TREES REMEMBERED AND REMEMBERING 



G. HARRIS COLLINGWOOD 



Long before Maine became known 

 as the Pine Tree State, before the men 

 who accompanied De Soto complained 

 of Florida as "cumbersome with woods 

 and bogs/' before Columbus and his 

 intrepid crew from three little wooden 

 ships knelt in reverent thankfulness on 

 the shores of San Salvador Island in 

 the Caribbean Sea, before Leif Ericson 

 and his Norsemen set sail from the 

 North Atlantic coast of an uncharted 

 continent with a cargo of timbers for 

 Greenland, there were, among the 

 seemingly limitless forests of what is 

 now known as North America, many 

 of the same giant sequoias that now 

 tower above their giant associates in 

 isolated areas of the western slopes of 

 the continent. Today, after more than 

 three centuries of exploitation and de- 

 velopment, few other trees are stand- 

 ing that may be said to "remember" 

 any of those adventurous explorers. 

 The sequoias could recall them all. 



Were Columbus and his crew to re- 

 turn to see what has happened to the 

 new land they discovered 457 years 

 ago, they might find among perhaps a 

 dozen varieties of trees some indi- 

 viduals that were standing when the 

 discovery was reported to their royal 

 patrons. These are the hardy, long- 

 lived ones of more than a thousand 

 tree species that inhabit this country. 



Along the east coast a few of the 

 original southern cypress or the bald- 

 cypress still stand but very few. Some 

 of the biggest eastern hemlock could 

 probably look that far back, as could 

 also a few of the Carolina hemlock, in 

 isolated coves of the Great Smoky 

 Mountains. This is the tree that the 

 late Charles Sprague Sargent described 

 as America's most beautiful conifer. 

 Among the broadleaved hardwoods 

 they would find early companions only 

 among the white oaks and post oaks, 

 with possibly a rare old sassafras tree. 

 Beyond the Great Plains, of whose ex- 



istence those explorers had not the 

 slightest shadow of information, they 

 would find a larger variety and many 

 more individual trees. 



Extensive forests of Douglas-fir in 

 Washington and Oregon include trees 

 whose size in 1492 exceeded that of 

 many present-day trees whose trunks 

 are harvested and hauled to a sawmill. 

 Among them, extending in more or 

 less pure stands through British Co- 

 lumbia to the Alaskan coast, are larch, 

 Engelmann spruce, noble fir, western 

 redcedar, Sitka spruce, and Alaska- 

 cedar, whose size and growth rings at- 

 test their age. But the biggest trees 

 then, as well as now, were two varieties 

 of sequoia : Sequoia gigantea, the big- 

 tree or giant sequoia of California's 

 high Sierra, and Sequoia sempervirens, 

 the coast redwood, whose magnificent 

 fluted columns rise high into the Pa- 

 cific fog near the coast of northern 

 California and southwestern Oregon. 



Those trees, and more particularly 

 the two sequoias with their associates, 

 are part of an amazing heritage that 

 has contributed immeasurably to the 

 economy, political structure, and spir- 

 itual outlook of this Nation. The ex- 

 tent to which they and all other forest 

 trees can continue to help support the 

 national welfare depends on the fore- 

 sight and efforts of the men and women 

 who now inhabit this broad land. 



During four centuries and more, 

 while man has pressed with accelerat- 

 ing force upon the natural resources 

 of the continent, forests that seemed a 

 cumbersome burden to the early pio- 

 neers have become an asset whose con- 

 tribution is only beginning to be fully 

 recognized. As men and women jour- 

 neyed across the land, broke the soil, 

 and built towns, political needs made 

 necessary division of the country into 

 States, each with an identifying name. 



Each State has characteristics, pecu- 

 liarities, and resources that give rise to 



