244 TREES 



tains, in the white glaring sunshine of the interior plateaus 

 and plains, and on the borders of mirage-haunted deserts, 

 volcanoes, and lava beds, — waving its bright plumes in 

 the hot winds undaunted, blooming every year for cen- 

 turies, and tossing big ripe cones among the cinders and 

 ashes of nature's hearths." {John Muir,) 



The Scrub Pine 



P. contortay Loud. 



The scrub pine is the humble parent of one of the splen- 

 did Western lumber pines, whose description comes under 

 its varietal name. Down the coast of Alaska, usually in 

 sphagnum bogs, on sand-dunes, in tide-pools and deep 

 swamps to Cape Mendocino, the indomitable, altogether- 

 admirable scrub pine holds its own against cold, salt air 

 and biting arctic blasts. No matter how stunted, gnarly 

 and round-shouldered these trees are, one thing they do, 

 often when only a few inches high: they hear cones, and 

 keep them for years; and each season add more. Up 

 from the sea the scrub pine climbs, ascending the Coast 

 Ranges and western slopes of the Cascade Mountains, 

 changing its habit to a tree twenty to thirty feet tall with 

 thick branches and dark red-brown bark, checked into 

 oblong plates. Gummy exudations of this pitch pine 

 make it peculiarly liable to running fires. Thousands 

 of acres are destroyed every summer, but they seize the 

 land again and soon cover it with the young growth. 

 This happens because the burned trees drop their cones, 

 which open and set free the seeds which have never lost 

 their vitality. 



In all the vast region over which this vagi'ant tree 



