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Chapter IV Trees, Shrub and Plant Growth
*Please do not assume this content reflects current Forest Service attitudes and/or practices. Neither should it be regarded to represent current scientific knowledge, policies, or practices.
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The ponderosa pine, with its twin sister, the Jeffrey pine, and classed together in local timber vernacular, is the chief lumber tree of the Modoc region. Fine groves of this forest monarch cover the gentler slopes of the Warners from end to end, the entire western half of the Forest, the north end of the Devil's Garden section, and the ranges extending south within the national forest area in Lassen County. The pine stand of the Modoc Forest is part of the same general ponderosa pine forest which covers northeastern California and southern Oregon.
Almost invariably mixed in the stands of ponderosa pine is found the white fir, which continues on to higher elevations than the ponderosa. Many of the north slopes of the Warner Mountains carry pure stands of white fir, the same being true of other parts of the forested area lying above 6,000 feet elevation. A beautiful tree in its youth and prime - and beautiful at any age when viewed from a distance - the white fir has only a fraction of the value of the ponderosa or Jeffrey for lumber purposes, having a tendency to become afflicted with heart rot after reaching maturity. Until recent years this tree has been decidedly unpopular with lumbermen because of the brittleness of its wood and the tendency of its lumber to check when exposed to the weather. Individual white fir trees sometimes reach a height of 125 feet and a breast high, diameter of forty inches. Dense thickets of this shade-loving tree are a common feature of the higher sections of the Modoc landscape.
Commercially akin to the white fir in its unpopularity as a lumber tree is the incense cedar, also found in abundance among the ponderosa and Jeffrey pines in the Modoc area up to elevations of 6,000 feet. With its vivid green foliage it is a beautiful tree at any age. The incense cedar never occurs in pure stands of any scope. A long-lived tree, like the white fir it is very prone to heart rot. It reaches an immense size and is utilized mainly for fence posts. During the eighties when labor was cheap and barb wire scarce and high-priced cowmen in the Happy Camp section built some twenty-five miles of snake fence with rails split from the straight-grained incense cedar, some sections of which still stand today.
In the southwestern part of the Modoc Forest are found a considerable number of sugar pine trees which range north as far as the east slopes of Glass Mountain. While this king of California lumber trees does not grow as prolificly in Modoc as in the main Sierra Nevada Range, such as are found mixed in the ponderosa pine stands often reach heroic proportions, sometimes being as large as sixty inches in diameter and the clean boles containing as much as three or four clear sixteen-foot logs.
The Western juniper is irrevocably tied into Modoc County history and development. On the Devil's Garden District is what is conceded to be the largest unbroken body of Western juniper (Juniperus Occidentalis) in the world, covering some 300,000 acres. Extremely slow-growing, often knotty and tough, the local juniper has furnished posts, poles and fuel for farmers and urban use ever since the county was first settled. Its close-grained wood is extremely durable. Fence posts set in wet valley ground for as long as forty years have been taken up and reset in the same earth to continue no one knows how much longer. Although often grotesquely gnarled and stunted, and usually growing not more than twenty feet high, it extends its giant roots for great distances sometimes along the very surface of rocky ground, establishing a tree growth which often relieves an otherwise barren landscape.
On good sites it will grow symmetrically to a height of forty feet or more and attain a diameter of eighteen to twenty-four inches. It takes possession of rocky flats to crowd up against the more choosy pine trees. One Western juniper, a lone specimen of its kind in a pine stand of timber on the Happy Canyon District, was burned down by a fire in the early thirties. This tree measured almonst ninety feet from roots to tip and thirty-six inches in diameter five feet above its rooty base. Another magnificent juniper specimen in the same district spreads its giant, low-hung branches over almost half an acre of ground. The acrid tasting, bright purple berries with which this tree is loaded, utilized somewhat in other sections, have attained no commercial prominence on the Modoc. There is no record as to what use the Jap[anese people] made of three pounds of juniper berries sent by the Modoc to the Director of the Forest Experiment Station, Keejyo, Chosen, Japan in November 1925 for experimental planting.
Generally the only other tree species found in juniper woodland is the mountain mahogany which probably attains its best growth in the State along the rimrocks of the Modoc Forest. With wood of an iron-like hardness, a straight trunk or branch of more than six or right feet is a novelty. Highly prized for fuel it is cut to a limited extent for this purpose. In some sections mountain mahogany adorns the hillsides in rather regular patches, homesick emigrants of the 1840's recording in their diaries the close resemblance of distance mahogany groves to Eastern apple orchards.
Groups of white-barked quaking aspen are found all through the Modoc Forest, the quivering leaves of this tree presenting a golden glow on the landscape in the fall of the year. In a very gnarled and stunted form this species climbs even the higher slopes, well above the regular timber line.
A fairly extensive stand of lodgepole pine occurs in the extreme north end of the Warner Mountains and the beautiful Western white pine is found occasionally in the same range. Most of the mountain oak trees occurring in the hills around the Big Valley area are little more than overgrown shrubs. The ever-present willow grows in profusion along practically every stream in the Modoc Country, intermingled with the larger cottonwoods. Canyons are choked with the lesser tree growth of such species as wild plum and chokecherry. Practically all the native tree species of the main Sierra Nevada Range except the Sequoias are found more or less in the Modoc National Forest.
The commonest introduced tree species flourishing the valley areas are the poplars, Lombardy, Carolina and the silver variety. The box elder is common. Black walnut, first started in Surprise Valley sixty or seventy years ago, has done well there. Elms of various species are becoming a common shade tree. Covered wagon pioneers brought slips of a gray willow species from their old home in Illinois to Surprise Valley in the middle sixties. About 1917 forest officers began introducing this tree further west and it has since spread over much of the county. A quick growing species, it is locally known as the Barber Willow, after its pioneer importers.
While the chaparral expanses of other sections of California are absent, brushfields which followed fires that destroyed the original timber cover are found here and there throughout the Modoc Forest. Mixed with twisted manzanita, the main species found in such areas is the crawling snowbrush, its green-leaved serpentine branches hugging the ground;-in tangled masses as much as fifteen feet from the parent rootstock. A notable feature of these brushfields is the new timber growth re-establishing itself in the tangled masses of brush by virtue of fire protection during recent decades.
In the Modoc section one can never be far away from the pungent odor of the purple sage, the commonest shrub of the local hills and plateaus. In areas of deep, rich soil, sagebrush reaches almost tree-like proportions in growth. It forms a protective cover for the native bunch grass over a large part of the Modoc ranges. Fraternizing with the sagebrush is found the rabbit brush with its purple gray stems and yellow flowers, hardly distinguishable from the larger sage shrub itself. Because of its immense reaches of the purple sage, a writer of the 1920's visiting Modoc for the first time, said it was "more Nevada than California" and further characterized isolated Modoc as "the land California forgot."
Buckbrush or bitterbrush, dominates almost the entire Modoc Forest area and adjacent wild lands, being found growing in the pine timber as well as on the more open plateaus and hills. It furnishes the principal forage for both wild deer and domestic sheep. The Ribes tribe makes a prolific growth in the region, gooseberry and currant bushes being prevalent over all the Forest's area. When wild currants are ripe, the rather sterile lava bed region is a Mecca for literally myriads of birds of different species. Rather unusual is the occurrence of a large field of chinquapin on the western slopes of Glass Mt. It attains fully as luxuriant a growth in this unusual location as it does in its natural habitat at lower elevations.
Flowers of the Modoc region are many and varied. Almost overnight following the melted snow, fragrant, short-stemmed star anemones appear for a short existence on rocky south slopes. The rocky Devil's Garden country in early spring produces a veritable carpet of wild pansies, pink and red owl clover, yellow primroses and pick shooting stars.
The short-lived pink bleeding heart is followed by the purple cockscomb. Until quite late in the season purple lupine grows in masses all over the landscape and swampy meadows are colored blue with a rank growth of iris. Tall larkspur grows everywhere; skunk cabbage takes possession of the mountain meadows and wild parsnip chokes areas of damp soil. Fern growth is not common in the region and the same may be said of poison oak which is such a dread in some forested areas of the State.
In the earlier months of spring the country is dominated by waving ranks of yellow buttercups and still later the same yellow note is carried by the large showy sunflowers which - forage plants as well - are found growing all over the Forest except in the dense timber. With its delicate blue flowers and slender stems. wild flax covers the warmer and lighter soils of the western part of the Forest. sharing the landscape with the dull red of the Indian paint brush. Massed thickets of wild roses spread their delicate fragrance on the air at the lower elevations. The late John H. Hatton, after an inspection tour of the Modoc Forest in late May one year, wrote "The whole Modoc area is one vast flower garden."