On our recent road trip from Washington to California we weren’t seeking out particular sights, more just letting the ambience wash over us, so I wasn’t specifically seeking out trees along the way. Certainly not all 29 species of pines that are native to California alone. But a few caught my eye, some of which which I’ll share below, focusing on pines. Take note of the range maps, the location where each of these species currently thrives.
Near Eureka there were quite a few Monterey pines (Pinus radiata), well outside their native range (three isolated sites along the central California shoreline and two islands off Baja Calif).
It seems that while Monterey pines are threatened with extirpation in their native range by a fungal disease imported from the Southeastern US, they are grown extensively elsewhere, mostly for lumber in Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Spain, and also in sites all up and down the California coastline. That’s the case in the Arcata Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary, a nicely constructed set of fresh and saltwater wetlands that are part of the local wastewater biological treatment facility. The pines appear to have been planted on the berms surrounding the wetlands, and there were signs some revision was going on: some trees and branches were being taken down. Even if not native to this locale it was good to see Monterey pines since we did not go far enough south to see them in Monterey.
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The pines that I most enjoyed on our drive were the Ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa).
This species has a very wide range so lucky for me there were many to see all the way from coastal Oregon, through California and up into eastern Washington. There are several subspecies, and likely I saw more than one, but they are all quite tall, have beautiful reddish bark, and are graced with very long needles giving the trees a silky appearance even at a distance.
It’s interesting how Ponderosa pine cones are smaller than Monterey pine cones even though the trees are bigger (200 feet vs 60 feet typically). Cone size seems to have nothing to do with tree size and the best example of that for me is the Coulter pine (Pinus coulteri), which grows in Southern California. I have a Coulter cone collected from my college years in Santa Barbara. Coulter pine trees only grow to 70’ typically.
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Some of the pines we encountered had very familiar cones and needles: they looked very much like the Shore Pines of home. But Shore Pines are short and strictly coastal — and in fact these were the closely related Sierra (or Tamarack) Lodgepole. Both are of the species Pinus contorta, but different subspecies: Shore Pines are P.c. subsp contorta, Sierra Lodgepole are P.c. subsp murrayana. There’s a third subspecies, the “default” P. contorta subsp latifolia, Rocky Mountain Lodgepole Pine which has a wider range, and is taller, than either of the others.
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Not a pine, but like the Sierra Lodgepole pine similar to a tree we have at home, is the juniper we came across in Central Oregon, the Western Juniper (Juniperus occidentalis). Junipers are very hardy plants, and the only kind we have in the relatively clement western Washington is the Seaside Juniper (Juniperus maritima) (and very few of those, isolated in the Olympic rainshadow). Seaside juniper was only recently found to be genetically distinct from the Rocky Mountain Juniper (J. scopulorum), another kind that grows almost entirely in the Rockies. Some books still equate them. All of these have scale-like leaves and light blue “berries”.
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Seeing all these unfamiliar kinds of trees was a reminder of how specific their ranges are. Every tree species is adapted to a particular set of environmental conditions. As we know, our rapidly warming climate is changing those conditions wherever trees are currently living. In general, tree ranges will have to shift to higher elevation or more northern latitudes or both if they are to survive a warming world, plus dealing with additional challenges like new competition and disease. Some tree species will be better able to make that shift than others. For some like the Lodgepole pine, or the Seaside Juniper, that may not be possible.
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Raining off and on in the PNW islands today. Temps in 50s. Breezy.
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