CHAPTER XI 



CONIFEROPHYTES— CONIFERALES 



The description of all the previous groups has been a description 

 of phyla which have had their origin, rise, culmination, and decline 

 in far away geological eras, with the cycads and Ginkgo as their only 

 surviving remnants. 



In the Coniferales we have a group which, although many of its 

 members have become extinct, is still the dominant forest-maker of 

 the world. The previous groups have belonged almost exclusively 

 to warm climates. The Coniferales extend from the arctic to the 

 antarctic circle, with a good representation in the tropics, and reach- 

 ing their greatest display where the winters are so severe that the 

 branches droop with snow and ice. 



The immense dinosaurs of the Triassic and Jurassic reached their 

 maximum size, and, at its culmination, became extinct. There have 

 been trees, some of them very large, ever since the Devonian; but 

 none of them even approached the size of some of the gigantic coni- 

 fers of today. Probably, without protection, the Sequoias, especially 

 Sequoia gigantea, would be on the way to extinction. Gigantism, in 

 both animals and plants, leads to extinction. 



In the Northern Hemisphere, members of the Abietaceae form 

 immense forests. Formerly, Pinus strobus, the white pine, was a 

 dominant lumber tree, but the forests have been cut so ruthlessly, 

 without adequate provision for reforesting, that this lumber has be- 

 come too expensive for most of its previous uses. Pseudotsuga 

 taxifolia, the Douglas fir, is the principal lumber tree of western 

 North America. The Long-Bell Lumber Company cut 2,000,000 feet 

 of lumber a day, but such efficient reforesting is under way that 

 there is no danger of any scarcity in the future. In Canada, 400 acres 

 of forest are cut every week to supply paper for one newspaper, the 

 Chicago Tribune. 



No other place in the world has such an interesting display of 

 conifers as the western part of the United States. 



217 



