas fir is nearly ten times as large as of redwood, and the supply still in the forests is much greater than that of redwood. The cut of western yellow pine likewise exceeds the output of redwood, and the remaining supply is larger. The cut of western red cedar, including s.h.i.+ngles, is about the same, and the remaining stand of cedar is very large. Western hemlock, too, exists in large quant.i.ty, and its importance as a source of timber supply may be equal to redwood.
Redwood is frequently referred to as one of the lightest in this country. Its weight per cubic foot, oven-dry, is 26.2 pounds. On the same basis, white pine is 24, southern white cedar 20.7, northern white cedar 19.7, and bigtree 18.2. There are woods in Florida lighter than any of these. Redwood is very soft, yet it dulls tools quickly. It is moderately strong, a little below white pine; it is brittle, again ranking below white pine; it splits and works easily and polishes well.
Few, if any woods surpa.s.s this one in splitting properties. Boards twelve feet long and a foot wide may be rived from selected logs, and they present surfaces nearly as smooth as if cut with a saw. However, curly and wavy redwood is not uncommon, and that, too, splits well, but the surface is not smooth. The width of annual rings varies, usually wide in young timber and narrow in old. The bands of summerwood are narrow and clearly defined. The surface of redwood lumber absorbs water quickly, yet, for some reason, creosote and other preservatives can be forced into the wood only with the greatest difficulty. Fortunately, it is not necessary to treat this timber to prevent decay, for, in almost any position, it wears out before it rots. s.h.i.+ngles, and window and door frames of the old barracks buildings at Eureka, California, remained in place until fifty years of wind and driven sand wore them away.
Railroads use the wood for ties until they wear out, not until they rot out. Farmers near some of the California railroads gather up the rejected worn ties by thousands and use them for fence posts. When redwood is employed as city paving blocks it is wear and not decay that puts them out of commission.
The medullary rays of redwood are thin and very obscure, but numerous.
Few woods show them to less advantage in quarter-sawing. The lack of l.u.s.ter in the surface of polished panels is well known. The wood's beauty is in its sameness and richness of color. Except curly specimens and burls, the wood may be said to have no figure, though in planks cut tangentially, the contrast of spring and summerwood displays some figure in a modest way. It is possible to wash much of the coloring matter out of the wood, if it is first chipped fine. It washes from the surface by ordinary exposure to weather. Red rainwater runs from a roof of new redwood s.h.i.+ngles, and weatherboarding, posts, and picket fences fade perceptibly in a few months. This coloring matter when washed out in large amounts in the process of paper making has been manufactured into fuel gas.
A complete list of the uses of redwood is not practicable, for this material goes into most of the large wood-using factories of this country, and much is exported--nearly 60,000,000 feet annually going to foreign countries. It has been much employed in California cities and towns for picket fences, and as posts for wire and plank fences. It is, next to western red cedar, the most important s.h.i.+ngle wood of the Pacific coast. One western railroad alone had in its tracks 12,000,000 redwood ties at one time. Builders of tanks, flumes, and water pipes procure some of their best material, and large quant.i.ties of it, from redwood sawmills. Few woods are more universally found in furniture factories.
GOWEN CYPRESS (_Cupressus goveniana_) follows the California coast from Mendocino county, California, to San Diego, and ascends mountains to the height of 3,000 feet in some localities. At its best it is fifty feet high and two feet in diameter; but it extends as a shrub over many sandy tracts. Specimens no more than a foot high sometimes bear cones. The Gowen cypress sheds its leaves the third and fourth years. Cones are from one-half to one inch long, and each bears about 100 seeds. The wood is light, soft, weak, light brown in color, the thick sapwood nearly white. The medullary rays are numerous but obscure. The wood is used for posts and other ranch purposes. Woodp.e.c.k.e.rs attack the trunks, picking holes through the bark to suck the juice from the cambium layer beneath.
DWARF CYPRESS (_Cupressus pygmaea_) was formerly supposed to be a stunted form of Gowen cypress. The ranges of both lie in the same region, on the coast of California in Mendocino county. The average height of dwarf cypress is from ten to twenty feet, with trunk diameter from six to twelve inches; but in peat swamps and on sterile sands it may not exceed three or four feet in height. It bears abundant cones at that size, and sometimes a tree no more than a foot high has mature cones. They ripen the second year, but remain a long time on the branches. The trees thrive in the most forbidding places, and are sometimes the only occupants of bogs or sand dunes.
The wood is necessarily of little value, because of the small size of trees. There seems to be no record of a dwarf cypress over sixty years of age; but it is believed that much older trees have fallen victims to fire.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
HEMLOCK
[Ill.u.s.tration: HEMLOCK]
HEMLOCK
(_Tsuga Canadensis_)
Seven hemlocks are known in the world, four of them in America. Two of these are in the East, two in the West. The eastern species are the Canadian and Carolinian. The former is _Tsuga canadensis_, the latter _Tsuga caroliniana_. The western species are, mountain hemlock (_Tsuga mertensiana_), and western hemlock (_Tsuga heterophylla_). The word _tsuga_ is j.a.panese and means hemlock.
The hemlock lumber in eastern markets is practically all from one species, which is known as hemlock in Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont, Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Ontario. In Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina; in England it is called hemlock spruce; spruce tree in Pennsylvania and West Virginia; spruce pine in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia; to the New York Indians it was known as oh-neh-tah, which being interpreted means ”greens on the stick.”
The range of hemlock extends east and west more than fifteen hundred miles, from Nova Scotia to western Wisconsin; south to Delaware and southern Michigan, and along the Appalachian mountains to northern Alabama and Georgia. The original quant.i.ty of timber was enormous, for large areas were covered with dense stands. The largest trees are found near the southern part of its range, among the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina; but the bulk of the timber has always been in the North. It thrives best in well drained soil, but it likes cool situations and often develops dense forests on northern slopes or in deep ravines; but it maintains a foothold on ridges, on the banks of streams, and around the borders of swamps.
The cones are very small, about a half inch in length, growing singly from the lower side of the branchlet. Their scales are rounded and thin, light brown in color. The seeds are winged and even when ripe the cones do not spread apart perceptibly. The seeds escape, however, slowly during the winter following their maturity. They are very small, and their wings distribute them a hundred feet or more. The seeds germinate best on leaf mold, but the seedling takes several years to thrust its roots deep into the mineral soil. During that time, growth is very slow.
<script>