Description: Large, very tall tree with a straight trunk unbranched for a long span and open, conical crown of long, nearly horizontal branches, bearing giant cones near the ends; becoming flat-topped.

Height: 30-50m, occasionally over 60m. The current tallest Californian Sugar Pine is 81.7m at Hogden Meadow in Yosemite National Park.

Diameter: 1-2m, occasionally reaches 2.5m; the current champion is 3.52m in diameter at breast height, a 66 tall tree visible from the General Store in Dorrington, California.

Needles: evergreen; five in bundle, with sheath shedding first year; 7-10 cm long. Twisted, slender, stiff, sharp-pointed; blue-green, with white lines on all surfaces.

Bark: brown or grey, furrowed into irregular scaly ridges; grey and smooth on branches.

Cones: weighing up to 2 Kg when green; 30-45cm long; cylindrical, shiny light brown in second year; hanging down on long stalk near ends of upper branches; cone-scales thick, rounded, ending in blunt point, spreading widely; seeds large, long-winged, edible; shed August to October in second year; significant crops every third year (typically over 50% are infertile).

Habitat: Many kinds of mountain soils; not forming pure stands, but occurring in mixed coniferous forests. Sugar pines tend not to dominate forest types, but rather are found growing with many other species. In the northern mountains some of its associates include Douglas-fir, Ponderosa Pine, Grand Fir and Incense Cedar. In the Sierra it is found with Jeffrey Pine, Giant Sequoia, and California Black Oak. In fact, the most dense populations of Sugar Pine are found on the western slopes of the Sierras. In the southern mountains Sugar Pines grow with Ponderosa Pine, Coulter Pine, White Fir and Incense Cedar. Sugar pines grow best in mesic, deep sandy loam soils, and they prefer warm dry summers and cool wet winters (Kinloch and Scheuner, 1990).

Range: Mountains from W Oregon south through Sierra Nevada to S California; also in N Baja California; at 330-1650m in north, 600-2400m in Sierra Nevada, and 1200-3200m in south.

Sugar Pine is one of the largest and most beautiful pines and has been called "The King of the Pines" and "The Queen of the Sierras". No other conifer has such long cones, reaching up to 55 cm long. American Indians ate the large sweet seeds as well as the bark, they also used the rootlets for baskets, the pitch for glue and gum, and the leaves and bark to make medicinal teas. But the common name refers to the sweetish resin which exudes from cut or burned heartwood which was also eaten by Indians. John Muir found the resin preferable to maple sugar. Sugar pine is considered a very important timber species due to the quality and value of its soft, even-grained wood. Discovered by Douglas, and introduced by him to the UK in 1827. It prefers a sheltered situation and a good loamy soil, but still grows slowly here.

Although sugar pine is ozone tolerant (Fenn, 1991), it is not very drought tolerant, which makes it more difficult to plant than other pines. Also, sugar pine is declining due to its high susceptibility to white pine blister rust, Cronartium ribicola, a disease that infects seedlings and kills them as cankers girdle the main stem. As the name suggests, the secondary hosts for this rust are various species of Ribes. Natural regeneration is thus curtailed in heavily infected areas. Introduced at the turn of the century in Oregon, white pine blister rust began infecting northern California Sugar Pines sixty years ago, where the intensity of infection still remains the highest (Kinloch and Scheuner, 1990). In the UK, all old trees are dead from this rust, though a specimen in Buckinghamshire had reached 29m and 1m diameter in 107 years before it died.

Much of the literature about sugar pine is focused on the rust problem. A small percent of the trees carry resistance genes and work is underway to further develop blister rust resistant stock under the auspices of the California Sugar Pine Program (Kitzmiller, 1991). Other techniques to reduce disease in plantation stock are also being investigated (Jenkinson and McCain, 1993). Pinus lambertiana is singularly resistant to hybridization (no natural hybrids are known), but fertile crosses with the Chinese pine Pinus armandii have been found to have high resistance to blister rust. In the meantime, increasing scarcity of high-grade sugar pine trees has led to an increase in timber value (Willits and Fahey, 1991).

Information: Audubon (1980), biol445, Gymnosperm Database

Source: Not yet sourced. We have had seeds from B&T World Seeds, but all of these rotted, with no germinations.

Planted: Intended for Sierra Nevada mid-elevation forest zone of the US Strip, with Ponderosa Pine and White Fir.

References: apart from the usual cited sources, see citations in Pyott. Unfortunately, these pages seem to be no longer online - CSF Fullerton no longer offer a Forest Ecology course, and all the old material written by course members seems to have been removed.

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