Pinus muricata

Pinus muricata is a tree pertaining to the family of the Pinacées and the kind Pinus. Its surface of distribution is very narrow. One finds it mainly in California, the United States, and at some places of Low-California, Mexico, like on some islands off the coasts.

Description

It is a tree with persistent sheets which can reach a 25 m height, and 90 cm diameter. Its summit is round or even applatie. He lives on the low hills in coastal area. He has a port in broad column. Its branches are of color orange-brown. The branches are ascending, and persist rather low on the trunk even at the adulthood.

Its bark color crimson-brown (similar to the woodland Pine) scaly, very thick and is furrowed. Its sheets are in form of needles from approximately 1,5 mm broad and 8 to 15 cm length, slightly curved. They are from green-yellowish color dark, or blue-green following the area (see low), 2 per beam, and persist 2 to 3 years.

The male flowers are yellow, the red females, in groups separated on the young branches. The ovoid cones make 8 cm length, are asymmetrical, in Verticille. They are red-brown and maturent in 2 years. They can persist up to 70 years, which is more than any other pine. The scales of the cones are very stiff, and have their prickly end, thus avoiding the predation by the squirrels. The cones remain closed very a long time, generally until strong heats or fire make them open. The seeds make from 6 to 7 mm, color sunk, almost black, and have wings from 15 to 20 Misters.

Varieties

There would be four varieties of this pine ( token entry muricata , P Mr. borealis , token entry remorata , and token entry cedrosensis ), but none was not validated by scientific publication. It seems rather than the species muricata is very variable in term morphological, genetic, chemical, ecological and physiological.

In California, it was shown that the characteristics of this pine changed abruptly in the neighborhoods of the border between the counties of Sonoma and Mendocino. The population of north is called the “blue variety”, and that of the south the “variety green”, because of the differences in color of the sheets. The attempts at hybridization of the two populations always failed, suggest that they could be in fact two distinct species although enough close.

See too

External bonds

, placed on the red List of the UICN (noted in June 2007)

Sources

Allen J. Coombes, Trees , ED. Larousse, 2005.
'' Pinus muricata '' on conifers.org

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