All the forests of the Sierra are
growing upon moraines, but moraines vanish like the glaciers that make
them. Every storm that falls upon them wastes them, carrying away their
decaying, disintegrating material into new formations, until they are no
longer recognizable without tracing their transitional forms down the
Range from those still in process of formation in some places through
those that are more and more ancient and more obscured by vegetation and
all kinds of post-glacial weathering. It appears, therefore, that the
Sierra forests indicate the extent and positions of ancient moraines as
well as they do belts of climate.
One will have no difficulty in knowing the Nut Pine (Pinus Sabiniana),
for it is the first conifer met in ascending the Range from the west,
springing up here and there among Douglas oaks and thickets of ceanothus
and manzanita; its extreme upper limit being about 4000 feet above the
sea, its lower about from 500 to 800 feet. It is remarkable for its
loose, airy, wide-branching habit and thin gray foliage. Full-grown
specimens are from forty to fifty feet in height and from two to three
feet in diameter. The trunk usually divides into three or four main
branches about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground that, after
bearing away from one another, shoot straight up and form separate
summits.
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