Pinus balfouriana description

Foxtail pine cone and foliage (2).

Pinus balfouriana Greville & Balfour 1853

Common Names

Foxtail pine (1).

Taxonomic notes

One subspecies, austrina .

Description

"Trees to 22m; trunk to 2.6m diam., erect or leaning; crown broadly conic to irregular. Bark gray to salmon or cinnamon, platy or irregularly deep-fissured or with irregular blocky plates. Branches contorted, ascending to descending; twigs red-brown, aging gray to drab yellow-gray, glabrous or puberulent, young branches resembling long bottlebrushes because of persistent leaves. Buds ovoid-acuminate, red-brown, 0.8-1 cm, resinous. Leaves 5 per fascicle, upcurved, persisting 10-30 years, 1.5-4 cm x 1-1.4 mm, mostly connivent, deep blue- to deep yellow-green, abaxial surface without median groove but usually with 2 subepidermal but evident resin bands, adaxial surfaces conspicuously whitened by stomates, margins mostly entire to blunt, apex broadly acute to acuminate; sheath 0.5-1cm, soon forming rosette, shed early. Pollen cones ellipsoid, ca. 6-10mm, red. Seed cones maturing in 2 years, shedding seeds and falling soon thereafter, spreading, symmetric, lance-cylindric with conic base before opening, broadly lance-ovoid or ovoid to cylindric or ovoid-cylindric when open, 6-9(-11)cm, purple, aging red-brown, nearly sessile; apophyses much thickened, rounded, larger toward cone base; umbo central, usually depressed; prickle absent or weak, to 1mm, resin exudates amber. Seeds ellipsoid to narrowly obovoid; body to 10mm, pale brown, mottled with deep red; wing 10-12mm. 2 n =24.

" Pinus balfouriana is the true "foxtail pine." In leaf character it is hardly, if at all, distinguishable from P. longaeva , but its strongly conic-based cones with distinctly shorter-prickled, sunken-centered umbos at once distinguish it from that species" (3).

Range

Timberline and alpine meadows at 1500-3500 m in US: CA. Relatively uncommon, so of conservation concern (3). See also (8). The type subspecies is found in the "[m]ountains of California, on the inner North Coast Ranges (Siskiyou, Scott and Yolla Bolly Mountains) at 5000 to 6000 feet altitude; [subspecies austrina is found] in the southern Sierra Nevada" (4).

Big Tree

Height 23 m, dbh 255 cm, crown spread 10 m. Locality: Trinity National Forest in northern CA (6). Also height 36.0 m, dbh 121 cm, in the Trinity Alps Wilderness of California (7).

Oldest

See subspecies austrina .

Dendrochronology

See subspecies austrina .

Ethnobotany

Observations

Seen in the Yolla Bolly Mountains in the early 1980s, but have no details.

Remarks

"In the days when there were few roads of any sort in California, one region was as inaccessible as another, and botanical explorers, though few in number a century ago, expected nothing but hardships in the West, wherever they went. So that John Jeffrey, the Scottish explorer and first discoverer of this species, made his way to the stands of this tree on Scott Mountains, as earle as 1852. Jeffrey was always a lonely man, collecting far out ahead of civilization, claiming few friends. Thus he was not quickly missed when he disappeared forever, having set out from San Diego to cross the Colorado Desert in search of new plants. He was either killed by Indians or died of thirst. No trace of his end has ever been found" (4).

White pine blister rust ( Cronartium ribicola ), an introduced fungal disease, has afflicted this and certain other white pines (5).

Citations

(1) Arno & Gyer 1973 .
(2) Elias 1987 .
(3) Robert Kral, in Flora of North America online .
(4) Peattie 1950 .
(5) Little 1980 .
(6) American Forests 1996 .
(7) E-mail communication from Robert Van Pelt, who measured this tree; 18-Mar-1998.

(8) Robert S. Thompson, Katherine H. Anderson and Patrick J. Bartlein. 1999. Atlas of Relations Between Climatic Parameters and Distributions of Important Trees and Shrubs in North America. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1650 A&B. URL= http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/pub/ppapers/p1650-a/pages/conifers.html , accessed 22-Jan-2000.