The Swiss Stone Pine attains a height of 15 or 25 metres and occupies
two distinct areas, the Alps, from Savoy to the Carpathians at high
altitudes, and the plains and mountain-slopes throughout the vast area
from northeastern Russia through Siberia. Beyond the Lena and Lake
Baikal it becomes a dwarf (var. pumila) with its eastern limit in
northern Nippon and in Kamchatka. It is successfully cultivated in the
cool-temperate climates of Europe and America. The wood is of even,
close grain, peculiarly adapted to carving. The nuts are gathered for
food and confections, but are destroyed in great numbers by squirrels,
mice and a jay-like crow, the European Nutcracker. It is generally
conceded, however, that these enemies assist in dissemination.
Plate VIII.
Fig. 87, Cone, seed and magnified leaf-section. Fig. 88, Tree at
Arolla, Switzerland. Fig. 89, Cone, leaf-fascicle and magnified
leaf-section of var. pumila.
3. PINUS ALBICAULIS
1853 P. flexilis Balfour in Bot. Exped. Oregon, 1, f. (not James).
1857 P. cembroides Newberry in Pacif. R. R. Rep. vi-3, 44, f.
(not Zuccarini).
1863 P. albicaulis Engelmann in Trans. Acad. Sci. St. Louis, ii. 209.
1867 P. shasta Carrière, Trait. Conif. ed. 2, 390.
Spring-shoots glabrous or pubescent. Branchlets pliant and tough. Leaves
from 4 to 7 cm. long, entire, stout, persistent for several years;
stomata dorsal and ventral; resin-ducts external. Conelets
short-pedunculate, dark purple during the second season, their scales
often tapering to an acute apex. Cones from 5 to 7 cm. long, subsessile,
oval or subglobose; apophyses nut-brown or fulvous brown, dull or
slightly lustrous, very thick, the under surface conspicuous, meeting
the upper surface in an acute margin, and terminated by a salient,
often acute umbo; seed wingless, the testa bare of spermoderm.
This species ranges from British Columbia through Washington and
Oregon, over the mountains of northern California and the Sierras as
far south as Mt. Whitney, and, on the Rocky Mountains, through Idaho
and Montana to northern Wyoming. It is found at the timber-line of
many stations and forms, in exposed situations, flat table-like masses
close to the ground. It is a species of no economical importance and
is too inaccessible for the profitable gathering of its large nuts,
which are devoured in quantity by squirrels and by Clark's crow, a
bird of the same genus with the pinivorous Nutcracker of Europe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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