At the same distance (about two miles) from the ocean, and scarcely a mile from the above-mentioned depression, I found another group (mixed with Cupressus macrocarpa) in a deeper but drier locality. Here the tree was altogether of a different aspect, inferior in all its parts. This very transition suggested strongly, that this pine and the one previously seen on the plains near Mendocino City, on a similar soil, might be of the same species.
Near Mendocino City, on the so-called plains, I found in great abundance a small pine tree, which I refer for the present to this species.
Height, five to twenty feet, but the greater number averaged only from five to fifteen feet. Only one tree which I noticed which was fifty-five inches in circumference, and twenty to twenty-five feet in height. It had a flattish top with the branches very much imbricated and so completely covered with cones, that it was really difficult to discover its foliage. But this tree was very exceptional, compared with the mass of little trees covering the plains. These had in general upright branches with numerous and slender branchlets; leaves shorter, denser, and of a darker green than Pinus contorta? which grows with it and is a larger tree altogether; bark reddish, very thin, exhaling a strong resinous odor, and but slightly rimose; cones two to four inches long (curved when long) and scarcely an inch thick, mostly in pairs, but sometimes in threes, reflexed. I counted fifteen sets of cones on a tree fifteen feet high.
7. Pinus contorta, Dougl.?
Head of Tomales Bay! Mendocino City!
Its manner of growth resembles that of Pinus insignis very much. It attains the same height, has the same irregular spreading branches, the same thick rimose bark and very resinous wood. The leaves are invariably in pairs and slightly silvery on the lower surface. The cones are scarcely two inches long with mostly reflex pedicles (umbo) on the slightly gibbous side and persistent for a great number of years.
From the River Albin to Mendocino City, it grows quite near the coast on a fertile and undulating plain, gently descending towards the ocean. At Mendocino City I found it to extend all over the plains about eight miles eastward.
Whether this species is identical with Pinus contorta or not I am unable to decide. Observations made by Mr. Geo. Wm. Dunn, on his recent travels through the Blue and Siskiyou mountains, have rather a tendency to show that Pinus contorta is altogether a different tree. I can state, however, most positively that this species cannot be confounded with Pinus muricata. Both species are two-leaved, but in every other respect they differ widely. The object of these remarks is only to point out the different species, met in my travels, and not to decide which name should have precedence. Murray’s discussion on the distribution of our Pines, in his “Notes on California Trees,” has not “struck” me as being so very correct. Endlicher, in his Synopsis Coniferarum, makes Pinus muricata a Taeda, which is also incorrect; it is a true Pinaster. It remains to decide only, whether the species at Mendocino City is P. contorta, or P. Murrayana, Balf.