The Pines 



trees, for it submits gracefully to a complete change of altitude 

 and location. Seedlings from veteran trees in their native fast- 

 nesses are growing to-day in Eastern nurseries, and thriving 

 on kwns in New England villages. At the Arboretum in Boston 

 the young trees form a narrower pyramid than saplings of P. 

 Strobiis at the same age. No Western pine makes as vigorous 

 growth in the East as this one does. A tree 12 feet high bore 

 several cones last year. The species has long been grown in 

 Europe. 



Great Sugar Pine {P. Lambertiana, Dougl.) A majestic 

 tree, 200 to 220 feet high, 6 to 10 feet through, pyramidal, be- 

 coming flat topped, with spreading, pendulous branches. Bark 

 thick, furrowed, breaking into plates; dark grey, becoming 

 purplish or cinnamon-red. Wood brownish, straight grained, 

 soft, light. Buds pointed, scaly, clustered at tips. Leaves stout, 

 stiff, 3 to 4 inches long, in fives, sheathed, serrate, needle-like, 

 dark green. Floivers much like those of P. Strobiis. Fruits 12 

 to 18 inches long, heavy, scales 2 inches long and i^ inches 

 wide; seeds ripe in second autumn, edible. Preferred habitat, 

 mountain slopes and canon sides. Distribution, coast region in 

 mountains from Oregon into Lower California. Uses: Unsuc- 

 cessful in cultivation; lumber used in carpentry, for doors, blinds, 

 sashes, shingles and in cooperage. Sap yields sugar. 



"The largest, noblest, and most beautiful of all the seventy 

 or eighty species of pine trees in the world " thus writes John 

 Muir, who knows the sugar pine of the Sierras as he knows his 

 other neighbours, the mountains and the glaciers, with which he 

 has kept fellowship all his life. Fortunately these gigantic pines 

 do not go down to the sea, nor overhang the banks of seaward- 

 tending streams to tempt the lumberman. The hungry mills 

 would have swallowed the best of them long ago had not Nature 

 fenced them in by barriers too great to be overpassed, and the 

 Government has now, by the reservation of the Yosemite 

 National Park, insured the preservation of these mighty pines in 

 sufficient number to remind those who visit the region of what 

 all the Sierra forests were before they were laid waste. 



The cones of the sugar pine are the longest known. In 

 spring cone flowers an inch in length stand upright in clusters; 

 they thicken, lengthen and turn down on the coming of the 

 second spring. They are now 2 or 3 inches long, and quite 



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