The forest for the trees
Lewis and Clark's evergreens tower over two centuries of change

By Joan Carlin

Look into the treetops. Those soaring spruces, firs, pines, cedars or hemlocks are living links to the captains and the corps. That group took precious time to smell the conifers. Ever the observer, Clark noted them and marveled at the diversity in his journal, even while starving and shivering as he crossed the Bitterroot Range.

From left to right, they are:
Western white pine (Pinus monticola), Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), Mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), Ponderosa pine (pinus ponderosa), Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia), Western red cedar (Thuja plicata), Subalpine fir (Alies lasiocarpa), Grand fir (Abies grandis), Madrone (Arbutus menziesii), Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), Lodgpole pine (Pinus contorta), Engelmann's spruce (Picea engelmannii)

West of those mountains, in Idaho, a world without forests returned. The travelers crossed miles of prairies, then desert before finally reaching the Cascade Range, then the Coast Range. This lush country was thick with more conifers and evergreens they'd never seen: Sitka spruce, madrone, mountain hemlock and other green giants.

Lewis and Clark noted the 12 new evergreen trees for science, illustrated below, as well as 18 deciduous trees and at least a dozen shrubs you could almost call trees. Early on, they appreciated their practical value — expedition members hollowed out canoes from mammoth ponderosa pines and built Fort Clatsop with the hewn logs from the surrounding forest of evergreens. It was a preview of the time when timber would be king in the Northwest and help build the nation.

The logging value of trees, though, is only part of the story. As they did two centuries ago, our many-layered forests clean the air, offer shade, provide wildlife habitat and tie the future with the past. That's worth looking up to.

THE LEGACY GROWS reproduced courtesy of the Oregonian.
These stories originally ran May 24, 2001
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