Community: Closed-cone Pine Forest
Description
Trees to 24 m and 90 cm dbh, straight to contorted, crown rounded, flattened, or irregular. Bark dark gray, deeply furrowed into long ridges, scaly-plated. Branches spreading-ascending, often contorted. Shoots slender to stout, orange-brown, aging darker brown, rough. Needles two per fascicle, spreading to upcurved, persisting 2-3 years, 8-15 cm × (1.2-)1.5(-2) mm, slightly twisted, dark yellow-green (glaucous blue-green in northern populations), all surfaces with stomatal lines, margins strongly serrulate, apex abruptly conic-acute; sheath to 1.5 cm, base persistent. Buds ovoid-cylindric, dark brown, 1-2.5 cm, resinous. Pollen cones ellipsoid, to 5 mm long, orange. Seed cones maturing in 2 years, serotinous, persisting for up to 70 years (or more; longer than any other pine; often old cones are enveloped by the growing branch or trunk), mostly in whorls, mostly asymmetric, lanceoloid-ovoid before opening, curved-ovoid when open, 4-9 cm long, rich glossy chestnut-brown, sessile or on stalks to 2-4 mm long, mostly downcurved. Cone scales with a deep red-brown distal border (the sealing band, yellow-brown on fresh cones but darkening with age) distally on adaxial surface; apophyses usually much thickened, the abaxial ones progressively more angulately dome-shaped toward base of cone; umbo central, a stout-based, curved claw. Seeds obliquely ellipsoid; body 6-7 mm, dark brown to near black; wing 15-20 mm. 2n=24 (Kral 1993, M.P. Frankis e-mail 1999.03).
Distribution and Ecology
USA: California; Mexico: Baja California Norte; at 0-300 m elevation. Occurs in scattered locales along the coast and offshore on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands of California, and Islas Cedros and Guadalupe in Baja. Habitats include dry ridges to coastal, windshorn forests, often in or around bogs or in other nutrient-poor soils.
Very similar to the Bishop Pine (Pinus Muricata), many consider this to be the same exact tree.