the john muir exhibit - writings - the_yosemite - chapter 7
The Yosemite
Chapter 7
The Big Trees
[
Webmaster's Note
:
The "Big Tree"
is now known as the giant sequoia,
Sequoiadendron giganteum
(see page 122 of
The Jepson Manual:
Higher Plants of California
,
James C. Hickman, editor,
University of California Press,
1993)
]
Between the heavy pine and silver fir zones towers the Big Tree (Sequoia
gigantea), the king of all the conifers in the world, "the noblest of
the noble race." The groves nearest Yosemite Valley are about twenty
miles to the westward and southward and are called the Tuolumne, Merced
and Mariposa groves. It extends, a widely interrupted belt, from a very
small grove on the middle fork of the American River to the head of Deer
Creek, a distance of about 260 miles, its northern limit being near the
thirty-ninth parallel, the southern a little below the thirty-sixth. The
elevation of the belt above the sea varies from about 5000 to 8000 feet.
From the American River to Kings River the species occurs only in small
isolated groups so sparsely distributed along the belt that three of
the gaps in it are from forty to sixty miles wide. But from Kings River
south-ward the sequoia is not restricted to mere groves but extends
across the wide rugged basins of the Kaweah and Tule Rivers in noble
forests, a distance of nearly seventy miles, the continuity of this part
of the belt being broken only by the main cañons. The Fresno, the
largest of the northern groves, has an area of three or four square
miles, a short distance to the southward of the famous Mariposa grove.
Along the south rim of the cañon of the south fork of Kings River there
is a majestic sequoia forest about six miles long by two wide. This is
the northernmost group that may fairly be called a forest. Descending
the divide between the Kings and Kaweah Rivers you come to the grand
forests that form the main continuous portion of the belt. Southward
the giants become more and more irrepressibly exuberant, heaving their
massive crowns into the sky from every ridge and slope, waving onward in
graceful compliance with the complicated topography of the region. The
finest of the Kaweah section of the belt is on the broad ridge between
Marble Creek and the middle fork, and is called the Giant Forest. It
extends from the granite headlands, overlooking the hot San Joaquin
plains, to within a few miles of the cool glacial fountains of the
summit peaks. The extreme upper limit of the belt is reached between the
middle and south forks of the Kaweah at a height of 8400 feet, but the
finest block of big tree forests in the entire belt is on the north fork
of Tule River, and is included in the Sequoia National Park.
In the northern groves there are comparatively few young trees or
saplings. But here for every old storm-beaten giant there are many in
their prime and for each of these a crowd of hopeful young trees and
saplings, growing vigorously on moraines, rocky edges, along water
courses and meadows. But though the area occupied by the big tree
increases so greatly from north to south, here is no marked increase
in the size of the trees. The height of 275 feet or thereabouts and a
diameter of about twenty feet, four feet from the ground is, perhaps,
about the average size of what may be called full-grown trees, where
they are favorably located. The specimens twenty-five feet in diameter
are not very rare and a few are nearly three hundred feet high. In
the Calaveras grove there are four trees over 300 feet in height, the
tallest of which as measured by the Geological Survey is 325 feet. The
very largest that I have yet met in the course of my explorations is
a majestic old fire-scarred monument in the Kings River forest. It is
thirty-five feet and eight inches in diameter inside the bark, four
feet above the ground. It is burned half through, and I spent a day
in clearing away the charred surface with a sharp ax and counting the
annual wood-rings with the aid of a pocket lens. I succeeded in laying
bare a section all the way from the outside to the heart and counted a
little over four thousand rings, showing that this tree was in its prime
about twenty-seven feet in diameter at the beginning of the Christian
era. No other tree in the world, as far as I know, has looked down on so
many centuries as the sequoia or opens so many impressive and suggestive
views into history. Under the most favorable conditions these giants
probably live 5000 years or more though few of even the larger trees are
half as old. The age of one that was felled in Calaveras grove, for the
sake of having its stump for a dancing-floor, was about 1300 years, and
its diameter measured across the stump twenty-four feet inside the bark.
Another that was felled in the Kings River forest was about the same
size but nearly a thousand years older (2200 years), though not a very
old-looking tree.
So harmonious and finely balanced are even the mightiest of these
monarchs in all their proportions that there is never anything overgrown
or monstrous about them. Seeing them for the first time you are more
impressed with their beauty than their size, their grandeur being in
great part invisible; but sooner or later it becomes manifest to the
loving eye, stealing slowly on the senses like the grandeur of Niagara
or of the Yosemite Domes. When you approach them and walk around them
you begin to wonder at their colossal size and try to measure them. They
bulge considerably at the base, but not more than is required for beauty
and safety and the only reason that this bulging seems in some cases
excessive is that only a comparatively small section is seen in near
views. One that I measured in the Kings River forest was twenty-five
feet in diameter at the ground and ten feet in diameter 220 feet above
the ground showing the fineness of the taper of the trunk as a whole. No
description can give anything like an adequate idea of their singular
majesty, much less of their beauty. Except the sugar pine, most of their
neighbors with pointed tops seem ever trying to go higher, while the big
tree, soaring above them all, seems satisfied. Its grand domed head
seems to be poised about as lightly as a cloud, giving no impression
of seeking to rise higher. Only when it is young does it show like
other conifers a heavenward yearning, sharply aspiring with a long
quick-growing top. Indeed, the whole tree for the first century or
two, or until it is a hundred or one hundred and fifty feet high, is
arrowhead in form, and, compared with the solemn rigidity of age, seems
as sensitive to the wind as a squirrel's tail. As it grows older, the
lower branches are gradually dropped and the upper ones thinned out
until comparatively few are left. These, however, are developed to a
great size, divide again and again and terminate in bossy, rounded
masses of leafy branch-lets, while the head becomes dome-shaped, and is
the first to feel the touch of the rosy beams of the morning, the last
to bid the sun good night. Perfect specimens, unhurt by running fires or
lightning, are singularly regular and symmetrical in general form though
not in the least conventionalized, for they show extraordinary variety
in the unity and harmony of their general outline. The immensely strong,
stately shafts are free of limbs for one hundred end fifty feet or so
The large limbs reach out with equal boldness a every direction, showing
no weather side, and no other tree has foliage so densely massed, so
finely molded in outline and so perfectly subordinate to an ideal type.
A particularly knotty, angular, ungovernable-looking branch, from five
to seven or eight feet in diameter and perhaps a thousand years old,
may occasionally be seen pushing out from the trunk as if determined to
break across the bounds of the regular curve, but like all the others
it dissolves in bosses of branchlets and sprays as soon as the general
outline is approached. Except in picturesque old age, after being struck
by lightning or broken by thousands of snow-storms, the regularity of
forms is one of their most distinguishing characteristics. Another is
the simple beauty of the trunk and its great thickness as compared with
its height and the width of the branches, which makes them look more
like finely modeled and sculptured architectural columns than the stems
of trees, while the great limbs look like rafters, supporting the
magnificent dome-head. But though so consummately beautiful, the big
tree always seems unfamiliar, with peculiar physiognomy, awfully solemn
and earnest; yet with all its strangeness it impresses us as being more
at home than any of its neighbors, holding the best right to the ground
as the oldest strongest inhabitant. One soon becomes acquainted with new
species of pine and fir and spruce as with friendly people, shaking
their outstretched branches like shaking hands and fondling their little
ones, while the venerable aboriginal sequoia, ancient of other days,
keeps you at a distance, looking as strange in aspect and behavior among
its neighbor trees as would the mastodon among the homely bears and
deers. Only the Sierra juniper is at all like it, standing rigid and
unconquerable on glacier pavements for thousands of years, grim and
silent, with an air of antiquity about as pronounced as that of the
sequoia.
The bark of the largest trees is from one to two feet thick, rich
cinnamon brown, purplish on young trees, forming magnificent masses
of color with the underbrush. Toward the end of winter the trees are
in bloom, while the snow is still eight or ten feet deep. The female
flowers are about three-eighths of an inch long, pale green, and grow
in countless thousands on the ends of sprays. The male are still more
abundant, pale yellow, a fourth of an inch long and when the pollen is
ripe they color the whole tree and dust the sir and the ground. The
cones are bright grass-green in color, about two and a half inches long,
one and a half wide, made up of thirty or forty strong, closely-packed,
rhomboidal scales, with four to eight seeds at the base of each. The
seeds are wonderfully small end light, being only from an eighth to a
fourth of an inch long and wide, including a filmy surrounding wing,
which causes them to glint and waver in falling and enables the wind to
carry them considerable distances. Unless harvested by the squirrels,
the cones discharge their seed and remain on the tree for many years. In
fruitful seasons the trees are fairly laden. On two small branches one
and a half and two inches in diameter I counted 480 cones. No other
California conifer produces nearly so many seeds, except, perhaps, the
other sequoia, the Redwood of the Coast Mountains. Millions are ripened
annually by a single tree, and in a fruitful year the product of one of
the northern groves would be enough to plant all the mountain ranges in
the world.
As soon as any accident happens to the crown, such as being smashed off
by lightning, the branches beneath the wound, no matter how situated,
seem to be excited, like a colony of bees that have lost their queen,
and become anxious to repair the damage. Limbs that have grown outward
for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward to
assist in making a new crown, each speedily assuming the special form of
true summits. Even in the case of mere stumps, burned half through, some
mere ornamental tuft will try to go aloft and do its best as a leader
in forming a new head. Groups of two or three are often found standing
close together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown
on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a
former generation. They are called "loving couples," "three graces,"
etc. When these trees are young they are seen to stand twenty or thirty
feet apart, by the time they are full-grown their trunks will touch and
crowd against each other and in some cases even appear as one.
It is generally believed that the sequoia was once far more widely
distributed over the Sierra; but after long and careful study I have
come to the conclusion that it never was, at least since the close of
the glacial period, because a diligent search along the margins of the
groves, and in the gaps between fails to reveal a single trace of its
previous existence beyond its present bounds. Notwithstanding, I feel
confident that if every sequoia in the Range were to die today, numerous
monuments of their existence would remain, of so imperishable a nature
as to be available for the student more than ten thousand years hence.
In the first place, no species of coniferous tree in the Range keeps
its members so well together as the sequoia; a mile is, perhaps, the
greatest distance of any straggler from the main body, and all of those
stragglers that have come under my observation are young, instead of old
monumental trees, relics of a more extended growth.
Again, the great trunks of the sequoia last for centuries after they
fall. I have a specimen block of sequoia wood, cut from a fallen tree,
which is hardly distinguishable from a similar section cut from a living
tree, although the one cut from the fallen trunk has certainly lain on
the damp forest floor more than 380 years, probably thrice as long. The
time-measure in the case is simply this: When the ponderous trunk to
which the old vestige belonged fell, it sunk itself into the ground,
thus making a long, straight ditch, and in the middle of this ditch a
silver fir four feet in diameter and 380 years old was growing, as I
determined by cutting it half through and counting the rings, thus
demonstrating that the remnant of the trunk that made the ditch has lain
on the ground more than 380 years. For it is evident that, to find
the whole time, we must add to the 380 years the time that the vanished
portion of the trunk lay in the ditch before being burned out of the
way, plus the time that passed before the seed from which the monumental
fir sprang fell into the prepared soil and took root. Now, because
sequoia trunks are never wholly consumed in one forest fire, and those
fires recur only at considerable intervals, and because sequoia ditches
after being cleared are often left unplanted for centuries, it becomes
evident that the trunk-remnant in question may probably have lain a
thousand years or more. And this instance is by no means a late one.
Again, admitting that upon those areas supposed to have been once
covered with sequoia forests, every tree may have fallen, and every
trunk may have been burned or buried, leaving not a remnant, many of the
ditches made by the fall of the ponderous trunks, and the bowls made by
their upturning roots, would remain patent for thousands of years after
the last vestige of the trunks that made them had vanished. Much of this
ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood-action of
overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no inconsiderable portion
would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive
action; for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost
imperishable. Now these historic ditches and root-bowls occur in all the
present sequoia groves and forests, but, as far as I have observed, not
the faintest vestige of one presents itself outside of them.
We therefore conclude that the area covered by sequoia has not been
diminished during the last eight or ten thousand years, and probably not
at all in post-glacial time. Nevertheless, the questions may be asked:
Is the species verging toward extinction? What are its relations to
climate, soil, and associated trees?
All the phenomena bearing on these questions also throw light, as we
shall endeavor to show, upon the peculiar distribution of the species,
and sustain the conclusion already arrived at as to the question of
former extension. In the northern groups, as we have seen, there are
few young trees or saplings growing up around the old ones to perpetuate
the race, and inasmuch as those aged sequoias, so nearly childless,
are the only ones commonly known the species, to most observers, seems
doomed to speedy extinction, as being nothing more than an expiring
remnant, vanquished in the so-called struggle for life by pines and firs
that have driven it into its last strongholds in moist glens where the
climate is supposed to be exceptionally favorable. But the story told by
the majestic continuous forests of the south creates a very different
impression. No tree in the forest is more enduringly established in
concordance with both climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhere--on
moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses, and in the deep, moist
alluvium of meadows with, as we have seen, a multitude of seedlings and
saplings crowding up around the aged, abundantly able to maintain the
forest in prime vigor. So that if all the trees of any section of the
main sequoia forest were ranged together according to age, a very
promising curve would be presented, all the way up from last year's
seedlings to giants, and with the young and middle-aged portion of the
curve many times longer than the old portion. Even as far north as the
Fresno, I counted 536 saplings and seedlings, growing promisingly upon
a landslip not exceeding two acres in area. This soil-bed was about
seven years old, and had been seeded almost simultaneously by pines,
firs, libocedrus, and sequoia, presenting a simple and instructive
illustration of the struggle for life among the rival species; and it
was interesting to note that the conditions thus far affecting them have
enabled the young sequoias to gain a marked advantage. Toward the south
where the sequoia becomes most exuberant and numerous, the rival trees
become less so; and where they mix with sequoias they grow up beneath
them like slender grasses among stalks of Indian corn. Upon a bed of
sandy floodsoil I counted ninety-four sequoias, from one to twelve feet
high, on a patch of ground once occupied by four large sugar pines which
lay crumbling beneath them--an instance of conditions which have enabled
sequoias to crowd out the pines. I also noted eighty-six vigorous
saplings upon a piece of fresh ground prepared for their reception by
fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of the sequoia, also furnishes the
bare ground required for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is,
however, furnished in sufficient quantities for the renewal of the
forests without the aid of fire--by the fall of old trees. The soil is
thus upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one
that falls.
It is constantly asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly
wetter than now, and that the increasing drought will of itself
extinguish the sequoia, leaving its ground to other trees supposed
capable of flourishing in a drier climate. But that the sequoia can and
does grow on as dry ground as any of its present rivals is manifest in
a thousand places. "Why, then," it will be asked, "are sequoias always
found only in well-watered places?" Simply because a growth of sequoias
creates those streams. The thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every
sequoia grove he will find running water, but it is a mistake to suppose
that the water is the cause of the grove being there; on the contrary,
the grove is the cause of the water being there. Drain off the water
and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees, and the streams will
vanish. Never was cause more completely mistaken for effect than in the
case of these related phenomena of sequoia woods and perennial streams.
When attention is called to the method of sequoia stream-making, it will
be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the ground,
forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rain and melting
snow, only allowing it to ooze and flow gently. Indeed, every fallen
leaf and rootlet, as well as long clasping root, and prostrate trunk,
may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of storm-clouds, and
dispensing it as blessings all through the summer, instead of allowing
it to go headlong in short-lived floods.
Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of sequoias are growing
thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain
pines to rifts in granite precipices, and since it has also been shown
that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is
an effect of their presence, instead of a cause of their presence, then
the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near
approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater
moisture, are seen to be erroneous.
The decrease in rain and snowfall since the close of the glacial period
in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. The highest
post-glacial water-marks are well preserved in all the upper river
channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring flood-marks
of the present; showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease
has taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial
Sierra streams since they came into existence. But, in the meantime,
eliminating all this complicated question of climatic change, the plain
fact remains that the present rain and snowfall is abundantly sufficient
for the luxuriant growth of sequoia forests. Indeed, all my observations
tend to show that in a prolonged drought the sugar pines and firs would
perish before the sequoia, not alone because of the greater longevity of
individual trees, but because the species can endure more drought, and
make the most of whatever moisture falls.
Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be
interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the Range, then instead of
increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the rainfall
is less, it should diminish. If, then, the peculiar distribution of
sequoia has not been governed by superior conditions of soil as to
fertility or moisture, by what has it been governed?
In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the
only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those
portions of the general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare
toward the close of the glacial period when the ice-sheet began to break
up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin of the
San Joaquin, and trying to account for the absence of sequoia where
every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occurred to me that
this remarkable gap in the sequoia belt fifty miles wide is located
exactly in the basin of the vast, ancient mer de glace of the San
Joaquin and Kings River basins which poured its frozen floods to the
plain through this gap as its channel. I then perceived that the next
great gap in the belt to the northward, forty miles wide, extending
between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, occurs in the basin of the
great ancient mer de glace of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus basins; and
that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves occurs in
the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced. The wider the ancient
glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the sequoia belt.
Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins of the Kaweah
and Tule, I discovered that the sequoia belt attained its greatest
development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the
region, the ground had been best protected from the main ice-rivers that
continued to pour past from the summit fountains long after the smaller
local glaciers had been melted.
Taking now a general view of the belt, beginning at the south we see
that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down the
valleys of Kern and Kings Rivers by the lofty protective spurs outspread
embracingly above the warm sequoia-filled basins of the Kaweah and Tule.
Then, next northward, occurs the wide sequoia-less channel, or basin of
the ancient San Joaquin and sings River mer de glace; then the warm,
protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves; then the sequoia-less
channel of the ancient Merced glacier; next the warm, sheltered ground
of the Merced and Tuolumne groves; then the sequoia-less channel of the
grand ancient mer de glace of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus; then the
warm old ground of the Calaveras and Stanislaus groves. It appears,
therefore, that just where, at a certain period in the history of the
Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the sequoia is, and just where the
glaciers were, there the sequoia is not.
But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial
history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was
more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial
epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed,
they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species
is probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast
antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in
species and individuals,--comparing our Sierra Giant and Sequoia
sempervirens of the Coast Range, the only other living species of
sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described
by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which flourished over vast areas in the
Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories, during tertiary
and cretaceous times--then, indeed, it becomes plain that our two
surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits of
California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to species and
individuals, and that they may be verging to extinction. But the verge
of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have a breadth of tens of
thousands of years, not to mention the possible existence of conditions
calculated to multiply and re-extend both species and individuals.
There is no absolute limit to the existence of any tree. Death is due to
accidents, not, as that of animals, to the wearing out of organs. Only
the leaves die of old age. Their fall is foretold in their structure;
but the leaves are renewed every year, and so also are the essential
organs wood, roots, bark, buds. Most of the Sierra trees die of disease,
insects, fungi, etc., but nothing hurts the big tree. I never saw one
that was sick or showed the slightest sign of decay. Barring accidents,
it seems to be immortal. It is a curious fact that all the very old
sequoias had lost their heads by lightning strokes. "All things come to
him who waits." But of all living things, sequoia is perhaps the only
one able to wait long enough to make sure of being struck by lightning.
So far as I am able to see at present only fire and the ax threaten the
existence of these noblest of God's trees. In Nature's keeping they
are safe, but through the agency of man destruction is making rapid
progress, while in the work of protection only a good beginning has been
made. The Fresno grove, the Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves are
under the protection of the Federal Government in the Yosemite National
Park. So are the General Grant and Sequoia National Parks; the latter,
established twenty-one years ago, has an area of 240 square miles and is
efficiently guarded by a troop of cavalry under the direction of the
Secretary of the Interior; so also are the small General Grant National
Park, estatblished at the same time with an area of four square miles,
and the Mariposa grove, about the same size and the small Merced and
Tuolumne group. Perhaps more than half of all the big trees have been
thoughtlessly sold and are now in the hands of speculators and mill men.
It appears, therefore, that far the largest and important section of
protected big trees is in the great Sequoia National Park, now easily
accessible by rail to Lemon Cove and thence by a good stage road into
the giant forest of the Kaweah and thence by rail to other parts of the
park; but large as it is it should be made much larger. Its natural
eastern boundary is the High Sierra and the northern and southern
boundaries are the Kings and Kern Rivers. Thus could be included
the sublime scenery on the headwaters of these rivers and perhaps
nine-tenths of all the big trees in existence. All private claims
within these bounds should be gradually extinguished by purchase by the
Government. The big tree, leaving all its higher uses out of the count,
is a tree of life to the dwellers of the plain dependent on irrigation,
a never-failing spring, sending living waters to the lowland. For every
grove cut down a stream is dried up. Therefore all California is crying,
"Save the trees of the fountains." Nor, judging by the signs of the
times, is it likely that the cry will cease until the salvation of all
that is left of Sequoia gigantea is made sure.
Writings of John Muir
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