Description:
The whitebark pine is a common high-elevation occupant of most mountain ranges in the west. It overlaps with another high-elevation pine, the limber pine, in California, Nevada, and the northern Rocky Mountains. It prefers the alpine areas (as does the limber pine), which translates to 10 to 12 thousand feet in its southern extent to 6 to 7 thousand feet in its northern extent (such as the Olympic Mountains of Washington). It is often found on rocky, exposed slopes.
Besides sharing much of its range with the limber pine, it also shares the typical asymmetrical shape. Even though young saplings have a fairly symmetrical shape, with age it develops a wide, irregular crown, seeming to limit its typical height to about 70 feet tall. Its shape seems to fit in with the ambiance of the High Desert ranges where it lives.
Its 1.5 to 3.5 inch needles grow in groups of five, as does the limber pine, which makes it difficult to distinguish between the two species. The difference can be discerned fortunately by its cones. It has two to three inch purplish cones, the limber pine has larger three to five inch yellowish cones. When the cones are dismantled by ravenous Clarkâs nutcrackers and squirrels, it makes it tough to tell the trees apart, as I have found out in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada.
It is a critical provider of calories to many birds and mammals in its high fat-content seeds. Unfortunately it is being decimated by the pine blister rust and bark beetles in many areas.
Personal Observations:
My first experience with this alpine conifer was in my first backpack trip in the sixties into the Desolation Wilderness Area of the Sierra Nevada. These gnarly looking trees seem to find little niches around the lakes I camped at. When I worked for the Forest Service shortly thereafter near the Trinity Alps, I found them on the highest ridges.
More recently however, in my tree identification adventures, I have found them in the Ruby Mountains scattered on the higher slopes, usually not too far from the similarly irregular shaped limber pines. Only on close inspection of the cones could I tell them apart. Not far away also in Nevada, I also saw them on the higher, exposed ridges of the Jarbidge Wilderness Area of northeast Nevada.
More recently, after having moved to Bend, Oregon I have found them near Newberry Crater, southwest of Bend, and in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness Area. In both areas I saw that the tree heights shrunk as I progressed higher up the mountains.