Sugar pine

Abstract

Sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana Dougl.) was first recognized by David Douglas, of the London Horticultural Society, on the headwaters of the Umpqua River in Oregon, October 26, 1826. The tree was given the specific name lambertiana in honor of Douglas's friend Aylmer Bourke Lambert, a founder and vice president of the Linnean Society of London and the author of a prominent work on pines.

Sugar pine is the most valuable commercial timber tree on the Pacific coast, and its relative value among all the conifers of the world is very high. This is attributable partly to the characteristic straightness and unusual clear length of the trees and partly to the excellent physical qualities of the wood, which adapt it admirably to high-class uses in manufacture and trade.

Commercially, sugar pine may be considered, like the redwood, as essentially a California tree. Although it occurs in southern Oregon and in Lower California, it is relatively unimportant in both of these regions. The total stand in Oregon is estimated at approximately 3 billion feet, about equally divided between private and Government ownership. No reliable figures are available for Lower California, but the amount there is known to be small. Within California the best available estimates indicate a stand of 39 billion feet, board measure, about 24 billion on private lands and the remainder in Government ownership within the National Forests. Of the three most valuable widely distributed conifers within the State of California-redwood, yellow pine, and sugar pine-though the sugar pine ranks third in volume of stand, it is undoubtedly first in value of product.

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