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Pines — Part 4

The Foxtail Pines include two species whose branchlets are clothed with crowded leaf bundles, while the branches are bare. P. Balfouriana, M. Murr., has stiff, stout, dark-green leaves lightened by pale linings. The tree forms an open pyramid of more or less irregularity when old, but picturesque, whether a tree of 40 to 80 feet on the higher foothills of the California mountains or a straggling shrub at the timber line.

P. aristata, Engelm., the other species, has the same brush-of-a-fox leaf distribution, and it is distinguished by the long, slender prickles which arm the scales of its cones, giving the tree its common name, "prickle-cone pine." The tree is bushy, with whorls of short branches, regular at first, but unsymmetrical when old. Its range extends from western Colorado to southern California and includes Nevada and Arizona. It keeps as close as possible to the timber line, and varies from a stocky tree 40 feet high to a prostrate shrub. In cultivation in the Eastern States it is a handsome, bushy shrub.

The Nut Pine (P. quadrifolia, Sudw.) is easily distinguished by its leaves, which are usually in fours. No other pine has this number of leaves in a bundle. The tree inhabits the mountains of southern and Lower California, growing to the height of 40 feet in favourable localities. It is a desert pine, furnishing the Indians an important article of food in its rich, nut-like seeds. Its cultivation is confined to southern California.

The Nut Pine (P. cembroides, Zucc.), a bushy tree of the canon sides in Arizona and Lower California, may also be mentioned as an important source of food. The nuts are sold in most towns in northern Mexico. Its scaly bark distinguishes this tree from other nut pines.

The Nut Pine, or Pinon (P. edulis, Engelm.), of Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, is an important source of food to Mexicans and Indians. The tree grows in forests on the high South-western table lands, and follows the mountains into Mexico. Its leaves are very short, stiff, and in clusters of threes, its globular cones, scarcely over an inch in length, are woody, and the wingless seeds, two on each scale, about the size and shape of honey-locust seeds, are sweet and nutritious.

The one-leaved Nut Pine (P. monophylla, Torr.) is small and irregular, with the form of an old apple tree. Its single, cylindrical leaf, pale greyish green (in a cluster evidently intended to have two), sets it apart from other pines. Its plenteous little cones invest the tree with its greatest human interest.

"It is the commonest tree of the short mountain ranges of the Great Basin. Tens of thousands of acres are covered with it, forming bountiful orchards for the red man. Being so low and accessible, the cones are easily beaten off with poles, and the nuts procured by roasting until the scales open. To the tribes of the desert and sage plains these seeds are the staff of life. They are eaten either raw or parched, or in the form of mush or cakes after being pounded into meal. The time of nut harvest is the merriest time of the year. An industrious squirrelish family can gather fifty or sixty bushels in a single month before the snow comes, and then their bread for the winter is sure."--J. Muir.