"Ocian in view! O! The joy"
— William Clark, Nov. 7, 1805
Look all around. From our old-growth desert to coastal forest, the Northwest is home to a wealth of botanical finds

By Jolene Krawczak
Photos by Joan Carlin,
The Oregonian

SAGEBRUSH
(Artemisia tridentata)

Then: Ubiquitous in Eastern Oregon and Washington deserts; important ceremonial plant to American Indians.
Noted and collected: On the Columbia River just below Celilo Falls, April 20, 1806.
Now: Remains a symbol of the West. It calls to mind desolate, wide-open spaces and independence. The ranchers of the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s co-opted the image for their movement. Native Americans negotiated treaty rights to collect it.

In movies, television and books sagebrush paints the Western desert. But this icon of wide-open spaces is being pinched: People move onto its range, seed rustlers interrupt nature's course, weeds out-compete it.

UMATILLA — We call it the high desert and are coming to realize the land in Eastern Oregon and Washington is part of a fragile and threatened ecosystem. In 1806 on the journey home, Lewis appreciated the same country and called it "a beautiful seen... particularly pleasing after having been so long imprisoned in mountains and these almost impenetrably thick forrests of the seacoast."

As he passed through the high desert, Lewis wrote several times about sagebrush, calling it "southern wood" and "the aromatic shrub." On April 26, 1806, he wrote that he had preserved specimens of the three common shrubs in the area, which would have included sagebrush, but no specimens of sagebrush exist in the Lewis & Clark Herbarium.

The same fate seems to have befallen sagebrush in the modern West. Sagebrush as part of old-growth desert is disappearing from the shrub steppe region of the Columbia Basin. Invasive plants, fire-management practices that have altered the natural fire pattern, agriculture, programs to improve grazing for livestock, development and even seed rustlers threaten sagebrush.

Yet sagebrush is a vital food source and habitat for many animals, including antelope, deer, elk and the rapidly vanishing sage grouse and pygmy rabbit.

Last year a fire on the 362,000-acre Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington destroyed much of the nation's largest remaining shrub steppe habitat that included some old sagebrush as well as less mature sagebrush.

All across the West, other devastating fires wiped out even more sagebrush. The fires drove up demand for sagebrush seed for replanting efforts to nearly $16 a bulk pound. Ironically, in an effort to cash in on the seed demand, sagebrush rustlers destroyed even more mature sagebrush by cutting off seed-laden limbs rather than shaking off seeds. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials confiscated 5,000 pounds of illegally clipped sagebrush on Hanford Reach National Monument last year.

Efforts to save the West's sagebrush and the shrub steppe are growing. Private conservation groups such as the Nature Conservancy are buying shrub steppe land to preserve, and government agencies are working to save existing shrub steppe and establish new sagebrush habitat on farm land.

Public awareness is growing, too. In last year's Hanford fire, firefighters dug a fire line to save a stand of old-growth sagebrush — a move that would not have even occurred to most people a few decades ago.

This spring, some of the sagebrush — which has long survived natural fires — is resprouting and giving hope.

"There's definitely still lots of sagebrush out there," says Curt Soper, director of conservation for the Nature Conservancy of Washington, "and with the good rain we've had this year, we're seeing good regeneration in the burned areas."

COTTONWOOD
(Populus deltoides occidentalis)

Then: Different species, all proving very useful, encountered all along the trip, including the Northwest's black cottonwood. They appreciated the shade it offered. They constructed Fort Mandan, N.D., with it, burned it for heating and cooking, and hollowed it out for canoes. Horses were fed the bark by Native Americans.
Noted and collected: Remarked on it throughout the journey; three varieties include narrowleaf (June 12, 1805), plains (unknown) and black (June 1806).
Now: Hybrids bred from cottonwoods epitomize the new forest of farmed trees for a quick, renewable harvest.

All along the Columbia River grow commercial hybrid poplar plantations - 60,000 acres in Washington and Oregon combined - ready to harvest for pulp and paper in seven years.

CLATSOP COUNTY — Gary Bergseng of Puget Island spends his days working the ferry boat that travels back and forth across the Columbia River between Westport and Cathlamet, Wash., about 20 miles east of Astoria.

Each trip, the ferry passes Puget Island, which is packed with Fort James paper company's hybrid poplars. Bergseng uses the poplars to mark the changing seasons, and even the passing years. He knows the trees are harvested after seven years for pulp and paper. When planted within the next five years, the newest poplars will be left to grow 12 years, will reach 100 feet and then will be used for solid wood and veneer.

Drive farther east along Interstate 84 between Pendleton and Umatilla and it's hard to miss the tree farm in the middle of the desert. Boise Cascade's hybrid poplars — the fastest growing tree in America — are planted in tight rows that stretch 20 miles long and four miles deep, broken by an occasional field crop.

Farms of hybrid poplars, a cross between native black cottonwood and other cottonwoods, can be found all along the Columbia River — 60,000 acres and growing in Washington and Oregon combined.

All this attention is quite a change for the lowly cottonwood. The tree has long suffered a bad reputation as a messy nuisance with weak wood.

But crossing cottonwoods results in a stronger hybrid poplar that makes excellent pulp and paper. They are also ecological cleaning machines, sucking pollutants from the air and contaminants and chemical solvents from the soil, though exactly how is still a mystery to scientists. Hybrid poplars' deep, fast-growing roots can stabilize eroded hillsides, and some cities, such as Woodburn, have planted hybrid poplars to treat excess waste water from sewage treatment plants.

Lewis and Clark had a similar change of heart about cottonwood. The explorers noted the tree from the beginning to the end of their trip. Early in the journey, Lewis did not hold the cottonwood in high esteem. "The wood is... soft spungey and light... (and) is not durable nor do I know any other valuable purpose which it can answer," he wrote. But as the expedition progressed, they used cottonwood for canoes and even built Fort Mandan, N.D., their winter home in 1804, entirely of cottonwood.

Unfortunately, the native Plains cottonwoods, like the ones the expedition used in North Dakota, are disappearing.

The death of the native cottonwoods is tied to the damming of the Missouri River, says Forest Bird, community forestry coordinator for the North Dakota Forest Service. Dams have prevented natural flooding, which created the sandbars cottonwoods needed to root.

In response, the Forest Service works to preserve old cottonwoods and has grown 500 seedlings from cottonwoods 250 to 300 years old — trees Lewis and Clark would have paddled by — to plant along North Dakota's Missouri River for the Lewis and Clark bicentennial.

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