114 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



the age of a hundred years they are about two 

 feet in diameter and a hundred or more high. 

 They are then very handsome, though very un- 

 like : the sugar pine, lithe, feathery, closely clad 

 with ascending branches ; the yellow, open, 

 showing its axis from the ground to the top, its 

 whorled branches but little divided as yet, 

 spreading and turning up at the ends with mag- 

 nificent tassels of long stout bright needles, the 

 terminal shoot with its leaves being often three 

 or four feet long and a foot and a half wide, the 

 most hopeful looking and the handsomest tree- 

 top in the woods. But instead of increasing, 

 like its companion, in wildness and individual- 

 ity of form with age, it becomes more evenly 

 and compactly spiry. The bark is usually very 

 thick, four to six inches at the ground, and ar- 

 ranged in large plates, some of them on the 

 lower part of the trunk four or five feet long 

 and twelve to eighteen inches wide, forming a 

 strong defense against fire. The leaves are in 

 threes, and from three inches to a foot long. 

 The flowers appear in May : the staminate pink 

 or brown, in conspicuous clusters two or three 

 inches wide ; the pistillate crimson, a fourth of 

 an inch wide, and mostly hidden among the 

 leaves on the tips of the branchlets. The cones 

 vary from about three to ten inches in length, 

 two to five in width, and grow in sessile out- 

 standing clusters near the ends of the upturned 

 branchlets. 



