94 KESO URGES OF CALIFORNIA. 



eter of twenty, but it rarely exceeds two hundred and ten. 

 The young trees of the sugar-j^ine give early promise of the 

 majesty to which they subsequently attain. They are unmis- 

 takably young giants; even when having a trunk a foot in 

 diameter, their remote and regularly-whirled branches, like the 

 stem covered with a smooth, grayish-green bark, showing 

 that, although so large, the plant is still " in the milk," and 

 has only begun its life of many centuries. The sugar-pine 

 conspicuously exhibits one of the most general and striking 

 characteristics of the conifers — the great development of the 

 trunk at the expense of the branches. Nearly the whole 

 growth is thrown into the trunk, which generally stands with- 

 out a flaw or flexure, a perpendicrilar cone, all its transverse 

 sections accurately circular, sparsely set with branches, Avhich, 

 in their insignificance, seem like the festoons of ivy wreathing 

 about the columns of some ancient ruin. The leaves .are three 

 inches long, dark bluish-green in color, and they grow in 

 groups of five. The foliage is not dense. The cones are large, 

 sometimes eighteen inches long by four thick. The wood is 

 similar to that of the white pine — white, soft, homogeneous, 

 straight-grained, clear, and free-splitting. It furnishes the 

 best lumber in the state for the "inside work" of houses, and 

 is the chief building material used in the Sierra Nevada, where 

 it grows. The tree derives its name from a sweet resin which 

 exudes from the duramen or hard wood of the tree. This 

 resin is sugar-like in appearance, granulation, and taste, and 

 could not be distino-uished from the manna of the drug-stores 

 except })y a slight terebinthine flavor. The pine sugar is ca- 

 thartic. It is found in small quantities only, though it is said 

 one hundred and fifty pounds of it were collected by a man 

 who devoted himself for a few weeks to the business of gath- 

 ering it. 



The Western yellow pine [Pi7ms po7iclerosd) is a noble tree, 

 next in size among the pines of California to the sugar-pine. 

 It sometimes reaches a diameter of seven feet. Its leaves 

 grow in threes at the ends of the branches, giving the foli- 



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