94 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
eter of twenty, but it rarely exceeds two hundred and ten. 
The young trees of the sugar-pine give early promise of the 
majesty to which they subsequently attain. They are unmis- 
takably young giants; even when having a trunk a foot in 
diameter, their remote and regularly-whorled branches, like the 
stem covered with a smooth, grayish-green bark, showing 
that, although so large, the plant is still “in the milk,” and 
has only begun its life of many centuries. The sugar-pine 
conspicuously exhibits one of the most general and striking 
characteristics of the conifers—the great development of the 
trunk at the expense of the branches. Nearly the whole 
growth is thrown into the trunk, which generally stands with- 
out a flaw or flexure, a perpendicular cone, all its transverse 
sections accurately circular, sparsely set with branches, which, 
in their insignificance, seem like the festoons of ivy wreathing 
about the columns of some ancient ruin. The leaves are three 
inches long, dark bluish-green in color, and they grow in 
groups of five. The foliage is not dense. The cones are large, 
sometimes eighteen inches long by four thick. The wood is 
similar to that of the white pine—white, soft, homogeneous, 
straight-grained, clear, and free-splitting. It furnishes the 
best lumber in the state for the “inside work” of houses, and 
is the chief building material used in the Sierra Nevada, where 
it grows. The tree derives its name from a sweet resin which 
exudes from the duramen or hard wood of the tree. This 
resin is sugar-like in appearance, granulation, and taste, and 
could not be distinguished from the manna of the drug-stores 
except by a slight terebinthine flavor. The pine sugar is ca- 
thartic. It is found in small quantities only, though it is said 
one hundred and fifty pounds of it were collected by a man 
who devoted himself for a few weeks to the business of gath- 
ering it. 
The Western yellow pine (Pinus ponderosa) is a noble tree, 
next in size among the pines of California to the sugar-pine. 
It sometimes reaches a diameter of seven feet. Its leaves 
grow in threes at the ends of the branches, giving the’ foli- 
a 
