EVERGREENS OF COLORADO 5 



common knowledge that campfires should be put out instead of being left 

 to jeopardise the timber and every true sportsman and woodsman can 

 but take pride in practicing such methods in the mountains as shall not 

 endanger the forests, in whose shelter lie the pleasures that he seeks. 



There are richer pastures, however, to be gained from contact with 

 the forests than to make them merely a place in which to hunt or fish 

 or camp. The trees which compose the forests are themselves worthy of 

 our acquaintance. To know the different species by sight or to be able 

 to identify them through careful study is an accomplishment that can 

 but deepen the joy of an outing in the forests of our mountains through 

 the feeling of intimacy and friendliness which comes to us from the trees. 



In the following pages such descriptions of our native evergreens 

 are given as should enable almost anyone to learn their names and char- 

 acteristics. This work is not prepared as a scientific treatise of the 

 subject, but is intended primarily to enable the person without a technical 

 knowledge of botany to become familiar with our trees and thus gain 

 that sympathetic attitude toward them which usually accompanies such 

 knowledge. 



THE EVERGREENS 



Our true forests in Colorado are composed entirely of trees com- 

 monly called Evergreens. By this term we are accustomed to think of 

 such trees as the pines, spruces, cedars, firs, and other of similar botanical 

 characters, but in the southern and tropical forests are to be found trees 

 of widely different characters from these except that they also retain 

 green foliage the year around and in this respect they too are Evergreens. 

 The native evergreen trees of our state, however, all belong to one great 

 and important family, the Coniferae or Pine Family. Most of the mem- 

 bers of this family are trees in stature, comparatively few being shrubs. 

 Among lumbermen they are classed as soft woods, although the hardest 

 woods among them are much harder than some of the so-called hard- 

 woods among the broad-leaf trees. With very few exceptions, the foliage 

 of the trees in the Pine family consists of needle, or awl, or scale-shaped 

 leaves which remain on the twigs during several years, so that the trees 

 are never without living foliage. Exceptions to this rule are found in 

 the bald cypress of the southern states, in the larches of the north and 

 in the Ginkgo or maidenhair fern tree of Japan. But as none of these 

 trees are native to Colorado, all of our trees of the Pine family are true 

 evergreens. 



Another characteristic of the trees in this family is the resinous 

 juice or sap which they possess, and which exudes especially from 

 wounds made in the bark and sap wood of the branches or trunks. This 

 is well illustrated in the blazing of pine or spruce trees in which case 

 the pitch which oozes out, gradually hardens on exposure to the air and 

 forms the material sometimes used as chewing gum. 



The process of turpentine orcharding as practiced in the southern 

 states consists in cutting box-like cavities into the sides of the trunks 

 of certain species of pines and wounding the bark and sapwood for 



