The Pine Family 



127 



8. LODGEPOLE PINE. Pinus Murrayana. Balfour. 



The lodgepole pine is a distinctly western species and usually 

 a tree of the mountains. It is small, slender and graceful ; 

 seldom much more than two feet in diameter and rising at times 

 to a he'ght of one hundred and fifty feet. It has the habit cf 

 growing in dense groves unmixed with any other species. As 

 many of these groves are made up of young trees, the trunks 

 are tall and slender, more resembling the tamarack than other 

 pines. These clean trunks, being of uniform size and very 

 straight, formed the chief source from which the Indians of the 

 west obtained poles' for building their 

 lodges, and hence the name. 



The leaves are yellowish-green, about 

 two inches long, and are distributed along 

 the younger stems. The bark is very 

 thin, gray or brown in color, and covered 

 by small, thin scales. The cones are 

 about two inches long, usually in pairs, 

 near the ends of the branches. They 

 mature in the fall of the second year, but 

 frequently remain on the stem another 

 year, and while they sometimes shed their seed at once, they 

 not infrequently remain closed and the seed has been known to 

 retain vitality for twenty years. 



This is generally a tree of the mountains and their foothills. 

 It covers large areas of mountain slopes from western Alberta 

 almost to the Pacific coast. It also covers a small area in the 

 Cypress Hills in southwestern Saskatchewan. 



In fact it was from this tree that the Cypress Hills derived 

 their name. The French-Canadian voyageurs used the name 

 cypres for the jack pine of the east (pinus Banksiana). As 

 there is a strong resemblance between the two trees, the lodge- 

 pole pine is also often called jack pine and hence cypres or cy- 



FIG. 6. Lodgepole 

 Pine. 



