Читать книгу American Forest Trees - Henry H. Gibson - Страница 39

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Port Orford cedar of the northwestern coast is an interesting member of the cedar group with a very limited range. Specimens are found throughout an area of about 10,000 square miles, but the district moderately heavily timbered does not exceed 300 or 400 miles in area. It lies near Coos bay in southwestern Oregon. The tree is found as far south in California as the mouth of Klamath river, and it was once reported on Mt. Shasta, but it is very scarce there if it exists at all. In the best of its range Port Orford cedar runs 20,000 feet to the acre, and a single acre has yielded 100,000 feet. Trees run from 135 to 175 feet in height and three to seven in diameter. The largest on record were about 200 feet high and twelve in diameter. Few trees of any species have smaller leaves. They often are only one-sixteenth of an inch in length. They die the third year and change to a bright brown. The cones are about one-third of an inch in diameter. Two or four seeds lie under each fertile cone scale, and ripen in September and October. The seeds are one-eighth inch in length, and are winged for flight. The bark of the tree is much thicker than of most cedars, being ten inches near the base of large trees. This ought to protect the trunks against fire but it falls short of expectations. About sixty years ago much of the finest timber was killed by a great fire which swept the region. Some of the dead trunks stood forty years without exhibiting much evidence of decay, and those that fell remained sound many years.

The whole history of this interesting tree, from its first announced discovery by white men until the present time, is embraced in the memory of living men. It had not been heard of prior to 1855. Though fire and storm have destroyed large quantities, it has been estimated that 4,000,000,000 feet of merchantable timber remain, an average of 15,000 feet per acre for an area of 400 square miles. The wood is moderately light, is nearly as strong as white oak, and falls only sixteen per cent below it in stiffness. The annual rings are generally narrow, but distinct. The summerwood is narrow, but dark in color in the heartwood. The medullary rays are numerous and obscure. The wood abounds in odorous resin. The odor persists long after the wood has ceased to be fresh. Workmen in mills where this cedar is cut, and on board of vessels freighted with it, are sometimes seriously affected by the odor. It is reputed to repel insects, and is made into clothes chests, wardrobes, and shelves, with the expectation that moths will be kept at a distance. Several other cedars bear similar reputations.

One of the first uses to which the people of the Pacific coast put Port Orford cedar was boat building. The industry was important at Coos bay at an early day, and vessels constructed there sailed the seas thirty or forty years. Trunks of this cedar turn out a high percentage of clear lumber. The wood takes a good polish, and is manufactured into furniture, doors, sash, turnery, and matches. The latter article is esteemed by many persons for the peculiar odor of the burning wood. It has been found practicable to finish this cedar in imitation of mahogany, oak, and several other cabinet woods. In its natural state it sometimes bears some resemblance to yellow pine, and sometimes to spruce, there being considerable variation in the appearance of wood from different trees. When the visible supply of Port Orford cedar has been cut, the end will be reached, for not much young growth is coming on. Sixty-eight varieties of Port Orford cedar are recognized in cultivation.

Yellow Cedar (Chamæcyparis nootkatensis) describes this tree quite well. The small twigs are of that color, and so is the heartwood. Many give it the name yellow cypress. Others know it as Alaska cypress, Alaska ground cypress, Nootka cypress, or Nootka sound cypress. The name of the species, nootkatensis, was given it by Archibald Menzies, a Scotch botanist who discovered it on the shore of Nootka sound in Alaska.

Yellow cedar’s geographic range extends from southeastern Alaska to Oregon, a distance of 1,000 miles. It does not usually go far inland, and consequently the range is narrow in most places. North of the international boundary the tree seldom reaches an altitude of more than 2,000 or 3,000 feet, but in Washington and Oregon it is occasionally met with at elevations of 4,000 and 5,000 feet. The species reaches its best development on the islands off the coast of southern Alaska and British Columbia, where the air is moist, the winds warm in winter, the rainfall abundant, and the snowfall often deep. Well developed trees under such circumstances are from ninety to 120 feet high, from two to six in diameter. The blue-green leaves remain active two years, and then die, but they do not usually fall until a year later. The presence of the dead leaves on the twigs tones down the general color of the tree crowns.

The cones are about half an inch long and have four, five, or six scales. From two to four seeds lie beneath each scale until September or October when they ripen and escape. Their wings are large enough to carry them away from the immediate vicinity of the parent tree, and reproduction under natural conditions is generally good. Yellow cedar is abundant within its range, but nature has circumscribed its range, and it shows no disposition to pass the boundary line.

The bark is thin and exhibits cedar’s characteristic stringiness. It is shed in thin strips.

The wood is moderately light, and is strong and stiff. It is probably the hardest of the cedars, and the grain is so regular that high polish is possible. Under favorable circumstances trees grow with fair rapidity, but when conditions are unfavorable, as on high mountains where summers are short and winters severe, growth is remarkably slow, and twenty years or more may be required for one inch increase in trunk diameter. The wood of such trees is hard, dense, and strong.

The grain of yellow cedar is usually straight. The bands of summerwood are narrow, the annual rings are indistinct, and an attempt to count them is often attended with considerable difficulty. The wood is easily worked, satiny, susceptible of a beautiful polish, and possesses an agreeable resinous odor. The heartwood is bright, clear yellow, and the thin sapwood is a little lighter in color. In common with all other cedars, yellow cedar resists decay many years. Logs which have lain in damp woods half a century remain sound inside the sapwood. Sometimes fallen timber in that region is quickly buried under deep beds of moss which preserves it from decay much longer than if the logs lie exposed to alternate dampness and dryness.

Statistics of sawmill operations in the Northwest do not distinguish between the different cedars, and the cut of yellow cedar is unknown. It is considerable, but of course not to be compared with the more abundant western red cedar. Statistics of uses are as meager as of the lumber output. In Washington the factories which use wood as raw material report only 7,500 feet of yellow cedar a year. Doubtless much more than that is used, but under other names. There is no occasion to disguise this wood under other names. It has a striking individuality and deserves a place of its own. In some respects it is one of the best woods of the Pacific Northwest. In nearly every situation where it has been tried, it has been found satisfactory. Its rich yellow presents a fine appearance in furniture and interior finish, and the polish which it takes surpasses that possible with any other cedar, with the probable exception of some of the scarce, high mountain junipers. It has been used for pyrography and patterns, two hard places to fill, and for which few woods are suitable. Indians long ago in Alaska learned that it was the best material for boat paddles which their forests afforded. It possesses the requisite stiffness and strength, and it wears to a smoothness almost like ebony. Boat factories have many uses for the wood, decking, railing, and interior finish being among the most important. It is said to be a satisfactory substitute for Spanish cedar in the manufacture of cigar boxes, but its use for that purpose is not yet large.

It is said that occasional exports of this wood go to China where it is finished in imitation of scarce and expensive woods of that country.

Yellow cedar is a wood with a future. Its splendid properties cannot fail to give it a place of no small importance in factories and in general building operations. The supply has scarcely yet been touched, but it cannot much longer remain an undeveloped asset. It is apparently a high-class cooperage material, but it does not seem to have been used much if at all in that industry. The same might be said of it for doors. It is heavier than spruce, white pine, and redwood, but where weight is not a matter for objection, it ought to equal them in all desirable qualities.

In much of its range it is generally exempt from forest fire injury, because its native woods are nearly always too wet to burn.

Rocky Mountain Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) is scattered over the mountains from Dakota and Nebraska to Washington and British Columbia, and southward to western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Except near the Pacific coast, it is usually found at altitudes above 5,000 feet. It clings closely to dry, rocky ridges where it attains a height of thirty or forty feet, and a diameter of three feet or less. The trunk usually divides near the ground into several stems. The bright blue berries ripen the second year. The wood resembles that of red cedar, and is used in the same way, as far as it is used at all. It is not a source of lumber. A little is sawed occasionally on mountain mills, and the lumber is used locally in house building, particularly for window and door frames; but sawlogs are short, and because of their poor form, the output of lumber is negligible. Some of it finds its way into Texas where it is manufactured into clothes chests and wardrobes, and these are sold as red cedar. A choice mountain juniper log, with large, sound heartwood, produces lumber with a delicate grain and is more attractive than red cedar when made into chests and boxes. By habit of growth, it includes patches of white sapwood in the darker heartwood. When these are sawed through in converting the logs into boards, the islands of white wood scattered over the surface produce a unique effect not wanting in artistic value. Some of the other western junipers possess similar characteristics. Sometimes patches of bark are also found imbedded in the interior of the trees.