The Earth as Modified by Human Action - George P. Marsh

American Forest-Trees.

The remaining forests of the Northern States and of Canada no longer boast the mighty pines which almost rivalled the gigantic sequoia and redwood of California; and the growth of the larger forest-trees is so slow, after they have attained to a certain size, that if every pine and oak were spared for two centuries, the largest now standing would not reach the stature of hundreds recorded to have been cut within two or three generations. [Footnote: The growth of the white pine, on good soil and in open ground, is rather rapid until it reaches the diameter of a couple of feet, after which it is much slower. The favorite habitat of this tree is light, sandy earth. On this soil, and in a dense wood, it requires a century to attain the diameter of a yard. Emerson (Trees of Massachusetts, p. 65), says that a pine of this species, near Paris, "thirty years planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter of three feet." He also states that ten white pines planted at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1809 or 1810, exhibited, in the winter of 1841 and 1842, an average of twenty inches diameter at the ground, the two largest measuring, at the height of three feet, four feet eight inches in circumference; and he mentions another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which at the age of thirty-two years, "gave seven feet in circumference at the but, with a height of sixty-two feet six inches." This latter I suppose to be a seedling, the others TRANSPLANTED trees, which might have been some years old when placed where they finally grew.

The following case came under my own observation: In 1824 a pine-tree, so small that a young lady, with the help of a lad, took it up from the ground and carried it a quarter of a mile, was planted near a house in a town in Vermont. It was occasionally watered, but received no other special treatment. I measured this tree in 1860, and found it, at four feet from the ground, and entirely above the spread of the roots, two feet and four inches in diameter. A new measurement in 1871 gave a diameter of two feet eight inches, being an increase of four inches in eleven years, a slower rate than that of preceding years. It could not have been more than three inches through when transplanted, and up to 1860 must have increased its diameter at the rate of about seven-tenths of an inch per year, almost double its later growth. In 1871 the crown had a diameter of 63 feet.

In the same neighborhood, elms transplanted in 1803, when they were not above three or four inches through, had attained, in 1871, a diameter of from four feet to four feet two inches, with a spread of crown of from 90 to 112 feet. Sugar-maples, transplanted in 1822, at about the same size, measured two feet three inches through. This growth undoubtedly considerably exceeds that of trees of the same species in the natural forest, though the transplanted trees had received no other fertilizing application than an unlimited supply of light and air.] Dr. Williams, who wrote about sixty years ago, states the following as the dimensions of "such trees as are esteemed large ones of their kind in that part of America" [Vermont], qualifying his account with the remark that his measurements "do not denote the greatest which nature has produced of their particular species, but the greatest which are to be found in most of our towns."

He adds a note saying that a white pine was cut in Dunstable, New Hampshire, in the year 1736, the diameter of which was seven feet and eight inches. Dr. Dwight says that a fallen pine in Connecticut was found to measure two hundred and forty-seven feet in height, and adds: "A few years since, such trees were in great numbers along the northern parts of Connecticut River." In another letter, he speaks of the white pine as "frequently six feet in diameter, and two hundred and fifty feet in height," and states that a pine had been cut in Lancaster, New Hampshire, which measured two hundred and sixty-four feet, Emerson wrote in 1846: "Fifty years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in Blandford, Massachusetts, measured, after they were felled, two hundred and twenty-three feet." All these trees are surpassed by a pine felled at Hanover, New Hampshire, about a hundred years ago, and described as measuring two hundred and seventy-four feet. [Footnote: Williams, History of Vermont, ii., p. 53. Dwight s Travels, iv., p. 21, and iii, p. 36. Emerson, Trees of Massachusetts, p. 61. Parish, Life of President Wheelock, p. 56.] These descriptions, it will be noticed, apply to trees cut from seventy to one hundred and forty years since.

Persons, whom observation has rendered familiar with the present character of the American forest, will be struck with the smallness of the diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. Dwight ascribe to trees of such extraordinary height. Individuals of the several species mentioned in Dr. Williams's table are now hardly to be found in the same climate, exceeding one-half or at most two-thirds of the height which he assigns to them; but, except in the case of the oak and the pine, the diameter stated by him would not be thought very extraordinary in trees of far less height, now standing. Even in the species I have excepted, those diameters, with half the heights of Dr. Williams, might perhaps be paralleled at the present time; and many elms, transplanted, at a diameter of six inches, within the memory of persons still living, measure four and sometimes even five feet through. For this change in the growth of forest-trees there are two reasons: the one is, that the great commercial value of the pine and the oak have caused the destruction of all the best—that is, the tallest and straightest— specimens of both; the other, that the thinning of the woods by the axe of the lumberman has allowed the access of light and heat and air to trees of humbler worth and lower stature, which have survived their more towering brethren. These, consequently, have been able to expand their crowns and swell their stems to a degree not possible so long as they were overshadowed and stifled by the lordly oak and pine. While, therefore, the New England forester must search long before he finds a pine fit to be the mast Of some great ammiral, beeches and elms and birches, as sturdy as the mightiest of their progenitors, are still no rarity.

[Footnote: The forest-trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme longevity in the dense woods. Dr. Williams found that none of the huge pines, the age of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty or four hundred years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had noticed trees considerably older. The oak lives longer than the pine, and the hemlock-spruce is perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this latter species, cut within my knowledge in a thick wood, counted four hundred and eighty-six, or, according to another observer, five hundred annual circles. Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly accompanied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not found in the crowded city; and in the tropics, where life is prolific and precocious, it is also short. The most ancient forest-trees of which we have accounts have not been those growing in thick woods, but isolated specimens, with no taller neighbor to intercept the light and heat and air, and no rival to share the nutriment afforded by the soil. The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long experience has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may be cut at sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same species, reared in the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We have often remarked, in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the border of a grove is most developed or enlarged upon the outer or open side, where the branches extend themselves farthest, while the concentric circles of growth are most uniform in those entirely surrounded by other trees, or standing entirely alone."—A. and G. Villa, Necessita dei Boschi pp. 17, 18.]

California fortunately still preserves her magnificent sequoias, which rise to the height of three hundred feet, and sometimes, as we are assured, even to three hundred and sixty and four hundred feet, and she has also pines and cedars of scarcely inferior dimensions. The public being now convinced of the importance of preserving these colossal trees, it is very probable that the fear of their total destruction may prove groundless, and we may still hope that some of them may survive even till that distant future when the skill of the forester shall have raised from their seeds a progeny as lofty and as majestic as those which now exist. [Footnote: California must surrender to Australia the glory of possessing the tallest trees. According to Dr. Mueller, Director of the Government Botanic Garden at Melbourne, a Eucalyptus, near Healesville, measured 480 feet in height. Later accounts speak of trees of the same species fully 500 feet in height. See Schleiden, Fur Baum und Wald, p. 21.

If we may credit late reports, the growth of the eucalyptus is so rapid in California, that the child is perhaps now born who will see the tallest sequoia overtopped by this new vegetable emigrant from Australia.]