706 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



species. Intermediate between its lower and its higher belts it produces 

 a little merchantable lumber. The wood is light, soft, medium brittle, 

 of slow growth and with narrow bands of summerwood. The resin 

 passages are large and numerous. The wood, when a choice trunk is 

 found, resembles that of eastern white pine ; but generally the trunks are 

 inferior in size and form. The heartwood is light, clear yellow, the sap- 

 wood nearly white. Trees range in height from thirty to fifty feet, and 

 one to three in diameter. A sawlog ten feet long is about as much as 

 can be had from a trunk, and of course, when compared with commercial 

 trees, it holds a low place ; but in some remote mountain regions it is the 

 principal wood available, and to that extent it is of importance. When 

 green, the wood is very heavy, and sometimes will sink. It is used for 

 posts and in the mines. The farmer seasons posts on the stump. He 

 peels the trees six months before cutting them. They immediately 

 exude resin over the whole peeled surface, and the tree quickly dies. At 

 the end of six months the trunk is seasoned, and is cut for posts. The 

 ends are smeared with resin. Such posts have lasted twenty years with 

 little decay. Railroads make ties of fire-killed limber pine. Charcoal 

 burners use it also. The growing trees resist the fumes of copper smelters 

 better than any other species associated with it. 



PARRY PINON (Pinus quadrifolia). The names by which this tree is known in 

 the region where it grows indicate one of its leading features, a bearer of nuts. It is 

 called nut pine, Parry's nut pine, pinon, and Mexican pinon. The nuts exceed half an 

 inch in length, are reddish -brown, and the wings narrow and small. They cannot 

 carry the nuts far, and the species is not spreading. Reproduction takes place 

 beneath the parent tree, and frequently the old trunk dies without having succeeded 

 in planting a single seed to perpetuate the species. The nuts are nutritious, and are 

 eagerly sought by birds, rodents, and larger animals, including human beings. The 

 cones are seldom two inches long, and the leaves are little more than an inch. They 

 are usually in clusters of four, and fall the third year. The tree's characteristics 

 betray its environment. It is fitted for dry, sterile situations. Its abnormally large 

 seeds provide food for the seedling until it can get its rootlets deep enough in the poor 

 soil to get a start. The Parry pinon's range is confined to the extreme southern 

 part of California and to Lower California where it occupies arid mesas and low 

 mountain slopes. It is common on Santa Rosa mountains, California, at an elevation 

 of 5,000 feet. It is too small to be worth much for lumber, the usual height being less 

 than thirty feet, the trunk diameter from ten to sixteen inches. The wood is medium 

 heavy, weak, low in elasticity, but rather high in fuel value. The annual rings are 

 very narrow, and the thin bands of summerwood are not conspicuous. It is one of 

 the slowest-growing of the pines, and probably it is surpassed in that respect by 

 (odgepole pine alone. Its only uses are fuel, a few fence posts, and small ranch 

 timbers. 



KNOBCONE PINE (Pinus attenuate). This pine is known as prickly-cone pine, 

 sun-loving pine, sunny-slope pine, narrow-cone pine, and knobcone pine. Its leaves 

 are in clusters of three, and are four and five inches long. The cones are from three 

 to six inches long. They often adhere to the branches thirty or forty years, and may 



