I measured one, growing at an
elevation of 4000 feet in the valley of the Merced, that is a few inches
over eight feet in diameter, and 220 feet high.
Where there is plenty of free sunshine and other conditions are
favorable, it presents a striking contrast in form to the Sugar Pine,
being a symmetrical spire, formed of a straight round trunk, clad with
innumerable branches that are divided over and over again. About one
half of the trunk is commonly branchless, but where it grows at all
close, three fourths or more become naked; the tree presenting then a
more slender and elegant shaft than any other tree in the woods. The
bark is mostly arranged in massive plates, some of them measuring four
or five feet in length by eighteen inches in width, with a thickness of
three or four inches, forming a quite marked and distinguishing feature.
The needles are of a fine, warm, yellow-green color, six to eight inches
long, firm and elastic, and crowded in handsome, radiant tassels on the
upturning ends of the branches. The cones are about three or four inches
long, and two and a half wide, growing in close, sessile clusters among
the leaves.
[Illustration: PINUS PONDEROSA.
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