Description:
The western white pine is a regular member of the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Klamath mountains, with a more limited distribution in the eastern Oregon mountains. It only occurs in Nevada in a few spots east of Lake Tahoe.
In my opinion, it is an attractive tree, very stately and symmetrical, except in the higher elevations where it seems to battle with the blustery elements. It can grow to nearly 200 feet tall.
Its cones are very distinctive, long (5 – 8 inch), slender, and hang at the tips of branches, much like the related sugar pine. However beautiful the cones are, they don’t match the size of the sometimes 20 inch sugar pine cones. The three to five inch needles grow in groups of five, like the other members of the “white pines”.
Personal Observations:
My most recent encounter with this stately pine was on the east side of the Cascade crest on my hike to Doris Lake within the Three Sisters Wilderness Area. It was not in widespread gatherings, but was found in pockets here and there sprinkled in with the more pervasive lodgepole pine and Engelmann spruce. I also found a few isolated trees in the Metolius Preserve north of Bend, Oregon.
Several years ago I logged several of them east of Tahoe in my collaboration with David Charlet and the population of his Nevada conifer database. It was in the midst of white fir, Jefferey pine, and lodgepole pine.
In my early years while doing field work during my stay at Sonoma State, I came across many in the Yolla Bolly Wilderness Area, and the Mendocino Pass area of the California coast range. If I remember right, and that was about fifty years ago, it was amongst ponderosa pine and white and red fir. Its cousin, the sugar pine was also in the area, but down the slope a bit.
I have found many of them east of the Cascades and highway 97 and south of Paulina Peak. That extends the range noted by conifers.org.
I hope to seek and record this tree when I continue my exploration of the east Oregon mountains.