38 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



which grow in fertile valleys have the means of scattering their seeds 

 miles away; but this bleak mountain tree must drop its seeds on the 

 rocks beneath. In this instance, nature seems more interested in 

 depositing the pine nuts where the hungry squirrels can get them, than 

 in furnishing a planting place for the nuts themselves therefore, tears 

 off their wings before they leave the cone. The battle for existence 

 begins before the seeds germinate, and the struggle never ceases. The 

 tree, in parts of its range, survives a temperature sixty degrees below 

 zero. Its seedlings frequently perish, not from cold and drought, but be- 

 cause the wind thrashes them against the rocks which wear them to pieces. 

 Trees which survive on the great heights are apt to assume strange and 

 fantastic forms, with less resemblance to trees than to great, green 

 spiders sprawling over the rocks. Trees 500 years old may not be five 

 feet high. Deep snows hold them flat to the rocks so much of the time 

 that the limbs cannot lift themselves during the few summer days, but 

 grow like vines. The growth is so exceedingly slow that the new wood 

 on the tips of twigs at the end of summer is a mere point of yellow. 

 John Muir, with a magnifying glass, counted seventy-five annual rings 

 in a twig one-eighth of an inch in diameter. Trunks three and one- 

 half inches in diameter may be 225 years old ; one of six inches had 426 

 rings; while a seventeen-inch trunk was 800 years old, and less than six 

 feet high. Such a tree has a spread of branches thirty or forty feet 

 across. They lie flat on the ground. Wild sheep, deer, bear, and 

 other wild animals know how to shelter themselves beneath the prostrate 

 branches by creeping under; and travelers, overtaken by storms, some- 

 times do the same; or in good weather the sheepherder or the hunter 

 may spread his blankets on the mass of limbs, boughs, and needles, and 

 spend a comfortable night on a springy couch actually sleeping in a 

 tree top within two feet of the ground. In regions lower down, the 

 whitebark pine reaches respectable tree form. Fence posts are some- 

 times cut from it in the Mono basin, east of the Sierra Nevada moun- 

 tains. In the Nez Perce National Forest trees forty feet high have mer- 

 chantable lengths of twenty-four feet. Similar growth is found in other 

 regions. In its best growth, the wood of whitebark pine resembles that 

 of white pine. It is light, of about the same strength as white pine, but 

 more brittle. The annual rings are very narrow; the small resin pas- 

 sages are numerous. The sapwood is very thin and is nearly white. 

 Men can never greatly assist or hinder this tree. It will continue to 

 occupy heights and elevated valleys. 



BRISTLECONE PINE (Pinus aristata) owes its name to the sharp 

 bristles on the tips of the cone scales. It is known also as foxtail pine 

 and hickory pine. The latter name is given, not because of toughness, 



