Ponderosa pine trees

Eastern Washington
 

Ponderosa pine trees (Pinus ponderosa) grow in the Columbia basin at lower elevations, forming the arid timberline where forest transitions to shrub-steppe and grasslands. It's a stately tree that favors places where the pondering is good, on the border between the refuge of forests and prospect of wide-open spaces. Ponderosa pine extend into the moister, cooler mid-elevation forests and mix with interior Douglas fir, western larch, quaking aspen, and lodgepole pine.

This is a hardy, drought tolerant tree having thick , protective bark comprised of stacked plates that sometimes look like puzzle pieces. Its needles are bundled in threes and they are five to ten inches long, forming tufts at branch ends, with three to six inch long pine cones having sharp teeth. Old growth ponderosas grow 150 to 180 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet in diameter. Some people refer to ponderosa pine trees in logging terms as bull pine or yellow pine depending on the quality of its wood.

Ponderosas provide food and shelter for a wide variety of birds at the edge of the shrub-steppe including northern flicker, Lewis's woodpecker and other woodpeckers, white-breasted and pygmy nuthatch, Clark's nutcracker, and mountain chickadee. Ponderosa pine are also the favorite nesting tree for the colorful neotropical bird, western tanager, which migrate north from Cenral America to breed. Ponderosas make good roosts for turkey vulture, wild turkey and raven, sallying perches for Western bluebird, and nest and hunting platforms for red-tailed hawk, osprey, bald eagle, American kestral, merlin, great horned owl, and various other raptors. Loose, deep-furrowed bark and abandoned nest cavities of dying ponderosas also provide shelter for bats that flip-flap in desert nights eating flying insects such as mosquitos and moths. They also feed and shelter a variety of insects of course, from pine seed bugs to buprestid beetles to ants, to butterflies such as pine white and western pine elfin, in turn providing a major food source for various birds and mammals.

Young ponderosas provide winter browse for mule deer to survive tough winters while older stands may get infested with dwarf mistletoe, a plant parasite that is the host plant for the thicket hairstreak and other mistletoe butterflies.

Ponderosas seedlings planted at the edge of open country should be planted from local stock or seeded from local trees to ensure good adaptation and should be shaded from blazing summer sun, caged from deer, and if possible, watered in summer until roots reach deep moisture in a year or two.

Ponderosa pine tree - Pinus ponderosa
growing in a mixed forest at mid-elevation

Ponderosa pine seedling

Ponderosa pine snag
providing habitat for bats, woodpeckers and other birds

Dead ponderosa pine
bird and insect damage

Ponderosa pine needles
used for winter browse by mule deer

Young ponderosa
bark rubbed by mule deer buck antlers

Lewis' Woodpecker perched on a ponderosa branch
candidate for endangered-species listing in Washington State

Ponderosa pine tree
foraged by Western bluebird

Old growth ponderosa pine
providing seeds for pygmy nuthatch

Mountain chickadee foraging under ponderosa

Clark's nutcracker collecting ponderosa pine seeds

Ponderosa tree parasite Western dwarf mistletoe
or Arceuthobium campylopodum, a host plant for thicket hairstreak butterfly

Leaf-footed pine seed bugs
reduce seed production but don't otherwise damage pine trees

Flathead borers

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A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
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