Post 00385
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During the last fifty years repeated fires have swept through Western forests and destroyed vast quantities of timber. As a result of these fires, most species of trees in the West have lost large areas of their territory. There is one species of tree, however, that has, by the very means of these fires, enormously extended its holdings and gained much of the area lost by the others. This species is the lodge-pole pine.
My introduction to this intrepid tree took place in the mountains of Colorado. One day, while watching a forest fire, I paused in the midst of the new desolation to watch the behavior of the flames. Only a few hours before, the fire had stripped and killed the half-blackened trees around me. All the twigs were burned off the tree beneath which I stood, but the larger limbs remained; and to each of these a score or more of blackened cones stuck closely. Knowing but little of trees and being interested in the fire, I paid no attention to these cones until a number of thin, brownish bits, like insects’ wings, came fluttering and eddying easily down from the treetop.
The ashes and the earth around me were still warm, and the air was misty with smoke. Near by, a tall snag and some fallen logs smoked and blazed by turns. Again, a number of these tissue bits came fluttering and whirling lightly down out of the fire-killed treetop. Watching carefully, I saw brown tissue bits, one after another, silently climb out of a blackened cone and make a merry one-winged flight for the earth. An examination of these brown bits showed that they were the fertile seeds of the lodge-pole pine. With heroic and inspiring pioneer spirit, this indomitable tree was sowing seeds, beginning the work of reconstruction while its fire-ruined empire still smoked.