Western Yellow Pine

If you know your West at all, you know its Yellow Pine. It is found in every western state and parts of Canada and Mexico, from near to sea level in Washington to 10,000 feet in Arizona. In general, it chooses the life-zone that ecologists call the Arid Transition-the very range of conditions that man himself finds most agreeable and the eastern tourist most exhilarating. So the Yellow Pine grows most abundantly in the West's prime "vacation-land" as the travel posters call it. Its dry and spacious groves invite you to camp among them. Its shade is never too thin and never too dense. Its great boles and boughs frame many of the grandest views, of snow-capped cones, Indian-faced cliffs, nostalgic mesas, and all that brings the world to the West's wide door. Untold millions, for example, have taken that ride by train or car from Williams, Arizona, to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, through the flickering light and shade of the Western Yellow Pines. Wide-spaced as if planted in a park, stately of trunk, with colorful orange or cinnamon or buff-yellow bark, the Pines of that fine plateau are all of this one species. And they look so unlike any other Western tree that there is no mistaking them.If you get out of your car, you discover that no conifers are finer than these for a walk beneath their boughs-so ample and open their groves, so clean the forest floor of all save needles and grass and pungent sagebrush, with here and there a fleck of wildflower red or blue-some bugler pentstemon or lupine with its pouting lip. And the voice of these Pines is a grand native chanty. "Of all pines," thought John Muir, "this one gives forth the finest music to the winds." If you have been long away from the sound of the Western Yellow Pine, you may, when at last you hear it again, close your eyes and simply listen, with what deep satisfaction you cannot explain, to the whispered plain-song of this elemental congregation.

And you will breathe again, with a long, glad inhalation, the clean incense of these groves, which is nothing so cloying or seductive as a perfume. It is an aroma, resinous and timbered, that pervades much of the life of all the west, and many towns, like Bend, Oregon, and Flagstaff, Arizona are perpetually steeped in its wholesome, zestful odor. Indeed, the town of Flagstaff takes its name from the incident, on the Fourth of July, 1876, when a group of scouts stripped a lofty pine of its branches and "with suitable ceremony" raised the American flag upon it, with rawhide strings. With time the gigantic flagpole became a landmark of the trail, known from Santa Fe to San Francisco. "Travelstraight West, stranger, till you come to that flagstaff," immigrants used to be told. "There's a good spring there, and it's warm alongside that mountain, and a good place to camp."1 Of all Western Pines this one is the most light-loving and light-giving. Its needles, of a rich yellow-green, are burnished like metal. When the shadowless summer winds come plowing through the groves, waving the supple arms and twigs, the long slender needles stream all one way in the current, and the sunlight-astronomically clear and constant-streaks up and down the foliage as from the edge of a flashing sword. Then, when the wind is still and the trees stand motionless in the dry heat, a star of sunlight blazes fixedly in the heart of each strong terminal tuft of needles. Each tree bears a hundred such stars, each clump of Yellow Pines a thousand, and the whole grove blazes like a temple with lighted sconces for some sacred day. The groves of Western Yellow Pine cover an area of 1,000,000 square miles on this planet's surface! And no tree that grows, and few works of man, one feels, could satisfactorily replace an acre of this, the foremost lumber Pine of all the West. Deeprooted, aromatic and sparkling, the forest stands exultant, with the mule deer bounding through its aisles and overhead the ravens, jet and stertorous, cruising the timber from canyon rim to snowy range.

The Western Yellow Pine is a tree gregarious in high degree. It will associate with other species on occasionPiñon in the south, Lodgepole in the north and, more grudgingly, with Douglas Fir where sea winds blow. It tolerates the red-trunked Incense Cedar in the Sierra Nevada. and the White Fir, many-tiered and fragrant, in the Rockies. But best it likes to grow alone, to see nothing but its kindred to the horizon. It is not fastidious as to geology and soil, will thrive upon limestone or basalt, gravel or sandy clay-loam, or endure with little soil at all on cliffs and rocks. It mounts the cinder cones of the West's not longdead volcanoes and gives shade even on the pitiless malpais, the pumice rock of old lava flows. It springs up freely on burned-over lands, but is seldom or never a true alpine tree. The great altitudes to which it goes in the southern Rockies are still squarely in the temperate zone. The preferred habitat of this great tree is on level or rolling land. Even in the Sierra Nevada, it elects the floors of the U-shaped valleys carved out by glaciers, and, in the Rockies, silted-up beaver ponds. Over a great part of its range it is found on the high plains of the interior, or on those lofty plateaux that the Westerner prefers to call mesas -taking from the Spanish pioneers the word for table. Most

Of this area is located deep in the interior of the country, where the summers are very dry. Indeed, as you travel through a vast forest of Yellow Pine in midsummer, when the air is like a furnace breath and the bunch grass is withered to straw, you marvel that trees of such size can grow under such desertic conditions. Yet remember that the winters have a heavy snowfall and the melt in spring does not run readily off these level lands; most of it sinks to the subsoil and is captured by the extensive root systems of this tree. No Pine has a more efficient equipment of roots, for it is deep and in its branchings almost as extensive as the limbage of the crown. So, searching for water, the roots and rootlets expand in an inverted hemisphere until they meet the subterranean competition of another Yellow Pine. So the mighty trees hold each other at a distance in those parklike groves that characterize it. And mighty this tree certainly is. In the more arid Rocky Mountain states it does not grow so high as on the Pacific coast. Sixty to 125 feet is usual for mature specimens in the Rockies, with a diameter, at breast height, of 20 to 30 inches. On the coast, where the growth is much denser, owing to the greater precipitation brought from the Pacific by the prevailing westerlies, it is still greater in all its dimensions. Near Lapine, Oregon, one specimen was found to be 162 feet high, and 27 feet in circumference around the trunk. In Washington State, on the south slopes of that perfect, snow-capped cone, Mount Adams, stands a Yellow Pine 175 feet high, and 84 inches in diameter. But John Muir measured one tree 220 feet high, in the Sierra Nevada, with a diameter of 8 feet. With such a magnificent physique, its great plates of bark 4 and 5 feet long, its boles soaring, almost without taper till the lowest branches are reached, For 60 feet and more, its short heavy crowns of foliage, and the prodigious spread of its middle branches, well does this species merit the name of ponderosa given it by David Douglas when that famous Scottish explorer of the Northwest wilderness first made it known to science. But even before his day, it had been distinguished and admired by Lewis and Clark in their immortal journey from the mouth of the Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia and back. It first came to their attention when they noted "pine burrs," borne on the swift current of the White River where it reaches the Missouri in what we now call South Dakota. Lewis, if not a trained botanist, was a keen observer, and he seems to have recognized that these were not such cones as he knew in his native Virginia; they promised great forests, somewhere far in the mysterious interior, and indeed we know now that they came from some of those outlying stands of Western Yellow Pine found on the high plains of westernmost Nebraska, or else from the Black Hills. The explorers, as they toiled up the Missouri into western Montana, undoubtedly collected specimens of the new Pine, which they speak of in their journal as the "longleaf pine," but unfortunately those specimens were damaged beyond salvation when they were buried at the foot of the Lemhi pass, and only those collected on the return journey were ever brought back to civilization. One of these was a specimen of Pinus ponderosa taken in 1800 near present-day Orofino, Idaho, where the canoes were abandoned and horses mounted for the crossing of the continental divide. It was Meriwether Lewis's intention to publish his extensive notes on natural history, and had he done so he might have named this great Pine, but violent death cut short one of the most promising careers in American his"... it is turned to almost every purpose to which pine lumber anywhere can be put..."

tory. His natural history notes were completely passed over when the expedition journals were first published; his specimens were shuffled through by Frederick Pursh, the botanist, in search of novelties, but so superficially that this Pine was not even recognized as distinct and so, just as Lewis's friend Thomas Jefferson feared, it fell to foreigners to rediscover and name far too many of his pioneering "finds."

But the discovery and naming of a tree are small matters compared with the impressive story of the living tree itself, a monarch that expects to reign (man and fire and beetle permitting) for 250 to 500 years. A seedling just starting life has come even so far by a series of lucky accidents, for the seeds are a favorite with numberless animals like quails, squirrels, chipmunks, grouse, and those gray crows known as camp-robbers or nutcrackers. Even so, provident chipmunks are sometimes the friends of Yellow Pine reproduction. On the dry pumice soils of the upper Deschutes basin in Oregon, for instance, as much as 85% of the seedlings come up in chipmunk caches that have either been forgotten by these little scatterbrains or have been left as a legacy by the demise of one of these misers. Foresters found one such hoarding in which 29 seedlings had sprung up, and similar clumps dotted the volcanic barrens. For some reason chipmunk-sown clumps are far more likely to survive drought in their early years than windsown trees falling singly on the bitter waste. Where an old tree has fallen and then been burned in a ground fire, perfect hedgerows, 25 to 75 feet long, of Yellow Pine seedlings will spring up, fertilized by the minerals in the ash.

The seedling is cruelly subject to heaving of the soil by frosts, to nipping by late spring frosts, to the long summer drought characteristic of most of the West, to browsing by mule deer which, in season, make it their favorite food. Bushes afford the youngster much protection from sun and wind so that sagebrush, bitterbrush, and squaw-carpet are its nurses in youth. Later, Lodgepole Pines afford it protection without seeming to compete seriously with it as parent Yellow Pines would do.

The first effort of the little tree is to put down a taproot. This will be 7 to 12 inches long, while above ground only 2 or 3 inches of growth will be made by the shoot in the first year. But the second year more of a top is formed, and by the time it is eight years old the young tree will be about a foot and four inches high-a slow growth. Indeed, few first-class lumber Pines grow so slowly as this one unless it finds unusually favorable conditions such as prevail in the Sierra Nevada and the west slopes of the Cascades. Broadly speaking, Yellow Pine grows very slowly for the first 10 or 15 years; but for the next 75 or 100 years the growth is fairly rapid; exceptional trees will increase 2 feet in height a year and 1½ inches in diameter. At the age of 150 years the increment has fallen off almost completely; the tree is now mature and prime for lumbering, for from this point on only breakage and decay can be expected, in progressive amounts.

In its fiftieth year or so a Yellow Pine reaches sexual maturity; flowers at last are borne, and cones in abundance; old trees bear few cones, though the seeds are viable as ever. Time too brings many changes in appearance. The bark of young boles is often furrowed, with slender blackish ridges, the inner bark in the crevices showing somewhat orange or yellowish. Lumbermen call this "blackjack," as though it were a different kind of tree. But "blackjack" bark gradually changes until it assumes those great smooth plates, some-times 4 or 5 feet long by 18 inches wide, that give the old trees such a noble look. No other Western Pine approaches this one in the thickness, the smoothness, the bright color of its bark. Only in the Pines of the gulf states does one see the same sort of plated bark, on the Longleaf, Loblolly, and Shortleaf Pines. And this is for the very good reason that our Western Yellow Pine belongs to the same section (Australes) of the genus Pinmus as do those southern trees, while no other Western Pines do so, except the Jeffrey Pine. The long needles, too, remind one of the Longleaf Pine, and there is some similarity in the wood, so that the Western and Southern Yellow Pines compete fiercely in the eastern lumber markets.

times 4 or 5 feet long by 18 inches wide, that give the old trees such a noble look. No other Western Pine approaches this one in the thickness, the smoothness, the bright color of its bark. Only in the Pines of the gulf states does one see the same sort of plated bark, on the Longleaf, Loblolly, and Shortleaf Pines. And this is for the very good reason that our Western Yellow Pine belongs to the same section (Australes) of the genus Pinmus as do those southern trees, while no other Western Pines do so, except the Jeffrey Pine. The long needles, too, remind one of the Longleaf Pine, and there is some similarity in the wood, so that the Western and Southern Yellow Pines compete fiercely in the eastern lumber markets.

That wood, which lumbermen prefer to call Ponderosa or even (the better to entice you) Ponderosa "White" Pine, makes a very high-grade lumber at its best-fine-grained and so light and soft-textured that it sometimes passes for true White Pine and is often so marketed. It is turned to almost every purpose to which Pine lumber anywhere can be put. In the Northwest many houses are built entirely of Yellow Pine-even the shingles, floors, trim, paneling, doors, and sashes and frames for windows. It is exported, even by the high expense of rail haul, all the way to the eastern states as a general all-purpose factory material in the production of stock sizes of doors, sash, finish, shelving, bevel and drop siding, pattern material, and rustic ceiling and flooring. Much of the "knotty Pine" so much in favor at present is Yellow Pine; it is known from Western White Pine paneling by its brownish, not dark reddish, knots.

In the early days of Western settlement this wood was extensively employed for mine props and stulls and in some localities it met the whole demand. Quartz mills for crushing the ore from the mines utilized Yellow Pine for fuel, and a single mine would strip hundreds of acres of forest in a few years, to feed its uproarious stamp mills. Early railroads like the Denver and Rio Grande laid the rails of their heroic engineering through the Rockies on ties of Yellow Pine, and others set them in the sod of the high plains, in the days when buffalo were stopping the first trains and top-pling the telegraph posts of Yellow Pine as they scratched their hides against them. Time has shown that Ponderosa is not durable in contact with the soil unless treated with preservatives and, in case of a fire in a mine, its resins, when superheated, gave off gases that exploded. Its future is all above ground.The high cost of exporting Ponderosa by rail has The caused the operators to do their own drying and seasoning. When they had developed the kiln-dried process close to perfection, their industrial chemists improved on even that by inventing the solvent method, as it is called. The moisture content of inch-thick Ponderosa sapwood planks can be reduced to 9% by 10 hours of chemical treatment in cylindrical extractors. At the same time almost all the resin is extracted, leaving a wonderfully light, pale board.

The outlook for Ponderosa Pine as a timber tree is good for a long time to come; that is to say, we are far from the end of it. But we are also far from bringing the rate of cut and of losses by fire, insects, and overgrazing into balance with the rate of reproduction. To be sure, the stand of merchantable timber is great, with 185,441,000,000 board feet. It thus ranks third in the country, exceeded only by Douglas Fir and the southern Yellow Pines. In cut, it ranks fourth-3,650,000,000 board feet a year. But the annual gross growth or replacement is only half as much as the yearly cut. One reason for this is the serious toll taken by insect damage. The Pine butterfly and the Pandora moth in their caterpillar stages defoliate the trees. The Pine-engraver beetles destroy young growth, and the Western Pine beetle and other coleoptera attack the bark. Laws and insecticides are arrayed against these insects, but their depredations are not halted yet.

Ground fire is calamitous to young trees and regarded with too much indifference by the population because the flames never break into terrifying crown fires endangering lives and homes. Worse still is overgrazing. Cattle and sheep raisers were well established in the West before lumbering or forestry became common; they think of their rights as an eminent domain, something wrested by their own efforts from the Indians and practically assured by the Constitution. And the open, usually rather flat groves of the Western Yellow Pine, with their grass cover but little shrubby undergrowth, seem to the stockman as if made for grazing by a God who loves the cowboy. Scientific studies show, however, that heavy browsing by stock is one of theby stock is one of the