Common Names
Southern foxtail pine.Taxonomic notes
Syn: P. balfouriana var. austrina (Mastrogiuseppe & Mastrogiuseppe) Silba (1).Plants of the southern Sierra have been "shown to be genetically distinct from the type (differences in chemistry, form, foliage, cone orientation, and seeds) ... As in several other species or species complexes in Pinus, however, there is a problem with a character gradient involving related taxa. The evidence presented by D.K. Bailey (8) and later by R.J. Mastrogiuseppe and J.D. Mastrogiuseppe (5) could as well be used to indicate that P. balfouriana (with its two infraspecific taxa) and P. longaeva represent a single species of three subspecies or three varieties" (4).
Description
Range
USA: California: "in the southern Sierra Nevada from 9000 to 12000 feet, around the headwaters of the Kings, Kern and Kaweah Rivers; occurring only on the west slopes of the Sierra except at Cottonwood Creek at very high altitudes" (3).Big Tree
Oldest
A crossdated age of 2110 years for sample SHP7 from a specimen of subspecies austrina, collected in the southern Sierra Nevada (CA) by Tony Caprio (2).Dendrochronology
Because it lives in harsh alpine environments and achieves great age, it has been the subject of considerable dendrochronological research, chiefly by L.A. Scuderi and by Lisa Graumlich and her students, notably Andi Lloyd, since the mid-1980s (6, 7).Ethnobotany
Observations
Remarks
A disjunct southern population, possibly disjunct for ca. 700,000 years (Earle 1986, unpublished).Citations
(1) Silba 1986.(2) Arno & Gyer 1973.
(3) Peattie 1950.
(4) Robert Kral, in Flora of North America online.
(5) Mastrogiussepe, R.J. and J.D. Mastrogiuseppe. 1980. A study of Pinus balfouriana Grev. & Balf. (Pinaceae). Systematic Botany 5:86-104.
(6) Lloyd, A.H. 1997. Response of tree-line populations of foxtail pine (Pinus balfouriana) to climate variation over the last 1000 years. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 27:936-942.
(7) Scuderi, L.A. 1993. A 2000-year tree ring record of annual temperatures in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Science 259:1433-1436.
(8) Bailey 1970.
[Pinus] [Pinaceae] [home]
This page is from the Gymnosperm Database
URL: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/2285/pi/pin/austrina.htm
Edited by Christopher J. Earle
E-mail:earlecj@earthlink.net
Last modified on 21-Dec-98