The sugar-pine grows amid the mountains from southwestern British Columbia, southward through western Washington, Oregon, and on the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges of California, at elevations ranging from 4,000 to 8,000 feet. It frequently clothes steep declivities or bids defiance to the storms on the crests of sharp ridges. In size it is scarcely exceeded by any of its companions excepting the firs and sequoias. It frequently attains a height of from 200 to 275 feet, with a diameter at the base of from 8 to 14, and in some instances of over 20 feet. Individual trees are known which have a height of 245 feet and are 18 feet in diameter. The branches are usually high above the ground and widely spreading. In the case of well-grown individuals they leave the main trunk with a sweeping, downward curve, which midway out changes to an upward curve, and at the extreme distal end droops once more. At the extremity of many of the far-reaching boughs there are suspended one or two cones, each 12 or 14 inches long and sometimes over 8 inches in diameter. The peculiar and frequently remarkably regular curvature of the great branches, giving them the form of half a Cupid's bow, imparts to these mighty pines a grace and symmetry possessed by few other trees. The familiar name of this great pine refers to the fact that from wounds or incisions in its trunk there exudes a sweet sap which is considered by many persons to exceed even the sap of the maple in agreeableness of flavour.
Lovers of beautiful trees will agree in considering the sugar-pine as the noblest of its family growing in the woods of America, if not the most majestic of its kindred in the world. Its only rival, but of a different type of beauty, is the Norfolk Island pine, of the south sea islands.
Of the many pleasant memories of camp life in the forests of America which are a source of delight to the writer none are recalled with greater pleasure than those associated
with the sugar-pine of the Sierra Nevada, where the ground is carpeted with the long brown needles that fall in showers at certain seasons from the boughs far overhead. With the faded leaves are strewed also the great cones which always excite wonder and admiration. In the clear air and brilliant sunlight of the Californian mountains the luxuriant plume-like leaves far aloft appear to be formed of burnished silver or have the yellow of gold, according as the light strikes them, and at night the lofty boughs swayed by the winds make music such as no other forest can produce. Nothing in the vegetable world, not even the great sequoias, convey such an abiding impression of strength and majesty as these pines which have withstood the storms of centuries without losing their vigour or their symmetry and beauty of form. Unfortunately as it would seem, however, these magnificent trees are useful, as the term is commonly employed, and are fast falling a prey to lumbermen, who measure their value in dollars.
The yellow pine of the Pacific mountains, not to be confounded, however, with the yellow pine of the southern Appalachian region, fortunately has another common name, the silver pine, which is more appropriate and distinctive. This is the most widely spread, perhaps, of all the pines of North America, and is familiar to every one who has travelled through the Pacific mountains from British Columbia to Mexico, and from the Black Hills of Dakota or the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico westward to within hearing of the surf of the Pacific Ocean. It ranks second in size to the sugar-pine, but is a near rival in strength and nobleness of form. As might be inferred from its wide distribution, the silver pine had adapted itself to a great range of conditions, not only of climate, but of soil and height above the sea. It is found from an elevation of about 2,000 feet above the sea up the mountainsides nearly to timber-line, and flourishes alike in the hot, arid valleys and in regions bordering on perpetual snow and ice. One beautiful feature of the silver-pine forests is their open, park-like character. The trees stand far apart, and thus have room to reach not only a great size,
but a remarkable degree of perfection of form. Between the islands of shade on the sunlit ground there is usually but little undergrowth, and the far-extending natural pastures permit one to ride in any direction without inconvenience.
One other pine of the widely extended Pacific forest demands attention even from the passing traveller, not on account of its size, for it is a dwarf in a land of giants, but for its wide distribution and the food its large, oily seeds furnish for birds, squirrels, and even for man. I refer to the piñon pine, of which there are several species. They are seldom over 35 or 40 feet high, and are not remarkable for beauty, although they furnish an agreeable feature in the sparsely forest-clothed and semiarid region where they thrive best, but they bear a profusion of small cones, each of which contains perhaps a dozen edible and nutritious seeds. These seeds were formerly used by the Indians for food on an extensive scale, and are still gathered in large quantities, and may be found in the markets of our cities. The Indian encampments in the piñon forests in the fall of the year are among the most picturesque features of these degenerate days of the aborigines.
In the southwest portions of the United States the forests are confined to the mountains and the higher table-lands, the hot, arid valleys being without trees other than the larger growths of cacti and yucca. Similar conditions are present in northern Mexico, but on the western side of that republic and throughout practically the whole of the peninsula of Lower California the mountains and valleys alike are treeless and desolate.
As stated by C. S. Sargent, the forests of North America, exclusive of Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies, contain arboreal representatives of 158 genera of plants, of which 94 genera occur in the Atlantic and 59 in the Pacific side of the continent, and 48 genera in the tropical portion of southern Florida. Of the number of genera of trees in the Caribbean forest we have no reliable census.