FORESTS OF THE PACIFIC COAST 



dominant species of the Sierran forest belt are re- 

 sponsible. The tallest of all pines is the five-needled 

 sugar pine. The finely checked bark of its great 

 trunk, its cones, twelve to twenty inches long, and 

 pendulous from the tips of the unequal, horizontally 

 spreading arms in the top of the crown, make the 

 tree a never-failing object of interest. 



Conifers in general are characterized by cone- 

 like crowns, and divergence from this type of archi- 

 tecture attracts attention. The crowns of the Big Tree 

 are always rounded and the tops of nearly all old 

 trees have been struck by lightning. Again, no two 

 sugar pine crowns are exactly alike. These two 

 species, then, scattered among the uniform conifer- 

 ous tops of the other species break their monotony, 

 and give to every place in the Sierran forest where 

 they grow an air of individual interest and local 

 habitation. 



The most common forest species in the Sierras 

 is the western yellow pine, which everywhere shows 

 its heavy three-needled foliage and' its splenaid 

 yellow trunks checked into huge plates. These 

 smooth plates, often three to six feet long and one 

 to two feet wide, and the ovoid cones of this tree, 

 four to six inches long, readily characterize the 

 species. At higher altitudes the closely related 

 variety, or, as most foresters would have it, species, 

 Finns jeffreyi, shows beautiful wine-colored trunks 

 and cones nearly twice as large. In common asso- 

 ciation with the yellow pine is the incense cedar, 

 characterized by its arborvitae-like foliage, and the 

 white fir with its very much elongated narrow 

 crown and horizontally stratified sprays of foliage. 

 The trunk of the former is suggestive of a Big Tree 

 trunk, but the color is a duller, browner red. The 

 trunk bark of the latter is whitish, as it is inside 

 when checked with a knife or axe; in this way it 

 may be distinguished from that splendid fir of 

 higner altitudes, the red fir, which shows a reddish 

 trunk bark, almost blood red when chipped. The 

 bark is very thick in all these typical Sierran species 

 and this structure in connection with the open 

 stand, shows marked adaptations to long-continued 

 fire conditions through primitive times. 



All the characteristic Sierran species (including 

 the high altitude Pinus albicaulis and Jnniperns 

 occidentalis) may be seen by travelers entering the 

 State over the Central Pacific route, excepting only 

 the Big Tree. Over the Shasta route the more char- 

 acteristic species may also be seen. By far the 

 most extensive and in many ways the finest ex- 

 amples of Sequoia gigantea are to be looked for in 



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