BOTANY. 
37 
This is the most widely distributed of all the pines which are found in California or Oregon ; 
and over very large areas it is not only the most common hut the only species. I can only 
explain the confusion which exists in reference to it in the notes on the botany of the far west 
which have been published, by the supposition that its favorite habitat, though immensely 
extended, lying so far inland, has scarcely been entered by the botanists who have visited the 
inhabited portions of California or Oregon. 
The range of this tree is from the mountains of New Mexico, (San Francisco, &c.,) northward 
to and beyond the Columbia, and from the coast in California, where it is comparatively rare 
to the Rocky mountain chain on the east. 
In the Sacramento and Willamette valleys I did not see it; but in the Sierra Nevada it is 
abundant, associated with P. Lambertiana, Abies grandis, Libocedrus decurrens, on the slopes ; 
in many places exclusively composing the forests of the higher portions of the range, descending 
to mingle with the species I have named both to the east and west. 
As we passed northeastwardly from Fort Reading, California, across a portion of the Sierra 
Nevada, at the foot of Lassen’s butte, we found this species, known there as the “ yellow pine,” 
as we ascended, succeeding to P. Sabiniana, (which grows near the banks of the Sacramento 
and on the lower hills,) composing the first pine forests we saw in the country. At McCumber’s 
it forms an important element in the magnificent forest of that region, of which I have already 
spoken ; and still higher on the flanks of Lassen’s butte it composes the entire forest, rising 
nearly to the line of perpetual snow. As we descended into Pit river and Klamath basins 
we found it still abundant, forming by far the most constant feature in the vegetation of our 
route from Pit river to the Columbia. Near or distant, trees of this kind were always in sight; 
and in the arid and really desert regions of the interior basin we made whole days’ marches in 
forests of yellow pine, of which the absolute monotony was unbroken either by other forms of 
vegetation, or the stillness by the flutter of a bird, or the hum of an insect. The volcanic soil, 
as light and dry as ashes, into which the feet of our horses sank to the fetlock, produces almost 
nothing but an apparently unending succession of large trees of P. ponderosa. 
The yellow pine, as it grows in these sterile regions, is a noble tree; and though never rivalling 
the gigantic sugar pine in its dimensions, it claims among western pines the second place. At 
McCumber’s we saw many of this species six, and even seven, feet in diameter, three feet from 
the ground; and near the base of Mount Jefferson, in Oregon, I saw one which was twenty- 
five feet in circumference at the same height. 
The port of P. ponderosa is somewhat more spreading than P. Lambertiana , though far less 
so than P. Sabiniana. Where these last two species grow together, the contrast in form is 
very striking, as is also the color and character of the foliage. 
The leaves of P. ponderosa are in threes, from four to ten inches in length, serrated on their 
edges, and, being confined to the extremities of the branches, from which they radiate in all 
directions, give the foliage a peculiarly tufted appearance. The color of the leaves is a dark 
yellow green, and readily distinguishable from the deep blue green of P. Lambertiana, or the 
light blue green, or glaucous hue, of P. Sabiniana. The successive appearance and decadence of 
clusters of leaves at the end of the branches gives to the smaller ones a beaded character, which 
distinguishes it from all other western pines. The smaller branches, and especially the central 
shoot in young trees, are strongly marked with the scales of the fallen leaves ; closely resem¬ 
bling in some cases the leaf scars of the lepidodendroid fossils of the coal period. 
The cones of P. ponderosa are from three to six inches in length, ovoid in form, the bosses of 
