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The Douglas spruce, libocedrus, sequoia, and the silver fir are also more or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and hollow and down-plunging ravine.
Here, too, in the middle region of deepest cañons are the grandest forest-trees, the Sequoia, king of conifers, the noble Sugar and Yellow Pines, Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, and the Silver Firs, each a giant of its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its species and in the size and beauty of its trees.
The rain brought out the colors of the woods with delightful freshness, the rich brown of the bark of the trees and the fallen burs and leaves and dead ferns; the grays of rocks and lichens; the light purple of swelling buds, and the warm yellow greens of the libocedrus and mosses.
Of the conifers the species are as follows: yellow pine, pinus ponderosa; Jeffrey pine, pinus jeffreyi; sugar pine, pinus lambertiana; lodge-pole pine, pinus murrayana; white pine, pinus monticola; digger pine, pinus sabiniana; white-bark pine, pinus albicaulis; red fir, pseudotsuga taxifolia; white fir, abies concolor; Shasta fir, abies magnifica; patton hemlock or alpine spruce, tsuga pattoniana; incense cedar, libocedrus decurrens; western juniper, juniperus occidentalis; yew, taxus brevifolia.
In its prime the whole tree is thatched with them, but if you would see the libocedrus in all its glory you must go to the woods in midwinter when it is laden with myriads of yellow flowers about the size of wheat grains, forming a noble illustration of Nature's immortal virility and vigor.
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.
Libocedrus, on the other hand, appears to have cast in its lot with the Sequoias. Two species, according to Heer, were with them in Spitzbergen. L. decurrens, the incense cedar, is one of the noblest associates of the present redwoods. But all the rest are in the southern hemisphere, two at the southern extremity of the Andes, two in the South-Sea Islands.
The most constant companion of this species is the Yellow Pine, and a worthy companion it is. The Douglas Spruce, Libocedrus, Sequoia, and the White Silver Fir are also more or less associated with it; but on many deep-soiled mountain-sides, at an elevation of about 5000 feet above the sea, it forms the bulk of the forest, filling every swell and hollow and down-plunging ravine.
The shafts of the pine and libocedrus were brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well tinged with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale undersides of their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and then there was many a dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and jet of vivid crimson from the bark of the madroños, while the ground on the hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the groves, displayed masses of pale purple and brown.
His food consists of grass-seeds, berries, hazel-nuts, chinquapins, and the nuts and seeds of all the coniferous trees without exception, Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus, Juniper, and Sequoia, he is fond of them all, and they all agree with him, green or ripe. No cone is too large for him to manage, none so small as to be beneath his notice.