Stephen F. Arno

I have many tree books in my collection, but this one was one of the earliest I bought. Beautiful pen and ink illustrations of most of the species which make up the magnificent Sierra forest. One of my favorite reads on natural history of the region. There is a two page center spread illustration of a cross section of the mountain range showing the elevation ranges of all the included species. Excellent source of information.

This is basically an extended Wikipedia article about Douglas Firs. It has chapters describing the trees and their life cycles, the history of logging, recent conservation efforts, how indigenous people and colonizers use Douglas Firs, and the role of fire and fire suppression in tree ecology.