WESTERN WHITE PINE
[Pinus Monticola]

This tree, while not of extraordinary importance in Mount Rainier National park, is regarded as the most valuable of our native coniferous species. Here in the park it adds a touch of variety to the forest cover for its long, blue-green foliage tufted at the ends of the branchlets is quite conspicuous among the short needled firs and hemlocks.

Even at a distance it is easily identified. Its crown is more open than its associates and the branches extend at right angles from the trunk and have but a slight droop. On young trees the branches arise at whorls along the trunk and to a limited degree one can tell the age of a young White Ping by counting the number of whorls. Closer observation will bring out the fact that the needles are borne in tiny bundles - five to a bundle - and that they are enclosed at the base by a paper-like sheath which binds them together and holds them in place in the needle cluster. The cones, when mature are from 6 to 12 inches long, and very conspicuous hanging from the ends of the branches and cause no end of comment on the part of our visitors.

In the Park this tree has two close relatives - the Lodge Pole Pine (Pinus contorta) and the White Barked Pine (Pinus albicaulis). In the eastern portion of our country it has a very important relative in the Eastern White Pine which it closely resembles. This latter species at one time grew in abundance in the Lake States whose forests furnished the greater part of the lumber used in the United States at the time. Those forests are now a thing of the past but at one time seemed inexhaustible. Their destruction is one of the most powerful arguments for the practice of constructive forestry today.

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