Every Tree Is Appreciated As A Study
In Itself And Proclaims In No Uncertain Terms The Surpassing Grandeur
Of The Species.
The branches, mostly near the summit, are sometimes
nearly forty feet long, feathered richly all around with short, leafy
branchlets, and tasseled with cones a foot and a half long.
And when
these superb arms are outspread, radiating in every direction, an
immense crownlike mass is formed which, poised on the noble shaft and
filled with sunshine, is one of the grandest forest objects
conceivable. But though so wild and unconventional when full-grown,
the sugar pine is a remarkably regular tree in youth, a strict
follower of coniferous fashions, slim, erect, tapering, symmetrical,
every branch in place. At the age of fifty or sixty years this shy,
fashionable form begins to give way. Special branches are thrust out
away from the general outlines of the trees and bent down with cones.
Henceforth it becomes more and more original and independent in style,
pushes boldly aloft into the winds and sunshine, growing ever more
stately and beautiful, a joy and inspiration to every beholder.
Unfortunately, the sugar pine makes excellent lumber. It is too good
to live, and is already passing rapidly away before the woodman's axe.
Surely out of all of the abounding forest wealth of Oregon a few
specimens might be spared to the world, not as dead lumber, but as
living trees. A park of moderate extent might be set apart and
protected for public use forever, containing at least a few hundreds
of each of these noble pines, spruces, and firs. Happy will be the
men who, having the power and the love and benevolent forecast to do
this, will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their
lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise
up and call them blessed.
Dotting the prairies and fringing the edges of the great evergreen
forests we find a considerable number of hardwood trees, such as the
oak, maple, ash, alder, laurel, madrone, flowering dogwood, wild
cherry, and wild apple. The white oak (Quercus Garryana) is the most
important of the Oregon oaks as a timber tree, but not nearly so
beautiful as Kellogg's oak (Q. Kelloggii). The former is found mostly
along the Columbia River, particularly about the Dalles, and a
considerable quantity of useful lumber is made from it and sold,
sometimes for eastern white oak, to wagon makers. Kellogg's oak is a
magnificent tree and does much for the picturesque beauty of the
Umpqua and Rogue River Valleys where it abounds. It is also found in
all the Yosemite valleys of the Sierra, and its acorns form an
important part of the food of the Digger Indians. In the Siskiyou
Mountains there is a live oak (Q. chrysolepis), wide-spreading and
very picturesque in form, but not very common. It extends southward
along the western flank of the Sierra and is there more abundant and
much larger than in Oregon, oftentimes five to eight feet in diameter.
The maples are the same as those in Washington, already described, but
I have not seen any maple groves here equal in extent or in the size
of the trees to those on the Snoqualmie River.
The Oregon ash is now rare along the stream banks of western Oregon,
and it grows to a good size and furnishes lumber that is for some
purposes equal to the white ash of the Western States.
Nuttall's flowering dogwood makes a brave display with its wealth of
show involucres in the spring along cool streams. Specimens of the
flowers may be found measuring eight inches in diameter.
The wild cherry (Prunus emarginata, var. mollis) is a small, handsome
tree seldom more than a foot in diameter at the base. It makes
valuable lumber and its black, astringent fruit furnishes a rich
resource as food for the birds. A smaller form is common in the
Sierra, the fruit of which is eagerly eaten by the Indians and hunters
in time of need.
The wild apple (Pyrus rivularis) is a fine, hearty, handsome little
tree that grows well in rich, cool soil along streams and on the edges
of beaver meadows from California through Oregon and Washington to
southeastern Alaska. In Oregon it forms dense, tangled thickets, some
of them almost impenetrable. The largest trunks are nearly a foot in
diameter. When in bloom it makes a fine show with its abundant
clusters of flowers, which are white and fragrant. The fruit is very
small and savagely acid. It is wholesome, however, and is eaten by
birds, bears, Indians, and many other adventurers, great and small.
Passing from beneath the shadows of the woods where the trees grow
close and high, we step into charming wild gardens full of lilies,
orchids, heathworts, roses, etc., with colors so gay and forming such
sumptuous masses of bloom, they make the gardens of civilization,
however lovingly cared for, seem pathetic and silly. Around the great
fire-mountains, above the forests and beneath the snow, there is a
flowery zone of marvelous beauty planted with anemones, erythroniums,
daisies, bryanthus, kalmia, vaccinium, cassiope, saxifrages, etc.,
forming one continuous garden fifty or sixty miles in circumference,
and so deep and luxuriant and closely woven it seems as if Nature,
glad to find an opening, were economizing space and trying to see how
may of her bright-eyed darlings she can get together in one mountain
wreath.
Along the slopes of the Cascades, where the woods are less dense,
especially about the headwaters of the Willamette, there are miles of
rhododendron, making glorious outbursts of purple bloom, and down on
the prairies in rich, damp hollows the blue-flowered camassia grows in
such profusion that at a little distance its dense masses appear as
beautiful blue lakes imbedded in the green, flowery plains; while all
about the streams and the lakes and the beaver meadows and the margins
of the deep woods there is a magnificent tangle of gaultheria and
huckleberry bushes with their myriads of pink bells, reinforced with
hazel, cornel, rubus of many species, wild plum, cherry, and crab
apple; besides thousands of charming bloomers to be found in all sorts
of places throughout the wilderness whose mere names are refreshing,
such as linnaea, menziesia, pyrola, chimaphila, brodiaea, smilacina,
fritillaria, calochortus, trillium, clintonia, veratrum, cypripedium,
goodyera, spiranthes, habenaria, and the rare and lovely "Hider of the
North," Calypso borealis, to find which is alone a sufficient object
for a journey into the wilderness.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 65 of 81
Words from 65425 to 66515
of 82482
