In Habit And General Appearance It Resembles The Douglas Spruce, But
It Is Somewhat Less Slender And The Needles Grow Close Together All
Around The Branchlets And Are So Stiff And Sharp-Pointed On The
Younger Branches That They Cannot Well Be Handled Without Gloves.
The
timber is tough, close-grained, white, and looks more like pine than
any other of the spruces.
It splits freely, makes excellent shingles
and in general use in house-building takes the place of pine. I have
seen logs of this species a hundred feet long and two feet in diameter
at the upper end. It was named in honor of the old Scotch botanist
Archibald Menzies, who came to this coast with Vancouver in 1792[23].
The beautiful hemlock spruce with its warm yellow-green foliage is
also common in some portions of these woods. It is tall and slender
and exceedingly graceful in habit before old age comes on, but the
timber is inferior and is seldom used for any other than the roughest
work, such as wharf-building.
The Western arbor-vitae[24] (Thuja gigantea) grows to a size truly
gigantic on low rich ground. Specimens ten feet in diameter and a
hundred and forty feet high are not at all rare. Some that I have
heard of are said to be fifteen and even eighteen feet thick. Clad in
rich, glossy plumes, with gray lichens covering their smooth, tapering
boles, perfect trees of this species are truly noble objects and well
worthy the place they hold in these glorious forests. It is of this
tree that the Indians make their fine canoes.
Of the other conifers that are so happy as to have place here, there
are three firs, three or four pines, two cypresses, a yew, and another
spruce, the Abies Pattoniana[25]. This last is perhaps the most
beautiful of all the spruces, but, being comparatively small and
growing only far back on the mountains, it receives but little
attention from most people. Nor is there room in a work like this for
anything like a complete description of it, or of the others I have
just mentioned. Of the three firs, one (Picea grandis)[26], grows
near the coast and is one of the largest trees in the forest,
sometimes attaining a height of two hundred and fifty feet. The
timber, however, is inferior in quality and not much sought after
while so much that is better is within reach. One of the others (P.
amabilis, var. nobilis) forms magnificent forests by itself at a
height of about three thousand to four thousand feet above the sea.
The rich plushy, plumelike branches grow in regular whorls around the
trunk, and on the topmost whorls, standing erect, are the large,
beautiful cones. This is far the most beautiful of all the firs. In
the Sierra Nevada it forms a considerable portion of the main forest
belt on the western slope, and it is there that it reaches its
greatest size and greatest beauty. The third species (P. subalpina)
forms, together with Abies Pattoniana, the upper edge of the
timberline on the portion of the Cascades opposite the Sound. A
thousand feet below the extreme limit of tree growth it occurs in
beautiful groups amid parklike openings where flowers grow in
extravagant profusion.
The pines are nowhere abundant in the State. The largest, the yellow
pine (Pinus ponderosa), occurs here and there on margins of dry
gravelly prairies, and only in such situations have I yet seen it in
this State. The others (P. monticola and P. contorta) are mostly
restricted to the upper slopes of the mountains, and though the former
of these two attains a good size and makes excellent lumber, it is
mostly beyond reach at present and is not abundant. One of the
cypresses (Cupressus Lawsoniana)[27] grows near the coast and is a
fine large tree, clothed like the arbor-vitae in a glorious wealth of
flat, feathery branches. The other is found here and there well up
toward the edge of the timberline. This is the fine Alaska cedar (C.
Nootkatensis), the lumber from which is noted for its durability,
fineness of grain, and beautiful yellow color, and for its fragrance,
which resembles that of sandalwood. The Alaska Indians make their
canoe paddles of it and weave matting and coarse cloth from the
fibrous brown bark.
Among the different kinds of hardwood trees are the oak, maple,
madrona, birch, alder, and wild apple, while large cottonwoods are
common along the rivers and shores of the numerous lakes.
The most striking of these to the traveler is the Menzies arbutus, or
madrona, as it is popularly called in California. Its curious red and
yellow bark, large thick glossy leaves, and panicles of waxy-looking
greenish-white urn-shaped flowers render it very conspicuous. On the
boles of the younger trees and on all the branches, the bark is so
smooth and seamless that it does not appear as bark at all, but rather
the naked wood. The whole tree, with the exception of the larger part
of the trunk, looks as though it had been thoroughly peeled. It is
found sparsely scattered along the shores of the Sound and back in the
forests also on open margins, where the soil is not too wet, and
extends up the coast on Vancouver Island beyond Nanaimo. But in no
part of the State does it reach anything like the size and beauty of
proportions that it attains in California, few trees here being more
than ten or twelve inches in diameter and thirty feet high. It is,
however, a very remarkable-looking object, standing there like some
lost or runaway native of the tropics, naked and painted, beside that
dark mossy ocean of northland conifers. Not even a palm tree would
seem more out of place here.
The oaks, so far as my observation has reached, seem to be most
abundant and to grow largest on the islands of the San Juan and
Whidbey Archipelago.
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