The heat,
however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and in a few years the bark
shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are thus killed and left
standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the
distance, like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a
forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay, and the forlorn
trunks are blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another
encumbering the ground until they are consumed by the next fire, and
leave it ready for a fresh crop.
The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out
over the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless
mountain-sides with the Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in
rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocks--always, however, showing the
effects of such hardships in every feature.
Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so
far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct
species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from forty to eighty
feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in eddying
gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods.
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