70 USES OF COMMERCIAL WOODS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. 

 In different parts of its range it is known as tamarack, prickly pine, 

 white pine, black pine, spruce pine, tamarack pine, and Murray pine. 



This tree's wide geographical range, covering a million square miles 

 or more, and its persistence in spite of repeated forest fires, make it 

 an important factor in the present and future timber supply. It is 

 not, however, in the first class as a producer of lumber, and probably 

 never will be. It is of very slow growth, and usually a century or 

 more is required to produce a trunk large enough for a saw log. Its 

 chief value probably will be found in its ability to supply crossties, 

 fence posts, mine props, telephone poles, and similar small timbers. 

 The growth in its extensive range is by no means uniform, but is 

 thick in some districts and very scattering in others. 



Lodgepole pine profits by forest fires, even though its thin bark 

 affords so little protection against heat that a moderate fire passing 

 through a forest of this species frequently makes a clean sweep of all 

 the timber. But nature has provided this tree with the means of 

 perpetuating its species in spite of fire ; in fact, the very fire that kills 

 a lodgepole pine forest is a powerful agent in causing a new growth 

 to spring up and take the place of the old. 1 The tree is a prolific 

 seeder. It begins to produce fertile seeds when less than 10 years 

 old and it continues to do so for two or three centuries, provided it 

 is not killed in the meantime by fire. 



The cones hang on the trees many years; the scales are sealed to- 

 gether with resin and the seeds are usually unable to escape. Fire 

 softens the resin and the seeds fall out. They are not easily damaged 

 by heat, though the cones may be severely singed, and the scorched 

 cones hang on the fire-killed trees until the seeds have time to fall 

 upon the mineral soil left bare by the fire. The following spring 

 numerous seedlings cover the ground as many as 138,000 having 

 been estimated for a single acre. More than 17,000, 3 feet high, have 

 been counted on a single acre. All of them can not grow to maturity, 

 but after 80 or 90 per cent have been crowded to death the survivors 

 still make a thick stand of tall, slender poles. They grow slowly to 

 trees, and under favorable circumstances the best of them finally 

 make saw logs. Nearly or all of the pure lodgepole pine stands 

 occupy old burns. The tree reproduces to a small extent on unburned 

 soil, but it can barely hold its own there. 



The belief that the cones never open except after a fire is errone- 

 ous, but they open slowly and during several years, and when the 

 seeds fall they are nearly all picked up by squirrels and birds. A 

 forest fire assists reproduction in another way than by baring the 

 vegetable soil and showering seeds upon it it destroys the rodents, 



1 The Life History of Lodgepole Burn Forests, Forest Service Bulletin 79. 



