Conifers Archives - Page 3 of 18

January 9, 2022August 15, 2022

Trees in the Desert

Exploring the Mojave National Preserve

Mojave National Preserve Park Service Map

Established in 1994, the Mojave National Preserve encompasses 1.6 million acres roughly bounded by Interstates 15 and 40. Most simply pass by this region on their way to other places (Lost Wages, Nevada for example) but it is a premier desert park. This vast and varied landscape includes dunes, dry lakebeds, granites, volcanics (domes, lava flows, and cinder cones), limestones, and sedimentary deposits which support a diverse collection of plants. The preserve includes creosote bush lowlands at 880 feet near Baker all the way up to conifer woodlands at 7,929 feet on the summit of Clark Mountain. The Mojave Wilderness is 700,000 acres of the preserve.

Within the preserve is the University of California Riverside’s Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center. The University of California’s GMDRC is dedicated to academic research and teaching and access is solely through an application approval process. This was was our basecamp. I am working on a book with Philip Rundel and Bob Patterson called California Desert Plants (Backcountry Press, late 2022) so we came to experience, explore, photograph, and write about the regional wonders. In particular, we wanted to find trees in the desert.

Trees in the desert framing the Granite Mountains Desert Research Center.

October 21, 2021July 3, 2023

Magnificent Five-Needle Pines

of Western North America

I have made more posts about foxtail pines than any other trees and it is thus no secret that my favorite conifer is a five-needle pine. There are a lot of thoughts and details about five-needle pines swirling around in my world these days–for better or worse (fires and climate change)–so I figure I’ll add to the story with some updates here.

May 23, 2021January 14, 2023

Relearning the Southern Siskiyous

I am slowly learning about some of the shortfalls my training as a western scientist has had on my ability to interpret vegetation communities of the Klamath Mountains. What I am learning, that was never properly taught in my schooling, is that everything we see today in the Klamath Mountains was affected, to some degree, by long-term human habitation over the past ~9,000 years. For example, up north in British Columbia’s coastal temperate rainforest Fisher et al. (2019) found that the plant communities around village sites had different plant assemblages than control sites and were dominated by plants with higher nutrient requirements and a cultural significance. Consider this next time you look at an oak woodland on a river bench

Another major misconception taught in western science is the description of the assumed wild and wilderness as absent of human impact–when this is far from the truth. Much of what we have designated as wilderness was sculpted by Native People’s stewardship. For example, numerous travel routes were maintained for securing basketry, medicine, food resources, or reaching ceremonial sites (see map below).

August 23, 2020June 27, 2024

Klamath Mountain Whitebark Pine

In the Klamath Mountains, as in the remainder of its range in North America, whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a true summit tree that survive in only the highest subalpine conditions. Regionally, they define the extreme limits of the timber line (7,000’- 9,000’) on localized mountain tops, or sky islands, where they consummate an aesthetic splendor that rivals the finest subalpine scenery of the West. Scraggly branches splay about in the windward direction—where often just as many are dead as alive. Trees are scrupulously scattered across the landscape and thus sculpted specifically by the meager conditions offered. Centuries of slow growth are in strict compliance with the rigorous demands of sun, soil, water, and wind. On select summits a deep-time aptitude for life is exhibited through a multitude of charismatic individual forms.

Klamath Mountain Whitebark Pine — Whitebark pine groves across the eastern Klamath Mountains — the only place they grow in the range.

July 21, 2020July 22, 2020

Klamath Foxtail Pine

Pinus balfouriana ssp. balfouriana

“Whether old or young, sheltered or exposed to the wildest of gales, this tree is ever found irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque and offers a richer and more varied series of forms to the artist than any other conifer I know of.”
−John Muir

Epic grove of Klamath foxtail pines above East Boulder Lake.

The following excerpt is from my book Conifer Country. I was inspired to publish it here after a recent trip with my son to visit and measure the Klamath Mountain champion foxtail pine. After this trip, the foxtail pine is his favorite tree species too 🙂

Klamath foxtail pine range map from Conifer Country.

California’s endemic foxtail pines have established two esoteric populations abscinded by nearly 500 miles of rolling mountains and deep valleys. The species was first described by John Jeffrey near Mount Shasta in 1852 , which was most likely a population near Mount Eddy or in the Scott Mountains. Later, this species was discovered in the high elevations (9,000’-12,000’) of the southern Sierra Nevada. The ecological context of Klamath foxtail pines in the Klamath Mountains differs drastically from that in the Sierra Nevada due to the divergence of these populations in the mid-Pleistocene. Though separated over one million years ago, both subspecies exhibit a radiance and individuality for which I honor them as my favorite conifer.

With separation in space and time, divergence—including cone orientation, seed character, crown form, foliage, and even chemistry—has occurred between the two subspecies. Another reason for these variations are genetic bottlenecks that have been promulgated by spatially restricted microsite adaptations, particularly in the Klamath Mountains . Northern foxtail pines (var. balfouriana) are isolated on sky islands—local mountain tops and ridgelines—from 6,500’ to 9,000’ in the eastern half of the Klamath Mountains. By my count there are 16 isolated sub-populations each consisting of one to several isolated mountain-top populations, except in the Trinity Alps where they are locally common in the more contiguous high elevations. On these sites, proper geologic, topographic, and climatic conditions have offered synergistic alliances with shade-tolerant and faster-growing firs and hemlocks.