Part 57 (2/2)

The thin foliage uses little water, which is a fortunate circ.u.mstance, for there is little to use. Slow growth is the result. The trunk often adds less than an inch to its diameter in twenty years. The trees form very open forest, resembling old orchards, and the greenness usually a.s.sociated with pine landscapes is generally wanting. The singleleaf pine has filled an important place in the development of the region, and furnishes an example of the great service which a small, crooked tree can give when it is the only one to be had. Mines worth many millions of dollars have been worked with little of any other wood. This has been the fuel for the kitchen, the engine house, the blacksmith shop. It has supplied the props, posts, stulls, and lagging for the underground operations. Fences for stock corrals, sheds, stables, cabins, and bridges have been constructed of the small, crooked trunks and the distorted limbs, when no other wood could be had in fifty or a hundred miles. Extensive tracts have been cut clean in the vicinity of mines.

The product of the singleleaf pine forest cannot be measured in board or log feet, because of the smallness of the trunks and branches, but by the cord. The wood is medium heavy, rather high in fuel value, very weak, brittle, and soft. The resin pa.s.sages are few and small, color yellow or light brown, the sapwood nearly white. In contact with the soil the wood is not durable, but its princ.i.p.al use has been in a very dry climate, and it lasts well there. It is the most important of the nut pines.

It produces enormous crops which are larger some years than others. John Muir believed that the singleleaf pinon's annual nut yield surpa.s.sed California's yield of wheat. Only a small part of the nut crop is ever put to use by man. Scattered over mountains, mesas, and deserts, 100,000 square miles in extent, most of the nuts fall and decay, though the animals of the rocks and sands, and the birds of the air live on them while they last. The Indians of the region long looked upon the nut crop, as the Egyptians upon the overflow of the Nile--a guarantee against famine. The Indians are not so dependent on the nuts now as formerly because scattered settlements throughout the region supply other sources of food. Many nuts are still gathered, and are sold in stores from San Francisco to Denver. They look like peanuts, but are richer in oil, and if eaten raw they speedily cloy the appet.i.te. The Indians usually roast them, and frequently crush them into meal. When the harvest is ripe the Indians gather from all sides and camp during a month or more, thrash the cones from the trees with poles, extract the nuts, and keep up the operation until all present needs are supplied, and every available basket is filled for future use. The packhorses and burros of the mining country in Nevada where this pine grows, acquire a liking for the nuts. They are as nouris.h.i.+ng as oats, and the pack animals like them better. Indians do considerable business collecting the nuts and selling them by the gunny sack to pack trains, for horse feed. A single Indian will sometimes gather thirty or forty bushels, for which he can get a dollar a bushel when he has carried them to market.

The singleleaf pine's future will be about as its past has been, as far as can now be foreseen. Little planting will ever be done, nor is it necessary. Nature plants all that the sterile soil will support. It is of too slow growth to tempt the forester. A century is required to produce a fence post, and 200 years for a crosstie. Forest fires do little injury, for the ground is generally so bare that fire dies out of its own accord in a short distance. The tree can never be planted much for ornament. Even if it would grow outside of its dry habitat, it possesses no more beauty than a half-dead apple tree in a neglected orchard. The trunks resemble mesquite in Texas; but the Texas tree is redeemed by the beauty of its foliage in summer, while the foliage of the singleleaf pine is so pale and thin that it attracts no attention.

CAROLINA HEMLOCK (_Tsuga caroliniana_) is of far less importance than its northern neighbor which goes south along the Appalachian mountains to meet it. The two species mingle on the mountain tops from southwestern Virginia to northern Georgia. The Carolina hemlock is usually confined to alt.i.tudes 2,500 or 3,000 feet above sea level, and prefers rocky banks of streams. It does not usually occur in dense stands of even moderate size, as the northern hemlock does. A few trees in clumps or scattered solitary represent its habit of growth. Typical development of the species occurs on the headwaters of the Savannah river in South Carolina. For a long time this hemlock and its northern relative were supposed to be the same. Botanists did not formerly separate them, and the mountaineers do not generally do so now. There are several differences, however, which may be observed upon close examination, and by comparing the two species. The Carolina hemlock's leaves have more rows of stomata and therefore are a little whiter on the under side. The leaves are also longer, and the cones are larger.

The tree does not attain the dimensions of the northern species, its average size being forty or fifty feet in height, and two or less in diameter. It is not abundant, and has never been and never can be much used for commercial purposes. It is an attractive park tree and has been widely planted.

LIMBER PINE (_Pinus flexilis_) owes its name to its long, drooping branches. It is often called white pine, Rocky Mountain white pine, western white pine, and limber twig pine. It is not the tree usually called western white pine (_Pinus monticola_), but is a high mountain species, ranging from the Rocky Mountains of Montana to western Texas; it grows also on the mountains of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California.

The upper limit of its range in the Sierra Nevadas is 12,000 feet. It descends to an alt.i.tude of only 4,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, and forms open, scattered stands of round-topped trees of little commercial value, and is usually a.s.sociated with western yellow pine or Rocky Mountain cedar. At alt.i.tudes of 8,500 or 10,000 feet it is more stunted, and a.s.sociates with Lyall larch and other high mountain species.

Intermediate between its lower and its higher belts it produces a little merchantable lumber. The wood is light, soft, medium brittle, of slow growth and with narrow bands of summerwood. The resin pa.s.sages are large and numerous. The wood, when a choice trunk is found, resembles that of eastern white pine; but generally the trunks are inferior in size and form. The heartwood is light, clear yellow, the sapwood nearly white.

Trees range in height from thirty to fifty feet, and one to three in diameter. A sawlog ten feet long is about as much as can be had from a trunk, and of course, when compared with commercial trees, it holds a low place; but in some remote mountain regions it is the princ.i.p.al wood available, and to that extent it is of importance. When green, the wood is very heavy, and sometimes will sink. It is used for posts and in the mines. The farmer seasons posts on the stump. He peels the trees six months before cutting them. They immediately exude resin over the whole peeled surface, and the tree quickly dies. At the end of six months the trunk is seasoned, and is cut for posts. The ends are smeared with resin. Such posts have lasted twenty years with little decay. Railroads make ties of fire-killed limber pine. Charcoal burners use it also. The growing trees resist the fumes of copper smelters better than any other species a.s.sociated with it.

PARRY PINON (_Pinus quadrifolia_). The names by which this tree is known in the region where it grows indicate one of its leading features, a bearer of nuts. It is called nut pine, Parry's nut pine, pinon, and Mexican pinon. The nuts exceed half an inch in length, are reddish-brown, and the wings narrow and small. They cannot carry the nuts far, and the species is not spreading. Reproduction takes place beneath the parent tree, and frequently the old trunk dies without having succeeded in planting a single seed to perpetuate the species. The nuts are nutritious, and are eagerly sought by birds, rodents, and larger animals, including human beings. The cones are seldom two inches long, and the leaves are little more than an inch.

They are usually in cl.u.s.ters of four, and fall the third year. The tree's characteristics betray its environment. It is fitted for dry, sterile situations. Its abnormally large seeds provide food for the seedling until it can get its rootlets deep enough in the poor soil to get a start. The Parry pinon's range is confined to the extreme southern part of California and to Lower California where it occupies arid mesas and low mountain slopes. It is common on Santa Rosa mountains, California, at an elevation of 5,000 feet. It is too small to be worth much for lumber, the usual height being less than thirty feet, the trunk diameter from ten to sixteen inches. The wood is medium heavy, weak, low in elasticity, but rather high in fuel value. The annual rings are very narrow, and the thin bands of summerwood are not conspicuous. It is one of the slowest-growing of the pines, and probably it is surpa.s.sed in that respect by lodgepole pine alone. Its only uses are fuel, a few fence posts, and small ranch timbers.

k.n.o.bCONE PINE (_Pinus attenuata_). This pine is known as p.r.i.c.kly-cone pine, sun-loving pine, sunny-slope pine, narrow-cone pine, and k.n.o.bcone pine. Its leaves are in cl.u.s.ters of three, and are four and five inches long. The cones are from three to six inches long. They often adhere to the branches thirty or forty years, and may become entirely overgrown and hidden by bark and wood--hence the name k.n.o.bcone. The wood is light, soft, weak, brittle; the growth is slow and the annual rings are narrow. The resin pa.s.sages are large and numerous. The average height of the mature k.n.o.bcone pine is from twenty-five to forty feet, and the trunk diameter eight to twelve inches. It grows on dry mountain regions of California and Oregon, and is not a valuable timber tree.

A little is occasionally sawed in small dimensions, but the princ.i.p.al use is for mine props. It is short lived, even when it does not fall a victim to accidents. In accordance with the provisions of nature, it prepares for early death by bearing seeds when only five or six feet high. The cones act as storing places for seed, sometimes during the whole life of the tree. Thus a k.n.o.bcone pine may hold in its tightly closed cones the seeds produced during the tree's whole life. When death overtakes it, the cones open and scatter the seeds. The acc.u.mulated crops may total three or four pounds of seeds. Fire usually kills the trees, but the heat is generally not sufficient to burn the cones. When they open soon after the fire has pa.s.sed, they find a bared mineral soil ready to receive them. The k.n.o.bcone pine lives in adversity and usually dies by violence.

ARIZONA PINE (_Pinus arizonica_). This tree is confined to the mountains of southern Arizona at from 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level. It is the prevailing pine near the summit of the Santa Catalina mountains. Much of the timber is of small size and yields only inferior lumber; but when larger trunks are obtainable, the lumber grades with western yellow pine, and goes to market with it.

Arizona pine is medium light, soft, not strong, rather brittle, of slow growth, with the summerwood comparatively broad and very resinous; color, light red or often yellow, the sapwood lighter yellow or white. The leaves are in cl.u.s.ters of five and are tufted at the ends of the branches. They are from five to seven inches long, and are deciduous the third year.

DWARF JUNIPER (_Juniperus communis_) is an interesting tree because its range practically runs round the world in the north temperate and frigid zones, but in the United States the only reported use of the wood is in southern Illinois where it grows on the limestone hills and is occasionally cut for fence posts. In nearly all other parts of its range in this country it is little more than a shrub.

Some trees with a spread of limbs twenty feet across are only three or four feet high. The seeds mature slowly, not ripening until the third year; and they often hang a year or two after ripening. The wood is narrow-ringed, hard, very durable in contact with the soil, of light brown color, with pale sapwood. In Europe the aromatic fruit of this tree is used in large quant.i.ties to flavor gin, but there is no report that it has been so employed in this country. In the United States it occurs in Pennsylvania and northward, and northward from Illinois, and throughout the Rocky Mountains north of Texas. It occurs on the Pacific coast north of California. It grows from Greenland to Alaska, and through Siberia, and northern Europe.

DROOPING JUNIPER (_Juniperus flaccida_) is confined in the United States to the Chisos mountains in western Texas, but grows in Mexico. The tree attains a height of thirty feet and a diameter of one. Its name refers to its graceful branches. It has been planted in this country less than in southern Europe and northern Africa.

The bark is light cinnamon-brown, and easily separates in loose, papery scales. The lumberman will never go far to procure drooping juniper logs. They are too small, scarce, and of form too poor. The wood has the usual characteristics of the junipers which grow in western mountains. It looks more like alligator juniper than any other. In Texas it goes to the lathe to be manufactured into candlesticks, pin boxes, picture molding, and other articles of turnery.

UTAH JUNIPER (_Juniperus utahensis_) is known also as juniper, desert juniper, and western red cedar. The last name is properly applied to a different tree in Was.h.i.+ngton and Oregon. The Utah juniper occupies the great basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas, particularly in Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, and Colorado. It thrives best about 8,000 feet above the sea, but descends to 5,000 feet or less. It is a desert tree, usually small, often a mere shrub, but occasionally attaining a height of twenty feet or more and a diameter of one or two. The trunk is irregular in shape, and is generally deeply fluted. The wood is light brown in color, though it varies greatly in different specimens, and even in the same tree. The sapwood is thick and nearly white. The tree has not been much used except for fence posts and fuel. The Indians of the region eat the berries raw or bake them in cakes.

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