THE PINES 231 



of seven thousand feet. Short, stiff leaves in clusters 

 of two or three, dark green, ridged, stout, often persist 

 for eight or nine years. The tree is a broad compact 

 pyramid; in age, dense, round-topped, with stout branch- 

 lets and abundant globose cones. Each scale covers two 

 seeds, wingless, about the size of honey locust seeds, oily, 

 sweet, nutritious and of delicious flavor. This is the 

 pine nut par excellence, whose newest market is among 

 confectioners and fancy grocers throughout the states. 



The one-leaved nut pine (P. monopliylla, Torr.), spreads 

 like an old apple tree, and forms alow, round-topped, pictur- 

 esque head, its lower limbs drooping to the ground. The 

 reduction of the leaves in the clusters to lowest terms, gives 

 the tree a starved look, and the eighteen or twenty rows of 

 pale stomates on each leaf give the tree-top a ghostly pal- 

 lor. The vigor of the tree is expressed in its abundant 

 fruit, short, oblong, one to two inches in length, with rich 

 plump brown seeds upon which the Indians of Nevada and 

 California have long depended. The wood supplies fuel 

 and charcoal for smelters; and this stunted tree, rarely 

 over twenty feet in height, forms nut orchards for the 

 aborigines and the scattered population of whatever 

 race, between altitudes of five and seven thousand feet. 

 From the western slopes of the Wasatch Mountains of 

 Utah, it ranges to the eastern slopes of the southern 

 Sierra Nevada, to their western slopes at the head waters of 

 King's River, and southward to northern Arizona and to 

 the mountains of southern California. 



John Muir savs: 



"It is the commonest tree of the short mountain ranges 

 of the Great Basin. Tens of thousands of acres are cov- 



