Douglas Fir Trees

Douglas Fir trees abound along the coastal northwest mountains, Cascade mountains, and Olympic mountains.  I have four such beautiful Douglas Fir trees in my own backyard in Vancouver, Washington.  

"From the decks of the Pringle the foliage of the Douglas Fir appeared yellow-green in the sunlight but dark, almost black when shaded.  The broad lower branches dropped gently, the upper branches curved up at the tips, and the crowns formed perfect pyramids.  The boles were seen to be very straight and of great size.  Even from a distance the men were struck by the symmetry of the massive cinnamon-brown columns.  When the ship anchored at Discovery Bay and the party went ashore and into the forest, they were awed by the trees' height and by the thickness of the furrowed bard, sometimes a foot through to sapwood.  They measured fallen trees and found them 250 to 280 feet long and twelve to fourteen feet through at the butt." 1853, "The Last Wilderness," Murray Morgan 1955, p. 55

While visiting Nisqually Forest Industry Nursery in 1950, a seed harvesting nursery, Murry Morgan writes:
"A Douglas Fir cone contains from twenty to eighty seeds: a bushel of cones, when dried and threshed, will yield from four ounces to a pound of seed.  Each pound of threshed Douglas fir seed contains forty thousand potential trees."  ...  After holding a fifty pound bag of Douglas fir seeds, Murray writes: "For a moment I will never forget, I stood in the dim office with the rain beating on the roof, and I held in my hands the seed of two million Douglas firs--the forest that our children's children's children will see growing on the slopes of the Olympics."

I enjoyed reading the following book:

The Last Wilderness: A History of the Olympic Peninsula.  By Murray Morgan (1916-2000).  University of Washington Press, 1955, 2019, 262 pages.  Mr. Morgan was an author of 21 books, a newspaperman, and historian.  His storytelling is engaging, lively, and filled with personal accounts of the people who lived and worked in the Olympic Peninsula.  Logging and fishing were the mainstays since 1850 for settlers, and now tourism is a key economic contributor.  

Douglas Fir - Wikipedia

Murry writes about the Indians of the Olympic Peninsula and their thoughts about the forest resources:

"The water that falls on the western slopes means wealth to--the wealth of the rain forest.  The Indians believed that the forest was made from the bodies of those who lived on the land in the Time Before Everything Changed.  Once, they said, there was no wood in the land, nothing but grass and sand, so Those Who Changed Things decided the Indians would need fuel.  They went out changing people.  To one they said, "You are old and your heart is dry; you will make good kindling wood, for your grease has turned hard and will make pitch.  Your name is Do-ho-dupt, and you shall be the spruce tree, which when it grows old, will make dry wood always."  To another: "Your name is Kla-ka-bupt, and you shall be the hemlock, with your sour smell."  Those Who Changed Things knew the people would want some harder wood--so: "Kwahk-sa-bupt, you of the strong muscles and firm flesh, you shall be the alder.  You, Kla-ahik-tle-bupt, are tough and strong, and you shall be the yew tree, and people will use you to make wedges for splitting logs.  And the people will need soft wood for canoes, so you, Lla-ae-sook, the young-old man, shall be the cedar."  To Dopt-ko-bupt they said "You shall be the crab-apple, and since you have a bad temper you shall bear sour fruit."  And the trees grew and endured."
-  Murray, 1955, p. 6

  

This week I camped at a yurt at Pacific Beach State Park.  It is 31 miles from Lake Quinault via the Moclips highway.  Lake Quinault is the gateway to the Quinault Rain Forest in the Olympic National Park.  Very dramatic scenery in this area.  Seacoast, rivers, dense forests, mountains, lakes ....

"Douglas fir, the dominant tree on the Olympic Peninsula, has also been called Oregon pine, red pine, Puget Sound pine, Oregon spruce, red spruce, Douglas spruce, red fir, yellow fir, Oregon fir, and spruce fir.  Its scientific name, Pseudotsuga taxifolia, is a compound of Greek, Japanese, and Latin, and means "false hemlock with foliage like yew."  David Douglas (1799-1834), the Scottish botanist and explorer who is honored by its popular name, describe the tree in his field books as "one of the most striking and truly graceful objects in nature."  Then he added prophetically, "The wood may be found very useful for a variety of domestic purposes."
-  Morgan Murray, p. 55

Four Days in Grayland
By Michael P. Garofalo