UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
MISCELLANEOUS CIRCULAR No. 31 
Issued January, 1925 
Washington, D. C. Revised December, 1931 
LET’S KNOW SOME TREES 
Brief Descriptions of the Principal California Trees 
By CuHartes H. SHINN, formerly Forest Supervisor, Sierra National Forest, 
California Region, Forest Service 
CONTENTS 
Page Page 
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UT RU OYE: TORE aN ERS Seo gy OS ae A ee eee Hie ethe Califomnlai buckeye vrs ona aaa 34 
‘Rheraldersandsa:bircheer once ee 28 | Index of common and scientific names.-_-_-__- 37 
THE PINES 
First of the cone bearers, we name the tree John Muir so loved— 
the sugar pine, finest of all the pines in the world. (Fig. 1.) It 
often grows to be 200 feet high, with a trunk from 4 to 8 feet through. 
The_bark is reddish brown in color; the leaves (needles) are blue 
green, five in a bundle, sharp-pointed, and about 314 inches long. 
The beautiful cones are from 12 to 22 inches long, clear light brown 
when dry, and hang in bunches from the tips of the branches. Sugar 
pine is found from southern Oregon to Lower California. In the 
Sierra Nevada of California it reaches its best development from 
5,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea. - 
The western yellow pine (fig. 2) is found in all the States west 
of the Great Plains, and also in British Columbia and northern 
Mexico. In the Sierra it grows often with the sugar pine, from 
which it is easily distinguished by its longer, coarser, yellow-green 
needles (4 to 11 inches) occurring in bunches of three. The cones 
are only 3 or 4 inches long as a rule, reddish brown when dry, and set 
in a mass of needles at the ends of the branches. The bark on old 
trees forms large, irregular, yellowish plates. 
A species closely related to the western yellow pine is called 
Jeffrey pine. It is a somewhat smaller tree, although its cones are 
much larger. Its reddish, occasionally almost black bark, is broken 
into narrow plates. The needles occur, like those of western yellow 
pine, in bunches of three. Although occasionally found by itself— 
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