THE NATIONAL FORESTS OF COLORADO 37 



west. It is useful only for fuel and for its seeds or nuts, which are 

 large enough to be an important article of food for the poorer inhabit- 

 ants of the Southwest and appear on distant markets as a delicacy. 2 

 Unshelled, they are about the size of a Spanish peanut as seen in 

 candy and in the salted state. The cones are small and rough, each 

 cone bearing only a few of these large seeds. The needles of pihon 

 are usually about an inch long. 



Common companions of the pinon are two or three species of 

 junipers, close relatives of the eastern juniper, which is called " red 

 cedar." The various western junipers 3 are difficult to distinguish. 

 Some individuals have decidedly silvery foliage and others are 

 marked by a narrow, cylindrical form as regular as though they had 

 been trimmed with shears. The layman will be satisfied to call them 

 all "junipers." As is well known, the junipers have awl-shaped 

 leaves about one-half inch long, sometimes pressed close to the twigs 

 and under other conditions spreading and making the twigs very 

 prickly. All have berries, some of which require two years to 

 mature. 



In addition to these is another species which always grows as a 

 prickly low-spreading bush, and is called scrub, or dwarf, juniper. 



The spruces are distinguished by needles attached singly on all 

 sides of the twigs, and on close examination will be seen to be four 

 sided and sharp pointed. In the blue spruce (Picea pungens) the 

 needles are if anything a little longer, stiff er, and more " prickly " 

 than in the Engelmann spruce (P. engelmannii), but this is not 

 a certain means of identification, nor does the blue color certainly 

 distinguish the blue spruce from Engelmann's and from Douglas 

 fir, both of which are sometimes very blue. The most certain 

 characteristic of the blue spruce is the length of the cones, which 

 is 3 or 4 inches. But there is another characteristic which is always 

 apparent and is detected at a glance when one becomes accustomed 

 to it. On the main trunk of the blue spruce there are always a 

 number of tiny twigs only a few inches long in addition to and 

 usually between the main whorls of branches. These twigs keep 

 pushing out on the stem for many years, and after the stem becomes 

 large and the twigs die they give it an unkempt, unbrushed appear- 

 ance. The stem of Engelmann spruce, on the other hand, has none 

 of these adventitious twigs. It is smooth and clean, the bark begin- 

 ning to peel off at an early age in round thin flakes. 



Blue spruce occurs mainly in the bottoms of canyons below 9,000 

 feet elevation and hardly ever out on the hillsides. Engelmann 

 spruce occurs in the canyons above 8,500 or 9,000 feet. As one goes 

 higher, Engelmann spruce is found making extensive forests on all 

 slopes and aspects up to timber line. 



The cones of Engelmann spruce are slightly more than an inch 

 long. These small cones may usually be seen clinging near the ex- 

 treme tips of the larger trees. In the early summer they are bright 

 reel. Engelmann spruce forms the finest timber stands in Colorado, 

 dense forests occurring at high elevations, with individual trees 50 



2 It should perhaps be stated that all pine seeds are nourishing and decidedly palatable 

 food. The semihard shells of the seeds, however, have a slightly resinous flavor and must 

 be disposed of if the " meat " is to be enjoyed. The Mexicans who consume many pinon 

 seeds become very adept and are aole to feed whole seeds in at one side of the mouth, 

 while a steady stream of empty shells flows out of the other side. 



2 Juniperus $cop>ulorum f J, monosperma, and J. utahensis occur in Colorado. 



