Pinus longaeva |
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bristlecone pine, Great Basin bristlecone pine, intermountain bristlecone pine |
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Habit | Trees to 16m; trunk to 2m diam., strongly tapering; crown rounded, flattened (sheared), or irregular. |
Bark | red-brown, shallowly to deeply fissured with thick, scaly, irregular, blocky ridges. |
Branches | contorted, pendent; twigs pale red-brown, aging gray to yellow-gray, puberulent, young branches resembling long bottlebrushes because of persistent leaves. |
Buds | ovoid-acuminate, pale red-brown, ca. 1cm, resinous. |
Leaves | mostly 5 per fascicle, upcurved, persisting 10–30 years, 1.5–3.5cm × 0.8–1.2mm, mostly connivent, deep yellow-green, with few resin splotches but often scurfy with pale scales, abaxial surface without median groove but with 2 subepidermal but evident resin bands, adaxial surfaces conspicuously whitened with stomates, margins entire or remotely and finely serrulate distally, apex bluntly acute to short-acuminate; sheath ca. 1cm, soon forming rosette, shed early. |
Pollen cones | cylindro-ellipsoid, 7–10mm, purple-red. |
Seed(s) | cones maturing in 2 years, shedding seeds and falling soon thereafter, spreading, symmetric, lance-cylindric with rounded base before opening, lance-cylindric to narrowly ovoid when open, 6–9.5cm, purple, aging red-brown, nearly sessile; apophyses much thickened, sharply keeled; umbo central, raised on low buttress, truncate to umbilicate, abruptly narrowed to slender but stiff, variable prickle 1–6mm, resin exudate pale. |
Pinus longaeva |
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Habitat | Subalpine and alpine |
Elevation | 1700–3400m (5600–11200ft) |
Distribution |
CA; NV; UT
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Discussion | Pinus longaeva is considered by dendrochronologists to be the longest-lived tree. One tree was estimated to be 5000 years old. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 2. |
Parent taxa | Pinaceae > Pinus |
Sibling taxa | |
Synonyms | P. aristata var. longaeva |
Name authority | D. K. Bailey: Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 57: 243. (1970) |
Web links |