tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it.
The largest specimen I ever found was nineteen feet
seven inches in circumference. It was growing
on the edge of Lake Hollow, north of Mount Hoffman,
at an elevation of 9250 feet above the level of the
sea, and was probably about a hundred feet in height.
Fine groves of mature trees, ninety to a hundred feet
in height, are growing near the base of Mount Conness.
It is widely distributed from near the south extremity
of the high Sierra northward along the Cascade Mountains
of Oregon and Washington and the coast ranges of British
Columbia to Alaska, where it was first discovered
in 1827. Its northernmost limit, so far as I
have observed, is in the icy fiords of Prince William
Sound in latitude 61 degrees, where it forms pure
forests at the level of the sea, growing tall find
majestic on the banks of glaciers. There, as in
the Yosemite region, it is ineffably beautiful, the
very loveliest of all the American conifers.
The White-Bark Pine
The Dwarf Pine, or White-Bark Pine (Pinus albicaulis),
forms the extreme edge of the timberline throughout
nearly the whole extent of the Range on both flanks.
It is first met growing with the two-leaved pine on
the upper margin of the alpine belt, as an erect tree
from fifteen to thirty feet high and from one to two
feet in diameter hence it goes straggling up the flanks
of the summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges,
wherever it can get a foothold, to an elevation of
from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, where it dwarfs to a mass
of crumpled branches, covered with slender shoots,
each tipped with a short, close-packed, leaf tassel.
The bark is smooth and purplish, in some places almost
white. The flowers are bright scarlet and rose-purple,
giving a very flowery appearance little looked for
in such a tree. The cones are about three inches
long, an inch and a half in diameter, grow in rigid
clusters, and are dark chocolate in color while young,
and bear beautiful pearly-white seeds about the size
of peas, most of which are eaten by chipmunks and the
Clarke’s crows. Pines are commonly regarded
as sky-loving trees that must necessarily aspire or
die. This species forms a marked exception, crouching
and creeping in compliance with the most rigorous demands
of climate; yet enduring bravely to a more advanced
age than many of its lofty relatives in the sun-lands
far below it. Seen from a distance it would never
be taken for a tree of any kind. For example,
on Cathedral Peak there is a scattered growth of this
pine, creeping like mosses over the roof, nowhere
giving hint of an ascending axis. While, approached
quite near, it still appears matty and heathy, and
one experiences no difficulty in walking over the
top of it, yet it is seldom absolutely prostrate,
usually attaining a height of three or four feet with
a main trunk, and with branches outspread above it,
as if in ascending they had been checked by a ceiling
against which they had been compelled to spread horizontally.
The winter snow is a sort of ceiling, lasting half
the year; while the pressed surface is made yet smoother
by violent winds armed with cutting sand-grains that
bear down any shoot which offers to rise much above
the general level, and that carve the dead trunks
and branches in beautiful patterns.
Copyrights
The Yosemite from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
