Sugar Pine       PI-nus lam-bert-i-A-na

• Conifer, evergreen, the tallest pine (The King of Pines), 150 to over 200 ft (45-61 m) high, straight trunk free of branches much of its length, open crown, nearly horizontal branches.  Bark of young trees is thin, grayish-green, smooth; on old trees it is reddish, with narrow, broken, scaly ridges separated by deep furrows.   Needles, 5 per bundle, 5-10 cm long, twisted, slender, stiff, sharp-pointed, white lines of stomatal bloom on all surfaces; persist 2-3 years.  Cones are large, 28-46 cm long, sometimes to as long as 56 cm (22 inches), cylindrical, shiny brown, on a long stalk.
• Sun to light shade.
• Hardy to USDA Zone 6         Native to north-central Cascade Mountains in Oregon (Santiam Pass), southward through the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and extreme western Nevada, also found in northern Baja California, elevation range from 2,000-9,000 ft.
• lambertiana: after Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761-1842) English botanist, specialized in research on pines, author of the Description of the Genus Pinus (1803).
• The common name, Sugar Pine, is a reference to the sweetish resin that exudes from cut or burned heartwood.  Native peoples used the large, rich, oily seeds of Sugar Pine as a food source and the sugary sap exuded from wounds as both food and medicine, the sap has laxative properties.  The sweet exudate is pinitol, a methyl ester of a sugar alcohol namely, 3-O-methyl-D-chiro-inositol, it is now known to have "insulin sensitizing characteritics" and is obtained from soybean for commercial uses.