Not only is the Sugar Pine (Pinus lambertiana) the tallest pine in the world, but it also produces the longest Pine Cones.
They are easy to identify if you are in the West Coast of North America, look for the pine cones that dangle at the end of branches like earrings (or at least that is how my mind sees them). Then you know it is a Sugar Pine!
Kathleen Harrison set the scene in her important book called Tending the Wild:
“James Hutchings, one of the first non-Indian inhabitants of Yosemite Valley, described the openness of this forest community: ‘Large sugar-pine trees, Pinus Lambertiana; from five to ten feet in diameter, and over two hundred feet in height, devoid of branches for sixty or a hundred feet, and straight as an arrow, everywhere abound. These forests are not covered up with a dense undergrowth, as [in] the East,but give long and ever-changing vistas for the eye to penetrate.’”
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Plant Fact: Tallest Pine in the World!
