4. Pinus insignis. Dougl. (Monterey Pine.)
Monterey! Carmelo Valley!
This species covers many thousand acres of land near and by Monterey and Carmelo, forming quite an extensive forest along the coast between these two places. Height, sixty to one hundred feet, and one to three feet diameter; outline very irregular, consisting often of only a few rigid spreading branches; foliage dense and of a vivid green color; cones persistent, often from ten to nineteen whorls; bark very thick and rimose. Wood extremely resinous and rather coarse-grained; excellent for street planks, bridges, and floors. At present it is no more in the market as lumber; the good timber has been all cut, and the saw-mill removed.
Considering that there is, besides this species, only Pinus muricata growing in that forest, which could not be confounded with the species in question—it is certainly most singular to meet with so many synonyms for it. Pinus radiata, Don.; Pinus Sinclairii and Pinus tuberculata, provided this last should not prove to be a good species. It is the more astonishing since trees and cones are of great conformity throughout the entire forest.
5. Pinus tuberculata, Don.
Santa Cruz! Ukiah! Oakland hills! Forest Hill! Eureka!!
In all these localities, it is a small tree, from twenty to thirty feet high, and from six to fourteen inches in diameter. It retains its lowest branches, which spread generally very much, often horizontally. The foliage seems to me less dense and less vivid-green, than that of the preceding. Young trees raised here, side by side, show the same differential characters. The cones from all these different localities are very uniform, and differ essentially from those of Pinus insignis at Monterey. The seeds, however, resemble each other very much. Both species grow near the coast, but on different soil. Pinus insignis, on a soil produced by the disintegration of a bituminous slate and granite; Pinus tuberculata, in all the above-mentioned localities, on a soil derived from metamorphosed sandstone. Should these two species be definitely united, after a thorough investigation, they would afford a most striking example of the influence of a different soil. It is certainly singular to find such a well-characterized form restricted to one locality only. This fact, however, would not stand isolated with us here; Abies bracteata, we find similarly confined to one locality only in California. Isolation is more or less a characteristic feature with all our trees, and there is probably no country where the influences of soil, climate, and exposition are so well and abruptly marked and unmistakably defined.
6. Pinus muricata, Don.
Monterey! Mendocino City!
In a moist depression at Monterey, I found a small group of this species, averaging about fifteen feet in height, and five to six inches in diameter. Bark reddish and nearly smooth; branches almost at a right angle with the main axis and generally from five to seven in a whorl; leaves of a darker vivid green, and more succulent and longer, than those of Pinus insignis, of which there were trees of the same size by the side of it; cones from three to seven, in a whorl very much aggregated and clustered. I counted seventeen whorls on a tree fifteen feet high. The lower portion of the trunk was clad with dead leaves.