Conservation Reader

by Harold W. Fairbanks

A forest of great trees in the Sierras, near the Yosemite Valley.

Scattered over portions of the valley were oak trees, giving it the appearance of a park. When the valley had been passed the pioneers climbed the last mountain range, and from this range looked down upon the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Here they found forests again, some of the trees being of enormous size. Thus we see that the eastern part of the continent was nearly all forested, but that in the West the forests grew chiefly on the mountains, because there is not enough rainfall upon the plains and in the valleys.

The trees that make up most of the forests of our country are of two very different kinds. There is one kind that has narrow or needle-like leaves which they keep through the winter. These we commonly call narrow-leaved trees or conifers. The most important of the narrow-leaved trees are the pines, firs, spruces, and hemlock. Such trees form the forests of the greater part of the highlands of the northern and northeastern parts of our country. The pines also find a congenial home upon the lowlands of the Southern states. Trees of the second kind have broad leaves, and usually their wood is rather hard. Hence we call them broad-leaved or hardwood trees. Since most of these trees drop their leaves in winter, we often speak of them as deciduous trees. By far the larger part of the lands of the Eastern states that are now cultivated were found by the first settlers to be covered with hardwood trees. We are familiar with many of the hardwoods through their use in furniture and various household utensils and farm implements. The most important varieties are the walnut, hickory, chestnut, beech, maple, ash, oak, elm, locust, and linden.

There are not many broad-leaved trees in the forests of the West. The children of the West miss all the nut trees that the boys and girls of the East enjoy. But to make up for this lack there are some in the West that are not found in the East. The sugar pine, the piñon pine, and the digger pine afford delicious nuts which once formed an important article of food for the Indians. In the West the broad-leaved trees do not form dense forests. They are scattered among the pines on the lower mountain slopes, in the valleys, and along the streams. The most important of these trees are oaks of many kinds, soft maple, alder, cottonwood, sycamore, and laurel.

The dense forests of the Western mountains consist almost wholly of narrow-leaved trees. Among them are the pines and firs of different kinds, spruce, cedar, redwood, and "big trees." The redwoods and "big trees" are both known as sequoias; they grow to an immense size upon the mountains of California. The coniferous forests of which these trees form a part are among the most wonderful and interesting ones on the earth.

If you will take a forest map of our country and place it beside a rainfall map, you will quickly discover why the forests are found where they are. You will see that the forests are found where there is more than thirty inches of rain each year, except in the far North, where it is very cold. You can say, then, that the climate is the chief thing that determines where the forests shall grow.

George J. Young

Mountain hemlocks, which John Muir considered the most beautiful of all conifers.

If the climate is warm and the rainfall heavy, the forest vegetation is so dense and rank that you can hardly travel through it. Such forests are found in the tropical parts of the country. Where little rain falls there is scanty vegetation, as upon the deserts of the Southwest. But where it is very cold, even if there is much snow or rain, you will find no trees.