Ponderosa Pine

It's time to leave the birdwatching for a bit to blog about one of my favorite conifers, the ponderosa pine, Pinus ponderosa, or, more specifically, Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine, var. scopulorum. 

Also known as the western yellow pine or the blackjack pine, this species is most identifiable to me by its red-orange bark that seems split into pieces.  Only trees over a hundred years old have this type of bark, though, and the fact that they usually lack branches on the lower sections makes the bark more noticeable.  Younger trees have grayish bark, which is less distinctive. 

More reliable indentification features are the very long needles in groups of two or three and the large, attractive cones with a point at the end of each scale.

The pollen cones (strobili) are yellow, flower-like and pretty. 

Conifers.org describes this species as "widely encountered throughout most of its range....dense and continuous stands may be seen in the Black Hills of South Dakota, so named for the dense stands of ponderosa covering their slopes. Exceptionally old and picturesque trees may be found throughout the deserts of southeast Utah, particularly on the lower slopes of the Abajo and La Sal Mountains; and at Vedauwoo in southeast Wyoming."  The following photo is of a very cool, twisted pine growing almost out of a rock at Vedauwoo.

I've seen the largest ponderosas in this region in Northern Colorado's Poudre River valley.  It's ponderous size is enough to turn anyone into a tree hugger.